kirstencan

See ya on the flip side

The presents were unwrapped, dreams came true, tackle hugs were given (I love sib gifts on Christmas Eve!).

The mess mostly cleaned up (trying to undecorate today, but no one else is on board with this...).

Should we just leave the skylanders like this?  Hmm.

We've had a couple little minor illnesses during our Christmas vacation, but it hasn't put too big a damper on things since we're such homebodies anyway.  We plan a 'staycation' during Christmas each year.  We mostly hibernate and hang out together, which we all LOVE and look forward to all year.  It's almost over, and we have had a great, relaxing time.  Didn't cook as much as we wanted (but how did we run the dishwasher so often??), didn't keep up with laundry, didn't go out for our lunch date, but lots of fun stuff.

This will be the first year everyone (tries) to stay up till Midnight in our family on New Year's Eve!  We would have done it last year, but... didn't.  Can I just say I'm SO happy to say goodbye to 2012?  Not our finest year.  It started with stressful work stuff/layoff, followed by the fire, which pretty much meant the next 6 months were crazy stressful (and did I ever tell you that Aaron's car died on the WAY HOME during the fire?  Seriously?).  Aaron and I both got more grey hair this year.  We stressed.  And stressed.  Things worked out okay, but it WASN'T a fun year.  The HOURS and hours and hours of work we did.  Countless.  The having workers at our house banging on stuff.  I haven't mentioned this recently, but remember we live by a golf course?  That complicated things and was an extra worry.  And was annoying.  REALLY annoying (think people climbing over our wreckage to go through it looking for their ball).  I was really worried someone would get hit by a ball while working on our house/fence before the nets were back up.  So grateful no one was.  

I did what I could to make things positive, but what a HORRIBLE year!

After our fire, it was the summer of fires around here.  We could look out the window and see giant plumes about once a week or so.  Crazy stuff.

Not to mention some anxiety I've had to work through (leaving the kids alone in the house took some extra guts and extra calls to check on them, every time we leave the house I still have a panic about whether I left something on, every time I saw those plumes of smoke while out and about I'd have to calm myself down by figuring out the direction the smoke was coming in couldn't be MY HOUSE this time.  Because it was once.)  Traumatic.  I never told you the whole story of that afternoon, but let's just say there was some trauma.  For everybody. 

*DEEP BREATH*

Okay, but there were some positives.  We could still be in our house, unlike our next door neighbors who couldn't move back in for 4 months.  We celebrated some cool things, we were able to take a vacation - didn't think that would happen (it was MUCH NEEDED by that point)...  but I'm still ready for a fresh start.  Smell ya later, 2012.

Mostly Monkey :: seemingly unrelated

Here's what I've been up to (one of many many things):  painting.  We need to paint the back porch / swingset because it was scorched but not really damaged by the fire, and also because I feel a need to step my backyard up a notch.  Can I just tell you that I will NEVER paint a ceiling again, ever? Sore neck and paint. everywhere.

Also I'm used to painting jobs that are 1 gallon of paint :: 1 room :: 1 day.  Not this 5 gallons of paint MANY day nonsense.  Sheesh.  Thank goodness I've had some friends (and my mom and my fam) help!  We're getting there.

Now here's a few shots of Monkey stuff:

He is obsessed with archery (and I love that he still dresses up!).

He was very happy to help us demo the front fence before it was replaced.  Give a seven year old a crowbar and let him go nuts - it's a good thing.

He is also obsessed with swings.  He loved these GIANT ones we visited at a park.

He recently signed back up for taekwondo and we couldn't be happier.  It's so good for him!  I love the respect and courtesy they are teaching these kids.  And he LOVES it.



He is the one in the air... (bad ipad shot).

So here's where I relate the top photo to the bottom.  As I was painting the other day, a huge glop fell right in my ear!  Ew!  And I showered and washed up as best I could before running Monkey to his class, but apparently I still had paint in my ear.  Another mom asked me why my ear was white (oops!) and so I thought I just had a tiny bit left.  I tried to just scratch a little paint out with my fingernail (since she was so interested) and asked her if I got it all.  That's when she STUCK HER FINGER IN MY EAR and pointed out all the paint I missed.  Apparently it was worse than I thought, but still!  I pulled my hair down to hide it and called it good until my next shower.  Ha!

Lately

Sorry for being a blogging slacker.  It's just been busy. 

Mostly with this:

I totally screwed on all those brackets myself! 

Which (hours and (weeks of) hours) later led to this:

We are now fenced in again and it feels great!

And there have been pleasant surprises around here, like a note from the girl, who has been awesome to take care of the boys and put them to bed in the evening so that Aaron and I can both be out working on the fence.

There have been funny garden surprises, like the hollyhocks, sunflowers, and tomatillos that are coming up in the most surprising places (not where we planted them for sure!).

We still occasionally find a casualty of the fire... Poor Boba Fett, I didn't even know you were outside!

Siding is done, windows will be finished this week, fence is done (thanks in large part to a family work party - my family rocks!) and the last dumpster was picked up.  That felt kinda awesome.  Much more normal.

Yesterday we did a hike and picnic with my family - all of whom are in town right now.  A little mini-reunion.

The leaves are changing!  Although this feels like the longest. summer. ever.  it also feels like we missed it since we've been so busy working on everything.  Stupid fire.

