In Case of Fire

People always say, "What would you grab in case of a fire?"

Now I know.

Thanks to some people who decided to go target shooting in the dry brush on the mountain right by my house, now I know.

I grabbed my scrapbooks and clothes and makeup.  Scrapbooks because I don't feel like they can be replaced and clothes and makeup for our immediate needs.

On Thursday, June 21st, on my way home from a brunch with a friend, we noticed a fire.  It surely hadn't been there when we left.   It was hard not to be distracted by the fire and it's dancing orange flames for the rest of the day.

This is my friend's picture.  By the time I got my camera out the flames were gone.  

Maybe I felt a little tinge of worry; I am a worrier after all. But no one else seemed worried.

In fact, my friend who lives at the bottom of the street across from the field on fire set up a lemonade stand: her boys, and some neighbor kids including my daughter.  Because she lives as the bottom of the street, she had a great vantage point to see the fire and people kept coming there to see what was happening.



She had all the kiddos split the money.  I was shocked when Laney came home with $3.25 for her portion.


 The next morning after aerobics, the flames and massive black smoke made it impossible to ignore.  Still no one seemed worried.  I came home and went about our normal Friday morning routine.  The boys were doing their Scripture Scavenger Hunt and I was helping Laney with her math when the phone call came.

We were being evacuated.

A mandatory evacuation.

Word on the street is that had the fire headed in the direction of our houses, it would have been here in 9 minutes.  (I found this out later.)

We all jumped into motion.  I had the kids put their scriptures in the car.  And from there they were pretty much the most amazing children ever!  They did what needed to be done, without fighting.  And they were so helpful to me.  I loved it and took a moment to watch their teamwork with my mommy heart smiling.  It was really fun to me to see what they brought and thought was important.  I loved that Ty reminded everyone to get church clothes.  I also loved that Ty was the one who reminded me of our non-member neighbors that should be told.  And, he was the one who grabbed my wedding picture off the wall.  Laney grabbed my jewelry.  And Ethan was the one who grabbed clothes for Steve.

Having the church in this situation was amazing.  I received a phone call from my Visiting Teacher (a sister assigned to visit me once a month) checking on me to make sure I knew and I also called the sisters I visit teach in turn.  A system.  I love it.  Ironically when I moved to Utah about 17 years ago, I didn't realize we were right on a fault line.  But, I would ask myself, "Who is going to come find me in an earthquake?"  I think because I didn't have any family out here at that time, I was always assessing.

During the time we were packing up, I was able to see the gospel in motion.  People kept stopping by to make sure we knew and to see if we needed anything.  One of my neighbors even thought to ask me if I knew how to turn off our gas because it had been recommended.  I saw neighbors checking on other neighbors.  It was great to see.  And, it was my 11 year-old son who remembered to go tell our non member neighbor.  I was so proud of him.

Silly me, I know, but I had to shower first before we left.  I knew we weren't in imminent danger. So, it took us a lot longer to leave the neighborhood than everyone else.  Did I  mention that I did the dishes and made my bed.  I thought if I were going to imagine flames engulfing my house, I wanted to know that my bed was made.  It seemed like a ghost town as we were on our way out:  kids were no where to be seen, mom's weren't out watching their little toddlers play, there were no cars in the driveways...it was a little eerie.

This was the string of cars on the road as we were trying to leave.  I usually don't see this many cars on this road ever!  And, especially not at this time of morning.

After talking with Steve, we decided to meet up at Red Robin's for lunch.  While we were there he surprised us with tickets to see Disney's new movie Brave.  Afterwards we went to his parents house (who were out-of-town) until the evacuation order was lifted.  Officials recommended keeping cars packed in case of a middle-of-the-night evacuation.  We did.  I actually went to bed that night fully expecting to be evacuated during the middle of the night.  Around 11 p.m., Steve and I stepped outside to see the flames and they were amazing.  And higher than I thought they would be.  And closer, than I thought they would be.

I went to bed that night praying for a boring night.

I have decided boring is great.

This picture was taken by my friend from a house on my street.

This was quite the experience.  Over all it took four helicopters, an air tanker, five hand crews including three "hot shot" groups, numerous fire engines and 200 firefighters to battle the fire.  And even more firefighters were expected to join those already fighting.  A big thanks to those men and women who worked tirelessly and around-the-clock to ensure the safety of our lives and our homes.


Now I know what I would grab in case of fire...

Birthday Manna

My husband has the best sister-in-law ever!

It also doesn't hurt that she kinda looks like me!

Look what she sent him on his birthday:  Georgetown Cupcake!!!

Our family loves to watch the cooking shows and Cupcake Wars is one of our favorites.  Well, the owner of the Sweet Tooth Fairy won one of the episodes from our very own state of Utah.   Thus, Steve wanted to try them.

After one trip home to Maryland where Paige had treated us to these sweet treats, I asked people on Facebook what cupcake bakery they liked in Utah.  The Sweet Tooth Fairy seemed to be the popular choice.  So I tried them.  I thought they in no way compared to DC Cupcake (aka Georgetown Cupcake).

Steve wasn't with us in Maryland at that point in the trip so he missed out for sure.  But, fast forward about two years later, Paige wanted to know what Steve thought of DC Cupcake.  So, with a magic click of her mouse a dozen of these sweet treats showed up on our doorstep!

Yea sis!  You get the sister-in-law of the year award.  I had to keep telling myself they were for Steve, for his birthday.  Luckily he loves me and shared with me.

He thought they were good and that some flavors he liked better from DC Cupcake and others from The Sweet Tooth Fairy.   But, he says he really thinks he needs to taste DC Cupcake fresh.

