Zombie Apocalypse!

I spent the week after General Conference assembling our 72-hour kits.  I was really great about food storage and emergency preparedness when we lived in Georgia but I've had lots of (not great) excuses to ignore those things since we moved to Utah.  I've been thinking for a while that I needed to get back into it, and the messages at General Conference definitely gave me some extra motivation.

I wanted to come up with a mock emergency to try out our kits and eat dinner from the backpacks and Ben had the perfect idea: a zombie apocalypse.  I made these little "notifications" that "popped up" on my phone, accompanied by an air raid siren for the first one, as soon as we were finished assembling our kits and cleaning up the residual mess in the family room.

So we grabbed our shoes, jackets, and newly packed 72-hour kit backpacks and retreated to the mountains, specifically Big Springs Park.  As we pulled out of the driveway Luke exclaimed, "We gotta vacate!"  As we drove down State Street he told Ben to make sure the windows stayed rolled up so that we didn't get zombie infection gas in our car.  Then to all of us, "Keep your eyes on the windows.  To look out for zombies, of course."  Then, "This is definitely a Goosebumps sat-uation."

We told him it was just a game we were playing, and reminded him that zombies aren't real, which he verbally acknowledged, but then he wondered how we knew there weren't any zombies at the park we visited (10 minutes up a mountain road).  I told him it was a certified zombie-free zone, which he again acknowledged, but as we hiked up the trail with our packs he still wasn't convinved.  At one point he saw some green stuff and wondered if it was evidence of zombie activity.  Poor kid.  He was a little freaked out.

We walked about 2/3 mile up the trail, following a little stream, then turned around and walked back.  It was comfortably cool, a lovely evening to be out walking and we appreciated that there were still some fall colors to enjoy.  When we got back to the trailhead we had a picnic near the parking area.  Then on our way home another "notification" "popped up" on my phone.

This was a really good exercise - we found out how the fully-packed backpacks feel while we're walking, we tried out some of the foods I'd bought, and we even used the water filter we received as a gift several years ago (it works!).  But I think next time we'll invent a fake blizzard or something and just stay in the house, eating our dinner by flashlight.  Luke will probably feel more comfortable in that scenario.