Smoke Cloud

 A smoke cloud from the California and Oregon fires shifted our way and made the air quality terrible.  To make the situation as positive as we could, we organized some areas in our house that we hadn't gotten to fine tuning yet.  We organized our camping stuff in the laundry room and our food storage closet.

Cute and Functional Fall Decor

 

Evelyn Selfies

 

I Am Special

Last night's FHE was taken from a story in the Friend, titled, "I am Special".  After reading the story, I had everyone write down what makes them special.  

Evelyn:  I am smart, excited, happy, nice, helpful, responsible, funny, a good friend, creative, kind to animals.  I am myself.

Jason:  I am special because I am brave, smart, fast, grateful, nice, helpful, friendly, a great explorer, playful, kind, responsible.

Ryan:  I am special because I am creative, smart, adventurous, kind, good at reading, good at school, unique.

Max:  I am special because I'm a good swimmer, good at reading books, good with technology, good at building legos, cooking.  I have a nice dog and I'm helpful.

Debbie:  I am special because I have a beautiful family, I pray and try to follow Jesus Christ.  I am loving, caring, like to serve others, listen to people, a good friend, good with kids, like to make people feel special, courteous and smile and people I don't know.  I like to be positive, I can see the good in others, I consider other people's perspectives and feelings.  I am adventurous.  

Tony:  I am special because I have a talent to fix mechanical devices, I have a beautiful, wonderful wife, I have 4 wonderful kids who are healthy, smart and brave.  I have a good job with people who value my talents.  I have a wonderful house in a good school district.  I am special because I have good health and live close to care facilities to get help when needed.  I have a good dog that loves to be with us.

Afterwards we all added that we are special because we are children of God.  

Then we played Apples to Apples Junior and Jason was laughing hard and getting so excited.  Then he got so mad when he wasn't picked and thought for sure he would be picked on the last round.  He ran down the stairs (which he would normally never do unless someone was with him).  Tony talked to him and he came back.  Such big feelings!

Staying Away From the Fires

 Wednesday morning our neighbor sent us this picture of the lake.  Yikes.  We played with the Hanes but did stay home at night.  I will also need to take some pictures of the aftermath off of Hwy 410.  We will never forget this time.  It was so crazy and scary.  We stayed packed up for 6 days until the fires were 85% contained.

Bike Packing Day 2--Getting Away From the Fires

The First Day of School--9/8/20. The One that Wasn't!

 

The fierce winds let to power outages, felled trees and limbs.  Our neighbor's garage had a tree fall on it.  School was cancelled due to the extensive power outage.  Then there were also fires.  The fires were huge but we didn't know how bad they were at first.  We went to check on our neighbors and a lady in our ward who lives a street over.  We drove to get gas and fill up gas cans for our generator in case we still didn't have power that night.  We had to drive to Auburn because the nearby gas stations were out of power.  We got gas and headed back to help our neighbors clean up the mess. 

Then we went over to the Hanes to see how they were doing and hang out for awhile.  We learned more about the fires and the fact that we were so close to the evacuation zone.  We packed up our suitcases and decided to stay the night with the Hanes.  Jase, Ev, Avi and I slept in the playroom.  Max and Ryan slept in the loft.  The kids loved having a sleep over.