So many updates....

Wow, it's been a while huh?!?!?

Ok so let's start off with the fire.  So we had a horrible fire that started about a mile away from our house claimed 511 homes and two killed two people.  We ended up spending close to a week with Tadd again, he said that he felt like a parent to some college kids that just kept on moving back in. ;-)  Not one blade of grass on our property was even touched and we are so fortunate, especially since we hadn't even made one mortgage payment yet. D'Oh!  Here's a video that an evacuee took as they were driving off, this is taken one street up from ours which shows you just how bad it could have gotten.


Next, the definition of irony...in this case not the literal definition but the way that I see it now.  We share our property line with the Black Forest Fire Department (never thought that would be so important).  When Aunt Lisa and Uncle Jim came out to visit Lisa mentioned that we should go over and meet them and bring goodies.  So the morning of the fire I was busy making this cheesecake to bring over...now that's irony.  Needless to say they never received it and instead we all ate it over at Tadd's house that night but I will definitely make sure that I make it by that fire station with goodies.

So we get all moved back in and I am putting up the last of our suitcases from the evacuation when we get a knock on our door, sadly it's the Sheriff letting us know that a house fire has started 4 doors down and we needed to pack.  My eyes swelled with tears...make it out of a giant forest fire only to be taken out by a neighboring garage fire.  I took a deep sigh, put shoes on the girls, locked the cats and dog up, and started to repack everything.  Luckily 20 (and I am not exaggerating on that number) fire trucks came blazing down our road with everything they had.  They were able to fully extinguish the fire in an hour or so and we didn't lose our home - again.   Here is a picture of the fire trucks at the house fire, our home in one house behind the officer on the left hand side.

Did I mention that while we were busy packing for another evacuation that Adam was moving in with us and that Derek, Rachel, Lola and Lillian were driving down from South Dakota to stay for the week?!?!  Fire has a funny way of not scheduling it's attack with anyone in it's path.

We spent Wednesday at the lake with Ketelsen's, as you can imagine...one boat...four adults and four small children is less relaxing and more like a double dog dare.

Just look at those two little fisherman!

 Lillian driving the boat and eating chips...if you look closely you can see the grease on the leather and the vein popping out of Joe's neck. ;-)

 What you can't see in this picture is the 2 two year old's under the table making additional messes...but there's Joe's neck vein again.

 My two little girls fishing off the back of the boat.

Look at these fancy new beds we stole from Uncle Dane (they are supposed to be bunk beds but I think at this age they work better as separate twins), Tyler is still sleeping in her crib but I am sure we are just about done with that.  The second bed proved excellent for when Lola was in town.

Uncle Wells has a community pool with his new home so we played hooky one day two weeks ago and went to the pool with Carri and Kinsley.  My goofy girls are saying Hi to Dad in this picture.