Evacucation Part 1: Albuquerque

We were evacuated for more than a week.  We left Sunday, June 26th and came home on Monday, July 4th.  The town was actually under a mandatory evacuation from June 27th until Sunday, July 3rd.

We spent from Sunday, June 26th until Thursday, June 30th in Albuquerque staying at Uncle Brad's house.  It worked out perfectly for us to stay there since Karen had just taken Brendon a week earlier to Utah for BYU summer semester and is staying there until August.  My cousin, Kristin, had her first baby the night that we evacuated.  Anyway...so Brad's 5 bedroom house was pretty much empty since Brad was at work all day.  He was super nice to let us stay with him.

My friend, Juli, and her husband, Josh, and their four kids stayed with us at Brad's house from Monday until Thursday.  That was a blessing to have them staying with us.  Our kids are best friends and loved every minute of their three day long playdate.  It helped them be distracted from the fire.  Kate and Sophi (both 7) knew what was going on and were concerned every once and a while, but they loved being together and doing fun stuff.

Dave was in New Jersey on travel from Saturday, June 25th until the following Tuesday.  It was such a blessing to have my parents with me and Juli to talk to since Dave was gone.  I would give Dave 30 second updates throughout the day when he had a second to call.  It was nice when he was back in NM with us.

Monday we (my kids and mom and dad and Emmy) went swimming at the West Mesa Aquatic Center in Albuquerque.  It's a really popular pool, so you have to go early to buy tickets.  Kate loved going down the water slides and Jack loved playing with Grandpa.

The kids had a "sleepover" every night on the floor of the living room. (This is probably the last time Jack and Anna will be allowed to have a sleepover.  They are planning on getting married when they're old enough.)

On Tuesday we took the kids to the children's museum, Explora.  We met some more of our Los Alamos friends there.  My dad was a HUGE help!  He sat in the craft area with the girls for a long time and followed the little boys around.  I'm glad he came with me!

Jack figured out by himself how to fly the airplane.

 Kate and Sophi

Anna, Sophi and Ty

The girls spent hours in the craft room (Sophi, Kate & Emmalee). 

We took a little break from Explora and went to lunch at Burger King.  Ty had his nap for the day in Grandpa's arms.

 This could be Jack & Anna's wedding announcement picture.  Aren't they cute?

 Almost all the kids:  Emmalee, Kate, Sophi, Stewart, Jack, Anna and Ty

We went back to Explora for a little while longer, then went to the airport and picked up Dave.

On Wednesday we went to another swimming pool that was really close to Brad's house.  Our friends, Megan & Justin met us there.  First we had a pizza picnic for lunch before the pool opened.

 Ty showed us the new way to wear a swim diaper.

 Getting ready to race.

 Kate and sweet Naomi

Thursday morning we left Albuquerque and headed to Colorado Springs for the rest of our evacucation.  

Fire!

I can't sleep.  I've been going non-stop today since I got the phone call about a fire in the Jemez Mountains at 3:00 today.

I'd just woken up from a nap (good thing I had a nap since I drove 2 hours tonight) and my friend's hubby called to tell Dave that one of his home teaching families was being evacuated from their home in the Jemez.  Dave's in New Jersey right now on work travel.  I looked out the window and saw a giant plume of smoke.  That's when the panicky feeling started.

My parents and Emmy came to visit on Wednesday.  They were originally going to come on Sunday and leave Sunday, but they changed their plans and decided to stay with me while Dave was on travel.  I'm so glad that they stayed otherwise I would have been a mess.

They took care of the kids and made dinner while I frantically did a video inventory of our house and gathered everything that we would want to take with us if we did have to evacuate.

I kept checking the updates of the fire on the this website and it kept getting bigger and bigger.

In church today they read a letter from the stake presidency asking everyone to pray for rain and fast on Sunday for it and also go home and review their emergency plans.  I actually had a dream last week that we had to evactuate and I couldn't find any of our stuff to take.  I spent last Sunday researching what we'd need to take and found a brochure to refer too.  I didn't gather anything until today.

