Back home

Since I use this as much for my own personal reasons as I do to share with anyone else, you will have to excuse the length of this post.   However, I want to put this up front as it is an important thing our ward learned with this:  Our church mobilizes very quickly to make sure their people are safe and to make sure they are taken care of.  However, in a situation like this, it ONLY works if they have a phone number for you that is NOT a land line.  With this in mind, I encourage all of you to go to LDS.org and register if you haven't already and make sure your cell phones are listed.  You can filter it to only be seen by your bishopric if you don't want your cell phone widely distributed, but please make sure they can reach you in case of an emergency.  Go now. 

I am happy to report that we are back in our home as of Saturday (happy birthday Kurt).  We are truly grateful for my parents who allowed us to to interrupt their quiet lives with our mess for the last 3 days and for Rachael who kindly agreed to take on a 10-year-old with far too much energy on top of her 5 kids while already on her own with John out of town.  Thank you so much. 

Other than the smell of smoke outside our house, soot that came in the window around our air conditioning unit, and 3 bushes that were waiting to be planted on my back deck that didn't withstand the heat and no water, our home is just as we left it.  The neighborhood looks a bit different with the hill across from our church blackened and nothing but sticks on the ridge of the mountain.  We also have National Guard standing blockade up the street to keep people out of the evacuated areas, which feels a bit like living in a war zone.

Our hearts go out to the 346 families who lost their homes and must now start over.  We still had 66 families in our ward who were evacuated from their homes as of sacrament meeting this morning.  Though some were allowed to return to their homes tonight, six of those families have no home to return to.  We are happy to report that our home teacher's home shown in our last post is still standing and in fact undamaged.  Brother and Sister Clifford, who Mom and Dad will know, had the fire destroy everything across the street, skip over their house and damage the one next to them, but leave theirs unscathed. In fact, we had a lot of near misses in our ward.  It could have been so much worse for a lot of people.  The fire also interestingly burned up to the elementary school, skipped over it (it takes up more than a city block between the school and the park it sits next to) and burned houses on the other side.  We has originally heard that the school had burned down.  This was actually the first thing that really hit home to me and made it feel real, that the school all my kids had attended wasn't there anymore.  I'm so glad that, though smoke damaged, it is unharmed.

As we are still out of our church building, we had only an hour fast and testimony meeting, but it was one I won't soon forget.  I do not think there was a dry eye in the building. Testimony was by invitation only and the first one was an inspiration.  She talked about how they had lost everything important to them years ago upon first coming to Colorado Springs when the van they were driving was stolen and never recovered.  This time, they had some time to gather things that were important, but she has things that she regrets losing. One of those was a collection of creches.  However, her grandkids have already gifted her with the beginning of a new collection.  Her grandson, while asking a blessing after they had been evacuated, asked that the fire fighters be safe and put the fire out and keep Grammy and Grampy's trampoline from getting burned.  She said it was interesting to see what was important in their home through the eyes of a 5-year-old.  Her faith and outlook were amazing.

The second woman lost her father Saturday, the same day the fire started.  Her mother and father and her own family lived in the original evacuation zone.  Hours after they lost her father, all of them were forced to evacuate.  She said she is sure that he was watching over them as neither home was touched.  Their home was in the cul-de-sac at the end of one of the worst hit streets.  Despite the fact that most of the street is destroyed, their home stands untouched.

Something like this really makes you think about what is important to you.  Though there were a few things I regretted not thinking to grab (my recipe book) or not being able to get to quickly enough (so many hand-made Christmas decorations in the attic), I realized that there was nothing in our house that I would be devastated to lose, except my photo albums and my hard drive (all the pictures that aren't in the photo albums).  Most of it truly is just stuff.  I will say that this has given me a real incentive to work on getting my pictures digitized and backed up remotely, so that will be my next big project.  

Also, I am so proud of my kids after this.  Through it all, they were calm, did everything that we asked of them, and made good choices in the things that they gathered to take with them.  I loved looking through the things that Nate grabbed from his room that were important to him; his pillow with the tie-dyed pillow case that he made in school, the family pictures that he had on his wall, pictures that he had drawn himself, the book of signatures he had from his last day of school, a set of pens he had gotten for Christmas, clothes, his toothbrush, his iPod, his money, and, my personal favorite, the candy and gum he had in his room.  This was with almost no help from us other than instructions to gather some clothes and anything that is really important to him.  No attempt to grab toys or anything like that. 

I talked to my uncle a few days ago and he told me that my cousin, who lives off the Gulf of Mexico, goes through evacuations all the time for hurricanes, that it is old news to them.  After going through it once, I can safely say that I have no intention of moving anywhere that this becomes a regular occurrence.   No coastal areas or wooded lots for me. 

At this time, we are at 55% containment on the fire and they are well on their way to having the rest of it lined, so the worst definitely appears to be over.  Though we are still on pre-evacuation notice, we expect that will be lifted within the next couple of days.  Thank you all for your concern and prayers over the last few days.