I’m always looking for new innovative ways to teach the kids lessons. Sometimes the ideas are good, sometimes not so good. One of the ideas I’ve talked to my wife for a while was holding a family emergency night. Since we experienced a snow storm this week, it seemed like a great opportunity.
You may ask, “just what is family emergency night?” Well this time around, it consisted of a simulated power outage. Well, semi-power outage. Before I get to the details of “emergency night”, I feel it is a necessity to set some background for the day.
Due to the recent snowstorm, our rather large family (5 kids) had been cooped up in the house most of the day except for a brief sledding expedition. Brief for the 3 little ones, while the 9 year old big brother got to go on a longer outing. His sleek black plastic sled was the envy of the other adventurous souls which required us to be good neighbors. We shared. Daddy was exhausted. Something to know about having a really good sled…the walk back up the hill is longer.
Later in the evening, approaching dinner, my wife was preparing a delectable pot roast, but unfortunately, it took a little longer to cook than originally planned. Our fallback plan was pizza. Not just any pizza. A Garlic Jim’s pizza! Now being the adventurous type, I opted to skip the home delivery and venture out on the icy roads. Surprisingly, the roads were still amazingly slick and well worth the trip out! 🙂 A few parking break pulls, a little tire spinning, 1 close call on getting stuck and I finally made it home with the pizza still hot. Now enter the “emergency night”.
After getting home, the kids wanted to do a picnic in the living room. Boy did they get more than they intended. We dug up our flashlights and lanterns, turned on the weather radio, and turned out the lights. Oh what a night. With no TV, we played boardgames and had a marvelous time. I think the most entertaining part was sending the boys upstairs in the dark with just their flashlights. I found out later they cheated and turned on their bathroom lights. 🙂 It was just a little too much for them to be upstairs alone in the dark with just a flashlight.
As I mentioned, sometimes the ideas are good, sometimes not so good. This family emergency night was somewhere in between…depending on whose opinion you get. : ) It wasn’t quite as exciting as the night of the extreme rainstorm and the journey into the basement with our 2 year old and my pregnant wife sitting on a 5 gallon bucket, but it was less stressful!
Family Emergency Night