What would you take with you?

When your house is in danger and you need to evacuate, what would you take with you? This is what we took with us:

• Important documents: passports, birth certificates, safety deposit box information, homeowners insurance policy, etc.
• All our photo negatives (2 full binders of them, from pre-digital cameras). I was so glad I had organized this at the beginning of 2006. Go me!
• All our photo albums, scrapbooks, and boxes filled with photos.
• My mom's little jewelry box.
• The Tiffany cross necklace that my mom gave me for Christmas 2005.
• Medication
• Toiletries
• Clothing for a few days
• Computers
• Personal DVDs - Buckeye games, my 2004 dance recital with Danceology, our Puerto Vallarta zip line adventure, my skydiving video, and our family videos.
• Tax documents. (They say the only sure things are death and taxes. So if I survive the fires, I need to file taxes.)
• Cameras
• Ipods
• Memorabilia, cards, and notes from my junior high and high school years.
• Box full of written journals that I've kept since sixth grade.
• Large envelopes filled with year-by-year of cards & letters from family & friends, vacation memorabilia, and ticket stubs.
• My Honolulu Marathon finisher's medal.

That's it. That was what was important to us. Nothing that would be of value to anyone else but us. Looking back, I'm totally amazed at the clarity of thoughts as we went around each room and decided what to take. I didn't really have any thoughts of "I forgot to take that" after evacuation. We were lucky we had an hour to get out. Some people saw the fires coming towards their house and only had minutes to get out. It also occurred to me that it was good that I have this blog. This is on google's servers and would still be around if my house burned down.