Putting Fires Out

It seems that my life does consist in putting out so many fires out, so to speak.  Take Yesterday, for instance.  My Dad was supposed to fly out Yesterday and we missed his flight, due to many reasons.  He still had a half hour before the plane was to take off and they wouldn't let him go!  I left my big kids in charge at home with the "littles" and my niece, Rachel, who graduated this last year from high school was there too.  After all, my plan was to just make a quick trip and be back.  I also had to pick up an exterior door for our addition.  
Once in town, after I dropped my dad off, I found out he missed his flight, my kids at home were having problems with a very disobedient Eden, and the wildfire was now coming up over the ridge headed down towards our house!! My dad got another flight lined out and we had lunch together, he helped me run a few errands, and get my door, and then I dropped him back off at the airport and headed home.  By this time I knew Cade was already headed home and he would be there.
Still, I was a bit anxious to get home as you could imagine!!  When I got back home there were fire people and other people watching the fire by the road at our place and plenty of excitement!!  We had a minor thunderstorm that provided high winds and really blew up the fire so it was quite incredible as we watched the force of it.  It was loud (I wished I would have taken a video of it!) and roaring!!  As we stood out our back yard by our pool you could feel the heat from it and the smoke boiled down!!  Such an extraordinarily eerie feeling!!  It was interesting too, as my emotions got to me a few times.  After all, I had hiked that very area Yesterday morning with Ryder dog that was burning.  We watched Cyrus' tree fort burn down up in the hill and the fire kept creeping down in the pasture where the cows were.
The firemen were on our property and keeping our home secure, but they did not do anything to try to keep our property from burning up!  A lot of people do not understand our home and our situation because we are very fortunate that we are protected by the highway on one side and the river on the other side of our home, where as many of our neighbors are right up in the mountains with trees all around them.  We also are surrounded by green grass that I keep watered because we have gravity flowing water to our place from Kohl Creek.

Gpa Jeff reading books to the kids 

 A short but sweet visit by my dad so he could do our electrical work in our addition!!

Yesterday

holy smokes!!

My Excursion was still out after my trip to town and you can see how windy it was (tree)

our pasture - it came right down in the field

safety provided by a truck and lights (ha)

We had our own fireworks!

Out the back door (looking at the addition) the fire roaring to our neighbor's house in the hills!

incredible!!