*This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone*

#PrepWithPower #CollectiveBias

I love everything about my neighborhood: my house, the street I live on, the neighborhood pool, the dozens of playgrounds, walking trails, and lakes that fill the spaces between houses, and the downtown with coffee shops, restaurants, and a movie theater all in walking distance. Yes, I love my neighborhood. But the one thing I don’t love about my neighborhood is that when a summer storm comes sweeping through, our neighborhood is pretty much guaranteed to have no power. Sometimes its just for  few hours, but with severe summer storms, the power outages can last a lot longer. When you’re a mom, you have to be prepared for everything, and  I’ve gotten really good at being prepared for these storms. With a little help from Duracell batteries,  I’ve found ways to turn a scary storm into a fun camping adventure.

Preparing for a storm for myself and preparing for a storm for my kids is very different. For me, I need to make sure we have lots of light, power for my cellphone, a radio to hear weather updates, and backup batteries for everything. So if I know a storm is coming, I check to make sure I have everything in my Mom’s Storm Safety Kit:

The kids are a different story. Storms can be really scary for little ones. Actually, they can be scary for all of us. So we turn power outages into camping adventures! Because I’m not really the “outdoorsy” type, the closest my kids will make it to camping is in our basement, and they are perfectly happy with their makeshift campsite (for now,at least!) Here is what they need for their camping adventure:

If the lights go out during a storm, we grab our Storm Kits and head to the basement. During those hot summer months, our basement stays nice and cool and is a perfect place to wait out the storm. With their little camping lanterns in hand, we put up the their tent and roll out their sleeping bags. Their silly little giggles crack me up, and even though they probably won’t stay in those sleeping bags too long, I can’t imagine two cuter campers.

Since we’re all a little uneasy with severe storms, we just skip the scary stories, and we try to make each other laugh with the silliest story

Inside the tent we play card games by the light of our lanterns. I wonder who is winning this round of “Go Fish”?

Now I might not be an expert camper, but I do know you can’t camp without S’mores! No power? No problem! Because I was sure to add a Sterno canister into the kid’s Storm Kit we have some yummy S’mores to devour. Now if I could just get the kids to stop touching each other’s marshmallows…

Once our bellies are full, we play a few rounds of hide-and-go-seek with our lanterns, make shadow puppets on the wall, and use that battery-powered radio for a dance party with our glow sticks and necklaces. If the power comes back on, great! If not, no big deal because we are having too much fun to care if we have power or not! Good thing Mommy stopped at Walmart and stocked up on Duracell batteries because we have a lot more “camping” ahead of us!