The fire

Our poor city is on fire right now, the kind of fire we are told can't happen in populated areas.  So far our home isn't in any real danger but the shop is just across the Interstate from the mandatory evacuation site.  We're hoping that the winds don't pick up again today and blow it across.  Here's some pictures to show how bad it is.

This is what the fire looked like a couple days ago, just really some smoke from the mountains.

With the changing winds you can see how it is crawling down the mountain yesterday.

Once the winds changed it took 30 minutes for the front of the shop to look like the above picture to this one.

Here is a view as the sun sets and the fire lights up the sky. 

This is the view from our gas station on the corner, you can see that the fire was successful in crawling all the way down the mountain to the city.



Toddler Time

This house runs on Toddler Time, it will take nearly 7 minutes to put on shoes, 3 minutes to clear a place setting, 45 minutes to eat dinner, 90 minutes to fall asleep...you get the gist.  Bottom line I spend a lot of time waiting each day and saying things like "Can you please hurry?" or "We are running late can you try and hurry?".  If I step in and do it for her she will quite literally melt into a puddle of screaming and crying that Satan himself would be proud of so I just stand there with Tyler waiting patiently.

We went to South Dakota this last weekend to visit Derek and Rachel.  The girls had SOOO much fun, we even visited a petting zoo (ok that part was for me, but we took the girls with us).  :-)  Every trip up there gets more fun as the girls grow and change and find that they can all play together.  It's just too cute.

Our Little Eater...she will eat anything you put in front of her and loves ribs.  That shirt she is wearing had to be thrown away after this experience.

Look at the size of this moth Joe caught for the girls. That is Joe's cell phone sitting next to it so you can see the vastness of it.  (Meowser must have been been impressed too which led her to eat it this morning luckily while the girls were still asleep).

Austin riding a pony at the petting zoo!



The girls birthday party.

So far it's really nice to have the girls' birthdays so close, I am sure one day they want to do their own separate things but for now it's much easier.


Helen testing out the new picnic table that Marmee and Papa got for the girls.

The birthday girls sharing some water waiting for people to start showing up.

The Elmo cupcakes that I made for their party, my fingernails are still red from the amount of food dye I had to use.

The Hello Meow romper that Helen got for Austin.

The pretty blue hat from Anne.

 The awesome people puzzle and Austin telling Joe all about the people in it.

You can't hear what Austin is saying to me but she is walking the beads up and giving them to me and letting me know that she will not stick them up her nose. :-)

Singing Happy Birthday to the girls.