Suffield Patch invites you and your circle of friends to help build a community of support for mothers and their families right here in Suffield.
Each week in Moms Talk, our Moms Council of experts and smart moms take your questions, give advice and share solutions.
So grab a cup of coffee and settle in and welcome three of our Suffield moms, Cami Beiter, Lisa Coatti and Wendy Pierman Miztel. The topic today is earthquakes and hurricanes.
Did you and your kids feel the earthquake? While it didn't cause any serious damage in Suffield, feeling the earth move under you can still be upsetting. How did you address it with your family, especially with younger kids? Do you have any emergency plans with your family?
Lisa Coatti
Apparently it is best to be in Target during times of natural disaster. That is where we were during the earthquake. There was no indication that something “earthly” had occurred.
It wasn’t until we overheard another shopper talk about it at the next store on the trip that we started to realize something must have just happened. If we were home and I felt some kind of major movement of the house, I most likely would have blamed my children for jumping off the couch or breaking something.
With the next natural disaster, in the form of water and wind approaching, it really is a good time to talk about emergency plans. We moved recently and the current events have reminded me that our family never updated the “meet at this spot in case of fire or emergency” plan.
My children were told that if there was a fire and they couldn’t get to us, to grab their siblings and get out of the house. We had a certain location to meet up after we all were outside. Should something happen now, I might just find my children hunkered down by the big maple in the front of our old house, the emergency location spot we drilled into their heads.
Is it too late to buy a generator? We were out of town when the earthquake rattled the east coast last week. After we heard the news, the kids and I talked briefly about earthquakes and we called my parents in North Carolina to see if they were OK.
She walked out of the store without buying a generator to power her refrigerator, but said she'd continue to consider it. "It'll make you think, being without power for more than a week," she said. Mike Leonard, an assistant manager at the Lowe's Home
Waste of money or revenue generator. Marketing is always in question. Should we do it? Why isn't it working? How much should we spend? Can we even afford it? Why do others do it so much better? The answers are actually quite simple.
"We are anticipating kids and families swimming by the summer of 2012," said Chuck Barthuly, director of the Better Billings Foundation, the group working to build the center. At the hearing that had been scheduled for Tuesday, District Judge Susan
His neighbors on Chesney Boulevard regard him as friendly, quiet and helpful, especially if any of them have needed someone to fix a generator or a kid's go-cart. Word-of-mouth business brings in some money to help him and his wife, Linda,