Los Alamos County Fair

The Los Alamos County Fair has a lego category in its Hobbies and Crafts division.  The kids each worked on a lego creation of some kind and entered it into the fair on Friday.

We dropped their creations off on Friday.  They were judged that evening.  Then Saturday we went to the fair (in the top floor of the library) and checked out the displays.  The kids were thrilled to see that they each won 1st place!  I'm not quite sure how the awards were given, but most entries had a ribbon.

Kate made Mia's Treehouse Bakery

Jack made an army ship

Ty made a robot hideout (with some cute little robots on it)

When we were driving home from picking up their legos, Ty said, "Mom, we rocked!  Those other kids went down!"

Fire Still Burning

The fire picked up today and dropped a little bit lower towards town.  Town was protected because the area between the homes and the fire was already burned in the 2000 fire.  We walked to the middle school (close to our house) and took some pictures looking to the north-west.

 This picture is looking towards the west at the ski hill.

Post Fire

We took this picture on the way home from Colorado Springs, a few miles away from Espanola.

 This is taken from just outside Espanola (I wish I'd been able to video it.  A camera couldn't capture the whole fire -- it's wider than the lense).

 We stopped at the turn-off on the way up the hill a few miles out of town.

 We stopped at the airport and took pictures from there.  We love seeing all the helicopters!

 Lots of other people were taking pictures at the airport too.  We had to pick up Dave's car from the airport. He'd taken a rental car to the airport before his trip to New Jersey.  His car had a good bit of ash inside it and the windshield wiper fluid was black.  But at least it was safe.

We went out the night that we got home and took some pictures of the fires glowing around town.  All the hillsides that surround the east and north sides of town glowed like this.  This is by the horse stables not far from our house.

 This is taken from the hill above our house looking towards the north and the roundabout.

 When we got home, our house wasn't as smoky as I'd expected it.  It still smelled a bit like new carpet -- we had just picked up a huge piece of bound carpet for our living room a few days before we evacuated.  The non-smoky smell didn't last long since it's been really hot so we had to open the windows.

The smoke comes and goes.  I'm writing this on July 14th and this morning we woke up to really strong smoke.  Monsoon rains are trying to come.  The last four days it's clouded up in the afternoon, but doesn't produce much rain.  After it rains the smoke rolls in and it smells really stinky!  Hopefully we'll be able to get the smoke smell out of our stuff eventually.

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.