Just Call Me Fire Crotch

Anslie was born on October 31, 2007. If you look back at SoCal history, you will find that approximately a week or so before she was born was when the big Wildfires hit San Diego. We were voluntarily evacuated from our home (I was really sick with a bronchial infection and since we didn't have an air conditioner with an air filter to filter out the smoke, I couldn't breathe and so we left our home to stay with friends across town who were much further away from the smoke and falling ashes than our home was). It was really scary and stressful to say the least to be evacuated from my home a week before I was supposed to give birth to my first child (or any child for that matter!!!). Fortunately we were able to return to our home a few days after leaving (nothing was damaged by the fires) and Anslie was born about a week later (late-we were not living in our apartment on my due date).

Memorial Day, 2010: Approximately 1 week before my due date with this new baby...I am sitting on the couch in the living room watching TV and folding laundry. I get up to get something and glance out the window into my back yard and notice some black smoke over the horizon. So I get a chair and stand on it so that I can see over my block wall fence, and this is what I find:




(The patch of dirt is my backyard)


I call 911 and they tell me that there are officials on the scene and that the police will let the residents of the community know if/when to evacuate. About 20-30 minutes later a police officer drives his car down the streets of the neighborhood announcing on his loudspeaker that we all need to evacuate our homes. Seriously?!?!?! AGAIN?!?!?! Is it just coincidence that about a week before both of my due dates we are ordered to evacuate due to a wild fire?!

I wake Kevin up and tell him what is going on and of course we start loading irreplaceable items into our car (birth certificates, loan documents, insurance info, pictures, the dog...Anslie) and just before we are about to leave, we check the progress of the fires and it looks like they are pretty much out. Phew!

We never ended up leaving our house which I was happy about, but we still went through the trouble of packing bags and loading them into the car. A. NNOY. ING. That's the (physically) hard part anyway.

Needless to say, I'm super thankful for the quick response of the fire fighters and police! It would have been so sad to lose our new home and all that we have filled it with!!! Talk about an EVENTFUL Memorial Day!