Sheeh! What a weekend! For those of you who don't live here, we've been having some major Santa Ana winds and very, very low humidity. When we left Sunday morning for our little night away in San Diego, the visibility on the freeway by our house was a mere 100 yards or less with all the blowing dirt. It was insane....(Kelli...almost like those crazy dust storms in AZ!) The winds howled at our place all day and night Sunday I guess. Gloria was here taking care of Luke and she said at some points, she thought the windows would blow out! The winds made our would-be relaxing mini-getaway not so much fun too. :( Two fires had sparked up around the San Diego area while we were on our way down there yesterday, and by the time the wedding began at 4:45pm, even La Jolla was socked in with smoke and ash. The wedding was outdoors, as was the cocktail part of the reception, so we all smelled like we'd been at a bonfire more than a wedding by the time the night was through. The wedding was still beautiful, and our friends still had a wonderful celebration, which in the end, I guess is all that matters! Ellie was a complete angel and hardly made a peep the entire night! She got passed around to all of our friends for the first part of the night and then I wore her in my wrap for dinner and dessert. She is such a good baby! We are so blessed! But I worried for her little lungs breathing all that smokey air all night and her cute little cream outfit now is covered in little black specks of ash. :( The hotel we were staying at was a historic one and while very nice, it was so old that the windows didn't seal shut well at all. We got to enjoy that smoke ALL night long! :( Blegh! We also got to enjoy the loud music and sounds of the street below most of the early morning too. :( We got to bed late and slept fitfully (Ellie did pretty well sleeping....but Ty and I didn't) We awoke this morning to find that the two fires we went to sleep last night with had somehow grown to SIX and nearly all of San Diego county was in one way or another, affected by fire! When we learned that part of the I-15 was closed, we decided we had better leave earlier than we had originally planned, so as to leave ourselves extra time for a detour. Little did we know when we left at 10:30 this morning that our normally hour and 45 minute drive would take us a whopping FOUR AND A HALF hours! With the I-15 closed in one section, we took a detour through the canyon, which was supposed to let us out back on the 15 just above the closure. As luck would have it, minutes before we made it out of the canyon and onto the freeway, another fire had crossed over the freeway further north and closed THAT section of the 15 as well. We had to turn around and backtrack all the back to Oceanside, and then head north along the coast, until we could head inland for home! We stopped once so that I could feed Ellie, but the rest of the day was a crazy blur of heavy smoke, heavy traffic and too many hours behind the wheel. And once we finally made it home, we had a little boy who was not too happy with his mommy and daddy for leaving him overnight! :( He was quite angry with us for the first hour or so that we were home....he wouldn't even let us hug him at first. :( Poor baby! I feel horrible that he was so sad! According to Gloria though, he did great with her...it was just us he was being stinky with. Guess that's how it goes, eh? Boy am I glad today is over!
Needless to say, as I type this, I am feeling just a bit disillusioned and grumpy about what I had hoped to be a relaxing mini-getaway. It turned out to be more of a nightmare than anything. :( But at-least we're not dealing with all that the people of SD are...over a quarter of a million people there have been evacuated from there homes! It was insane down there......it literally looked like Dante's Inferno! Please keep those people in your prayers, as well as all the others around Southern California who are in harms way tonight with the many other fires that burn around us. Today has been eerily reminiscent of the those horrible 2003 fires. I just hope it doesn't get that bad out here again!
Well...my eyes are heavy as I type, so I think I'll sign off to what I hope will be a much better night's sleep.
3 comments:
Gotta love those Dust Storms. We hit one going up to Santa Clarita on Sunday - where fires just happened to start too (right above where we ended up.) Sorry it didn't turn out to be that great of a weekend. It does kind of feel like we're in the middle of a ring of fire. The gray clouds of smoke all the way around...blegh! I can't wait for these winds to calm already...I'm done with them. Let's get onto the fun holidays!!!
hugs and kisses to the kids!
Kelli
I can only send my prayers to those who our dealing with the fire directly. June 24th will be a day I will never forget. South Lake Tahoe was ablaze and several of our friends and fellow neighbors lost there homes. I have never experienced anything so devastating. If there is anyone you know who comes victim to these fires, please let them know I am here for them. By the way...if you and your family do find the time and want to have a mini getaway..you're always welcome to our happy, beautiful community as well as my home. XO Jenny
Sorry to hear that you had such an icky weekend. :-( And, ya, these fires bring back some not-so-good memories...but as of now they are much further away from us then they were in the 03 fires. School is cancelled at least for the day and even inside our house, it smells strongly of smoke...yuck! But, we are all doing fine. Hope your upcoming days are better than your weekend!! :)
Lots of Love,
Tay
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