Well, it has been an exciting couple days, that's for sure! I thought that this weekend was going to be busy, but it turns out that I had NO idea what I was in for.
On Saturday I spent the afternoon at a graduate Voice Recital for one of the girls in our GAP (graduates and professionals) church group. Even though I know nothing about opera, I thought it was beautiful! She did a great job! (way to go, Sarah - if you read this!) My husband picked me up from there and we went straight to a football game that our church's school was having. They put up a good fight, but they lost. It was a great game, though!
On Sunday we did went to church like usual, however, after church I got to hang out with my good friend Holly McCarty and my friend Sherice Davis (Canty). She was in town visiting for the week and we had SO much fun together! I felt like we were 18 again! :) We went out for lunch on Sunday and then got pedicures. It was nice!
On the way back from our "Girls Day Out" we kept noticing the smoke from some fires that were burning a long ways away. We were taking tons of pictures and joking about church being cancelled that night. Little did we know...
After I got home, all afternoon I kept hearing helicopters going overhead. It seemed like there was one every five minutes. When we stepped outside to go to church we realized that there was smoke rising from the hill across from us.
We went to church and noticed that tons of people were stading outside of the church pointing up to the sky. We got out to see what they were looking at and realized that from our church property (which is about 3 miles away from us) we could see HUGE flames spreading across Canyon Country. The wind was blowing in the opposite direction from where we live, so we weren't too worried. However, there were many people that had to leave church halfway through, or didn't even come to church because they had to evacuate their homes. Many people slept at our church last night.
We went to someone's house after church for dinner and had a good time of fellowship, while still keeping the news on and keeping tabs of where the fire was. At around 9:30 pm we heard that the road that we lived off of was closed because of the fire. We hadn't heard anything at all before that time to indicate that the fire was anywhere near us, so we left right away to see if we could get home and grab a few belongings.
Let me tell you something, what I saw when we came to the intersection that was as far as we could drive was one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen in my life. The hillside that is facing our apartment building was engulfed in flames (the fire was about 500 yards from where we live). I've never seen anything like it. (I have to say that I might have freaked out just a smidge) :) Dave and I parked the car and then went on foot about 2 miles til we reached our apartment building. When we got there we packed important documents and pictures just in case our apartment building was affected. We talked to our apartment manager, and he felt that we would be safe because there were strike teams at the bottom of the hill making sure that the fire didn't jump the road. We decided to take our bag of possessions with us (just in case), walk back to get our car, and take the backroads to get our car back to our apartment building. We decided that we wouldn't leave until we heard from the authorities of a mandatory evacuation. Dave didn't want to leave me at the apartment building alone, and I didn't want him walking that 2 miles by himself, so we ended up both heading out to get the car together. It was quite an adventure. We passed several newspeople reporting about the fire, and several firetrucks. We inhaled alot of smoke (poor Dave has a sore throat this morning from the smoke). But we made it, drove the backroads to our aparment (so we'd have a car in case of emergency), and tried to sleep. It wasn't a very restful night! :)
Thankfully, this morning the wind had blown the fire away from us (so far). I am at work (I'm the only secretary that's here), though, and I keep getting phone calls about families from church being evacuated from their homes. Of the 12 fires that are going on in California right now, the one in our town has been given #1 priority. Please keep us in your prayers. There are alot of people that are being affected by this fire, and because the wind is so high it's making the fire move quite fast. Thanks for your prayers, and I will keep you all updated.
Dave and I had the greatest weekend! We went to Disneyland to celebrate my birthday. I took off Friday from work and we spent the weekend down there. It was fabulous! 