Ummm....I am sure that can be arranged sweetie!

DaMudEaters

It was a giant playground for adults.  And, our little ones too.

On June 2nd, we had so much fun participating in our first Dirty Dash.  DaMudEaters was our team name.

I seriously couldn't capture the spirit of the race the way the website did.  So here are their words describing the race:

ABOUT THE DIRTY DASH

Have you ever said to yourself, “Marathons are too easy, and Triathlons are for sissies?”

We haven’t either…those races are really hard. Think about it…the first person to run a marathon actually died.  HE DIED!...and he probably didn’t even have fun along the way!

Well, welcome to a new kind of race: THE DIRTY DASH.  This race that puts all other races to shame.  The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course where a military boot camp meets your inner five-year-old’s fantasy and subsequently converts boy to man and then man to swine. 

You’ll need endurance to trudge up mountains of sludge, courage to overcome uncompromising obstacles, a complete lack of shame to wallow in pits of mud and a smile to show through at the end!

So let this mud run obstacle course become your new guilty pleasure. Go solo or with some of your dirtiest, filthiest, & uncouth friends.  Either way, you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I am a Dirty Dasher!”… and then proceed to clean yourself off.  

Here is the beautiful race course in Soldier Hollow (where the cross country skiing was during the 2002 Olympics).  The kiddos were watching some of the early runners during the Dirty Dash.

Trying not to fall in the slippery mud.

Tyler, Ethan, and Alayna ran the Piglet Plunge.  And they LOVED it! They ran it according to age, so Steve ran with the boys and I ran with Laney along with the camera.  Laney did a fabulous job!  She ran so much of it with her mom yelling, "Laney, wait!"  Her little agile body could weave in and out of the other runners.    She wanted to run the whole thing.

 After running the course with Alayna, I thought to myself that the boys might be a little disappointed that it was short and not a ton of obstacles.  Luckily for them, some of the kids running in front of them veered off course and they ended up running far more than they were suppose to.  They didn't mind.

I am pretty sure I heard them asking if they could do it next year.

Making the race even more fun was meeting up with my friend and her family.  We ran most of the race with them.  I loved it.  Her boys were hilarious and their costumes too.  We didn't get to see them at the end, because Steve and I had taken the "shortcut."  We were a little worried about leaving our children.  And, then we realized how hot it was and how sunburned Ethan was getting so we left to get some water and sunblock before Kelly and her family were finished.  How did we not have those with us?

There was no salvaging the clothes or shoes.  So you can donate them.

They actually do clean up the shoes before they are donated.

"Reentry" into Summer

Reentry of the space shuttle is tricky business.

Reentry into summer with kids is also tricky business.

If not done properly, both could have disastrous results.

And so far, ours has been disastrous.  I am not sure why the transition from school to summer has been hard so far.  Was it this way last year?  I honestly can't remember but I am telling myself it was and that the kids settled in because I remember being sad on the first day of school.  Being sad that they were going to be gone and that I was going to miss them.

So far we have had a real lack of kindness and patience mixed in to our days.  And so, I keep telling myself that they have to learn how to be summerites.  That it will come.  But, maybe, just maybe they need my help a little.  In fact, I know they need it.  They need to be busy.  And, without me, they would watch tv all day and do nothing productive.

But, I have a plan.

• We have a checklist.  The checklist has been around since the boys were very little.  Being that I was at home and that there was never consistently a place we had to be, I was having a hard time making sure the important things like prayer and brushing teeth was getting done.  So, I invented our morning checklist.  The checklist consisted of:  getting dressed, brushed teeth, and morning prayer.  I would call down the list and the boys responded with a resounding check if they had done it.  And they loved it.  It worked for us.  We are still doing the "checklist" all these years later. Now I have added cleaning room before playing with friends.
• "Summer school".   Knowing that studies show the elementary children can lose up to 1 and a half years of reading development over the summer, I wanted to help prevent that.  So we have a math and reading part of our day.  In the morning.  
• Scripture Scavenger Hunts.  As with most families in our church we read the scriptures with our children and wonder if they are getting anything out of it.  We usually read by dividing up the chapter with each member reading our assigned number of verses.  At times Steve or I take turns discussing what the verses mean.  Because let's face it, sometimes you can read scripture and think, "What did I just read?"   And, I am not sure they are enjoying it.  I love the scriptures and love learning about them and I want to pass this on to my kiddos.  So, trying--key word is trying--to make it fun, I have created what I call Scripture Scavenger Hunts.  Basically it's a 10 question quiz with fill-in-the-blanks, true/fasle, matching, and one thinking question to help them learn the layout of the scriptures and to think about gospel principles.  We've only done one so far and they loved it.  Ethan wasn't quite used to my questions--and maybe they weren't developed enough for him--so he struggle a little bit in finding the answers.  I am not trying to be intense or make this hard for them.  I tell them exactly where to look to find the answers and if he couldn't find it, I was right there to show him how. 
• Friends.  I have been collecting the phone numbers of my children's school friends all year.  I want to make sure they have plenty of opportunities to play with friends.  
• Legacy Center.  Luckily we have been blessed to afford passes to the Legacy Center where the kiddos can go swimming.  I remember as a kid being so content swimming all day.  

I know we are bound to hit some "air resistance" or "drag" along the way.  I am going to do my best to be patient with that as well.  But, having a plan in place makes me feel so much better.  Like I can jump into summer with both feet.  I know my kiddos are growing so fast and  I want to enjoy this time, not endure this time.