At 8:00 tonight they started a voluntary evacuation.  We decided to load up and head to Karen and Brad's house in Albuquerque.  I've heard lots of stories from the fire in Los Alamos in 2000 about how long it took to get out of Los Alamos.  My dad was sweet and filled up our vehicles with gas shortly after we heard about the fire just in case.  I'm sure a mandatory evacuation will take place tomorrow.


I snapped these pictures of the smoke from our driveway an hour or so before we left.

 It's a horrible feeling locking up your house not knowing if you'll ever see it again.  There aren't many things that I felt like I HAD to pack in the van, but I would be really sad if we lost it all.  It's an indescribable feeling.

 We left Los Alamos at around 9:00 p.m.  We stopped at the golf course to snap some pictures of the fire.  The pictures are horrible, but you get the idea of how the mountain behind the town was glowing. 

 The kids were starting to get worried when we were taking pictures.  We couldn't see the flames from our house.  Kate saw the flames and spelled, "let's G.O!"  She's been pretty worried about fires the last few weeks. 

 Thank goodness for Grandma and Grandpa and their big car!

 I "borrowed" this picture from here.  It was taking from the top of a bank downtown. 

It was crazy driving down the hill seeing all the traffic heading out of Los Alamos and the line of cars heading up the hill.  There were cops all over the place and people snapping pictures everywhere.  Once we drove over by Santa Fe it was scary to see the other side of the fire.  We could see the fire very clearly all the way to Albuquerque.


Anyway...I'm thankful that we're all safe and together (and that Dave will join us soon).  I'm thankful for my friends in Los Alamos and everyone's concern for each other.  I'm thankful for my parents and the huge help and support that they have been.  I've never experienced anything like this before.  Hopefully it will end well.  Guess I'll try to get some sleep now.

Topper Soccer School

The kids participated in the high school boys soccer team soccer camp. 

It's hard to pick pictures of Jack to post, since every picture shows how intense he was playing and how serious he was about playing soccer.

Jack explaining something to one of the "coaches"

 Trying to run the fastest

Playing "fishy fishy cross my sea"

 Playing Log Tag

Kate was a good sport since she got to play with lots of seven year old boys and only two other girls. 

Playing Log Tag

Cars 2

Dave took Jack to see Cars 2 at a theater in Santa Fe.  It was in 3D, so he got to wear these awesome glasses!

 I bought the tickets (I got a great deal online) a few weeks in advance, so Jack was very excited when Cars day finally came.  He even got to have popcorn (I had another great deal from our Frosted Mini Wheats boxes that worked at the movie theater's concession stand) and ate pretty much all of the bucket himself.

First Tooth

After years of waiting and months of wiggling, Kate finally lost her first tooth!  One of her top teeth has been loose for two months and it finally fell out that night that my parents came to visit. 
Kate was SO excited to go to bed that night.  She was a little surprised to wake up to find that the tooth fairy left her money stuck inside a potato.  She was very excited that the tooth fairy let her keep her tooth.

Around Home

In between visitors, this is what we were up to:

Lots of yard work. 

Here's a "before" picture of our back yard after we'd done a little work.

Notice the huge piles of pine needles, the big clump of scrub oak, and the timber "wall".

Now for the "after" picture -- after a few days of hard work.  This is far from being finished.

 No more low branches, scrub oak, pine needles, and the timber "wall" is coming out.

The original owner of our house had a very interesting way of making the wall that marks the edge of our property.  The timbers are rebarred together with sprinker pipes running through the timbers.
Jack loved helping Dave get the timbers out.  It took a lot of hard work and a hydraulic jack to get them out.

 Ty helped too.

 I raked the side yard and was amazed at how many needles I got out of the planters.

 Jack discovered the rope swing...

Kate loves reading on the deck.

 Ty can make a basket!

 Kate slept a little crazy one night.

 Jack learned how to do monkey bars (on the neighbors swing set).

 The boys took a little nap in the van after soccer camp.  Jack slept from 5 pm until the next morning (except for waking at 2:30 and then sleeping on my floor for the rest of the night).