I’m back home after being evacuated due to the Witch Fire in San Diego. It’s really been something. An apartment complex we had once considered moving to is still closed to residents due to the fire. Homes my husband remembers seeing built as a child burned to the ground. Ash is all over the place.

We’re quite grateful to have escaped unhurt and that our home was far enough from the fires that we can’t even see the burn areas. That’s mostly due to the hills, since there are burn areas within about 2 miles of us.

But on to the Thursday Thirteen thoughts:

1. Keeping kids busy indoors is tough, even when you’re fortunate enough to have family to evacuate to, rather than going to a shelter. I should have grabbed more of their toys.
2. There are times when it doesn’t matter that the kids watch a lot of television, so long as it distracts them from the crisis.
3. Kids run a little more wild when you get several of them together.
4. Try to keep some routine going.
5. Have a lot of art supplies for the kids. Markers, especially washable ones, or crayons are easier to deal with than paints.
6. Think about when you let the kids out when the air is bad. Get masks if they really need to play outside, and be especially careful if any of the kids have asthma or allergies.
7. Ash can creep under closed doors.
8. Think about the animals. My family doesn’t have any pets right now, but my sister does. It takes a lot more effort to care for pets during an emergency, even if you aren’t in a shelter.
9. No matter how much you pack, after you leave you will wish you had brought more.
10. Cooking for 11 people is a challenge, especially when you haven’t had a lot of time to plan for it.
11. Going through a crisis with loved ones is the best way to deal with it.
12. Watching too much news will burn you out on it, whether or not your home survives.
13. It feels really, REALLY good to go home again.

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For those of you who have high school or college-age kids, or are in college yourself this could be fun. The Gallery Collection is holding a $10,000 Greeting Cards Scholarship Contest.

The contest is open to high school, college and university students, and it ends January 14, 2008. Your work has to be original, of course. It can be a photo, artwork or graphic.

If the contest interests you, probably one of the smartest things to do is to familiarize yourself with what the Gallery Collection already offers. One of the areas they like to be known for is business Christmas cards, and they do have some beautiful ones. So thinking about what would look good for a professional to send out as a part of his or her business should be one of your considerations as you design.

I’m not a student myself these days, or I’d find it tempting to enter. That’s a nice bit of money towards improving an education. I hope whoever wins it makes the most of the addition to their educational opportunities. It’s so hard to pay for college these days. I had to work hard to make it through myself, and it has only become more expensive.

If you know someone who might enjoy entering this contest, let them know. You don’t want to wait until the last minute to start planning and designing.

Made it home today. Very first thing I did was take a nap. It’s just so exhausting sleeping in a house full of other people, not in your own bed, even when they’re all family. And I won’t even mention the occasional barking of the dogs.

We’re more or less out of danger now. A shift of winds or something like that is not completely out of the question, but the winds are expected to die down by 6 pm today. They’ve already been much better.

Home looks like it usually does. A little bit of ash blew in under the door, but that’s it. In the 2003 Cedar fire the winds were blowing perfectly to dump massive quantities of ash in my mother’s yard, but this time she didn’t get that, and we didn’t get it here either, despite being much closer to the fires.

While the risk of fire is not completely over, the most dangerous conditions are gone. No more high winds to whip it up into an inferno too quickly for anything to be done about it, and as I said the last bits of the wind will be gone soon.

We’re keeping prepared for now, just in case, but it’s highly unlikely that we have anything to worry about.

My sister still can’t go home, and she doesn’t particularly want to go home until they have water. She may not leave until the boil water order is over, in fact. That means at least a couple more days.

Gage is napping really well right now. He resisted, but like everyone else the poor kid is exhausted. Ariel is disappointed that she had to leave her cousins. All one big party to her, which helped except that they were much too rowdy at times. All us parents are all too glad to be done with that.

Now I just have to keep Ariel busy all week until school starts up again next week. I’m sure we’ll be making that up at the end of the school year. Gage’s speech therapy was closed for the week too. We got a call from them saying they’ll start up again next week. They were probably very close to some of the burn zones.

But around here, the entire drive from my mother’s house here, in fact, you’d hardly know anything happened. Didn’t pass any of the burn zones. Of course that also means no interesting pictures.

I hope the smoke clears from the air soon. We’re supposed to keep children inside as much as possible. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? We are letting the kids outside just a little because it is really hard keeping them 100% cooped up.  That was a big part of the reason the kids were so wound up at my mother’s house.

Now I get to catch up on everything around here. It will probably take me a few days to get back into routine, especially while keeping a slight extra eye on the news. But I’m not going to watch it all day. Did enough of that and the odds of anything immediately relevant have become slim enough.

[tags]fire,poway fire,witch fire,evacuations,home again[/tags]

My husband is off to take a look at our house today to see if things look good enough to come home. I told him that so long as it looks good and the air quality is sufficient, we may as well go. The kids are going utterly stir crazy around here. Separating our kids from their cousins would probably help a lot.

If anyone wants to get a good look at things, I found out that SDSU has a nice compilation of links for the fires.

Things will take longer for my sister and her family. They live in Ramona, and there’s no water there right now. The pumping station broke down. It’s going to be about two days before things are fixed, then they’ll be on a boil water order.

We aren’t watching the news quite so hard anymore. Short of a new fire or a big shift in the winds our homes should be safe.

It’s been a crazy couple of days and I’m really looking forward to getting home and getting my computer set up again. I’m lucky to have my mom’s to use, but it’s just not the same, and that drives me nuts. Along with all the waiting and worrying, of course.

We’ve been fortunate since we haven’t had to go to a shelter, sleep on a cot or on the floor or anything like that. Lots of people had it far worse, and will for a while yet.

[tags]fires,san diego fire,witch fire,poomacha fire,poway fire,evacuations[/tags]

We took a couple hours’ break from listening to news about the fires. It gets to where you know it’s mostly repeating, you aren’t in imminent danger of being ordered to evacuate, and it’s time to take a break.

Plus one of the dogs is having puppies tonight. My sister’s sister-in-law is staying here. She breeds boxers and one was due any time. That time turned out to be tonight. Two puppies so far that we know of.

So far no one I know seems to have lost their home. It looks like we’ve made it through the worst for my family, although I know many other people are still waiting and hoping, or know that they’ve lost their home. It’s quite a thought.

My daughter will eventually be disappointed, although she’s been having so much fun with her cousins here she won’t realize it until school starts. That field trip I mentioned earlier to Bates’ Nut Farm. School will be out for the entire week, and that means no field trip. No idea if they will reschedule or just leave it cancelled.

I will be very glad to get back home. I think it will be possible tomorrow. Technically it’s possible today, but we feel it makes more sense to stay away from the smoke and out of the way should the fire change course yet again.

[tags]poway fire,san diego fire,evacuation[/tags]