Growing up in Florida means growing up with hurricanes. Other states have Snow Days for missing school, we have Hurricane Days. I can’t count the number of times the first day of school was cancelled due to an impending storm. My son is only four, but we are about to go through his third hurricane experience!

We live on a barrier island on the Atlantic coast of Florida so when a hurricane is headed our way, it’s a pretty big deal. I was checking updates on my phone and my son got curious. I tried to explain to him what a hurricane was and show him the map for it, but now I’m pretty sure he thinks a giant red spiked disk is hurtling toward Florida, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

We stayed put through the last two, and if this one stays farther south, we’ll stay for it as well. Hurricane Irma was the worst one so far. I remember looking outside our second story window, thinking how crazy the palm tree in my neighbor’s yard looked waving back and forth, when suddenly it snapped and went flying into our pool.

When it actually hit around 3AM, it sounded like the roof was going to be ripped off. There was a giant crash directly above our bed and I leaped up and ran to my son’s room to make sure he was OK. Once things calmed down, we cautiously went outside to find another palm tree had come down on the roof. We live in a neighborhood with a ton of trees and walking through it after the storm was surreal. You could barely see the roads there was so much debris.

My husband called last week, urging me to buy water and I laughed it off because it wasn’t even a hurricane yet, and way off near Puerto Rico. He called the next day the tell me I should watch the news and I let him know I read the news every morning when I check my e-mail. If it was a big deal it would be on my Yahoo! news page.

I should probably find a more reliable news source, since a hurricane is headed straight for Florida and while there’s no mention on Yahoo!, they did have an expose’ on a travel influencer that kept using the same fake clouds in every photo. The horror!

I finally did accept that a hurricane was coming and went into the pantry to assess the food and water situation. I saw we were out of wine and realized this was now an emergency situation.

So that’s where we are on hurricane prep. I’m heading to the grocery store now to stock up on “essentials” and hope it doesn’t move any farther north!