smokey skies

I can actually see BLUE today! We've had thick smokey skies on and off for a few weeks plus lately, the temperature has been unbearably hot. Not a dry-sunny-let's-play-in-the-sprinklers-hot, but a feels-like-we're-trapped-in-a-burning-building-filled-with-choking-smoke-hot. Lightning sparked hundreds of fires in Northern California. Fortunately, the fires are not in this area but the smoke has been pretty thick here. Other Californians are not so lucky, the air is much worse further north, people have been evacuated and fire fighters have been working hard for weeks now to contain the fires and save people's homes. I heard on the radio that the power company was trying to keep ahead of the fires, spraying the poles one by one to hopefully keep them from burning. Some people have been without power since mid-June. Please keep them all in your prayers. Here's a picture I found of what it looked like around here.

The boys from our ward had Scout Camp last month. Michael and Nathan and 12 other boys left with their leaders early on a Monday morning, excited about swimming, playing, learning, good camp food, hanging out with buddies and accomplishing as many merit badges as they could squeeze into the week. By the next day though, the air up there was so bad they had to stay indoors, and that night, they were evacuated. Their Scout Leaders and the community took great care of them and fed them well! They made it back here, showered, ate, slept and their troupe took off again on their own to a much less smokey part of California. They didn't get all the merit badges they'd hoped but they had fun and got their week out on their own with the guys, and no moms or sisters. THANK YOU to awesome Scout leaders who do so much for these kids and make it fun for them and are great male role models.

Jessica got to spend some much needed girl time with her aunts and cousins (and actually had less smokey skies than the boys had). She got to sleep-over and play at Sarah and Bekah's, where the only males are under 3 or over 30, and she saw the girls in their dance recital. Later, Aunt Marcia took her and several girl (second) cousins to the American Girl movie. And Jessica got precious one-on-one time with Marcia.

One day when it was just Jacob and I, we went to the little candy/novelty store downtown. I let him lead me around to show me all the neat old toys and we picked out some taffy. The sales girls thought he was so cute and polite and they kept giving him free samples of fudge and licorice. There was too much smoke to play outside so we went to the library and used their listening center to hear Peter and the Wolf. We heard and talked about the different instruments and tunes and tempos for each characters. Then we went to a Chinese restaurant, just Jacob and I. We ordered chow mein and used our chopsticks and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Sometimes it seems like the only one-on-one time I get with the kids is if they're sick or hurt or in trouble. It's nice to have good times too.

KHSL Action News did a story on the Scouts being evacuated http://www.khsltv.com/content/topstories/story.aspx?content_id=746AC9B2-6309-4861-89D2-2C5FF7026FEA&gsa=true

These sites change as they are updated:

Sacramento Bee (newspaper) map showing fires, zoom out a little to see ALL of California http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1012305.html

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection http://www.fire.ca.gov/index_incidents.php

U.S. Air Quality site http://alg.umbc.edu/usaq/