Fire, Fire,Fire!!

So as many know we are surrounded by a ring of fire in Southern California. John and I were driving home Sunday evening from his parents and enjoyed a nice leisurely drive down Portola Avenue so the kids could nap a little longer in their carseats. We got home played in the family room and then John decided to take Madison for a walk. This is when it starts....

6:00pm- John comes back from his walk and says that something is on fire, our community backs up to the Santiago Canyon of beautiful hills, mountains and wildlife. All we can see is black smoke pouring over our community. It looks like its coming from the road we just drove down an hour earlier. Neighbors are coming out of the house, we walk to the corner of street and see it......




6:15pm- We see helicopters hovering above us in a race to get this fire contained. The Malibu fires have been raging all day so they know they need to get this one undercontrol. Were starting to hear that most of our local firemen are down in Malibu fighting that fire...great!

6:30pm- John and I keep going outside to check on the status of the fire, it seems to us that in less than 30 minutes it is already down the hills to the base, the winds are going about 30mph. We talk to our neighbors and decide to start packing things up to be prepared, if the fire has moved this fast in 30 minutes where is it going to be in another hour.



7:00pm- We start to panick as we see it coming closer......Its definitely getting bigger. One of our neigbors gets through to 911 and they say that if we can see the flames from our door then its a good idea for a voluntary evacuation. We have babies, not to mention preemie lungs so John decides thats close enough for us!



7:10pm- We are upstairs in the nursery gathering everything we could possibly need and looking around for things that we could not handle losing in a fire.... Jacob is crawling around on the floor and Mia is downstairs playing with her toys....THE POWER GOES OUT!! We can't see 2inches in front of our face since the house is blanketed in thick black smoke outside. Were reaching down for Jacob and running downstairs to get Mia. The power comes back on in less than 2 minutes.......then panic mode starts....throw everything in the car!!

7:30pm- We have everything packed, the kids are asleep in their carseats in the car, were talking with neighbors outside as they are all packing up their cars. We have never seen anything like this....

8:00pm - Were in the car on our way to Grandma and Grandpas as we drive down the street towards the freeway all we see in our review mirror is a wall of fire.