It was fun to have some sibling/aunt/uncle/cousin time.

And some splashing/exploring time.  Nature is good.

I have had my moments lately being a complete ball of stress trying to keep up with my family, plan homeschool stuff, plan the primary program (ugh), plan a little getaway that we really need, and fix the yard and fence. It feels like way too much right now.

We have made time for some fun stuff.  The girl and I went with my parents and sister up to Sundance to see 'Seven Brides'.  Aaron and I celebrated our 16th anniversary a week early by going to see Andrew Bird in concert (again), and celebrated the actual day with the kiddos going to our favorite pizza place (where they blast Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins and you can draw on the walls - our kids love it!).

And now it's time to run again - all day actually, why does nothing ever slow down?

Anyway, I'm good, how are you?

This week

Fun stuff, people, fun stuff.  Seriously sorry all posts seem to be fire-related lately, but that is our life right now.  I'll try and remedy that (on the blog at least) soon.

We had some awesome and HUGE deliveries this week.

I've taken to eating my breakfast on the back patio.  It's a lovely view of caution tape and people staring at me.  Seriously, though, I think I kinda feel like my backyard was taken from me, and I feel like taking full advantage of it now.  And fixing it up to be extra awesome.

We have had the wonderful blessing of giant storms that roll in every afternoon right when the sun coming through the windows should be killer.  Natural shade.

Building the fence.  I am helping (I was drilling with my right hand while trying to take a photo with my left. Home improvement Kirsten Style!).  Seriously, I'm so useful.

The siding guys were pounding on the walls, so I had to take all the frames off the walls so they wouldn't fall and break.  The walls looked SO bare I couldn't stand it.  I put them back as soon as I could!

The girl made it back from camp safe and sound and had a fabulous time (minus the bugs, she says).  She took hardly any photos (WHAT??!!) but here is a photo of one of the things I sent her - little ewoks on skewers leading to the tent.  I used this printable valentine (also made a bigger print of it), printed on cardstock, and cut out the ewoks.  Pretty much the cutest ewoks ever.

And here is her face the moment it finally hit her that a snipe hunt IS in fact a practical joke.  She fell for that one HARD.  Right when she got home (camp hair!) she was telling me about it and it took about 15 minutes and several google searches to convince her of the prank (and that she did NOT eat snipe for dinner the next night). ;)

She was SO embarassed (don't tell her I told you) but I told her that she probably made that so much fun for the other girls.  If no one believes it it's not fun!

Anyway, what's up with you?

Lately

The backyard trees are gone.  It was a seriously weird day when they took them all out. 

Weird yet fascinating.

Crazy CRAZY bright in our backyard now.  I kinda hate it.  And it's just so... bare.  No more happy leaves.  We need shade trees soon, but first we need that fence!

The view from my windows this week has mostly included ladders. 

But hey, new, shiny windows to look at the ladders through!  And a lot less melted siding blowing around!  Yay!

Aaron has been working his butt off before and after work getting burnt stuff hauled to the dumpster and digging holes for the fence.  He comes in covered in soot.  He's been working crazy hard.

I have my 'regular' stuff I do (kids, meals, laundry) but I wish I could go help him out there more!  I'm afraid I'm not much use at digging post holes.  But I wanted to do something besides be here for the siding guys and keep their cooler stocked with ice and drinks.

So I decided to take over the garden.

Re-take over the garden, which the weeds had declared victory on.  The garden is Aaron's thing, but he hasn't had time to work on it.  He doesn't usually have to weed much as he mulches really well, but the mulch burned off in the fire.    So I've been weeding.  And taking out things like bolted lettuces (they are so pretty and ruffly!).

I've never helped much in the garden, but my friend Ami came over to help me tackle some weeds.  She brought over (good) gardening gloves and a bucket.  I thought 'Aw, cute bucket!' because this is not a bucket job.  It's a wheelbarrow job.  We filled more than one that first hour.

I've also had some help from my mom and another friend - so the garden is looking better - and the food (a few re-planted post-fire and some that has come back) is out of danger.  We are SO happy that so many plants are coming back.   I've found a few surprises among the weeds, too, like the strawberries that we gave up on making a comeback and a volunteer tomatillo plant.  Yay!

Most of the weeding has been done mid-day when it's HOT and BRIGHT.  But I LOVE the garden very early in the morning or after the sun has gone down.  LOVE it.

We had some of the teenage boys from the neighborhood over last night to help haul away yet more ashy shed remains and melted sprinkler hoses.  They took out our cherry tree (we're down from 8 fruit trees to 3) and some burnt landscaping timbers.  So nice of them.

I also started a new pinboard of inspiration for fixing up the garden/yard/patio.  Because I'm determined to make our backyard a refuge.  A fun, BRIGHT refuge.

**

In other weirdness - the girl has been gone this week to camp.  We've missed her like crazy!  She has always been so confident about everything she's done in her life, so when she got nervous about camp it made me nervous.  And when we dropped her off and she looked so forlorn... yikes!  But I did manage to find out the (secret) theme of camp and which tent she was in, so I snuck a surprise bag into her pack that had ewok and other Star Wars themed paraphenalia.  And I new she'd be okay.   I don't know if you remember, but we're big fans.  What a great theme for her first year at girls' camp!  (And she comes back today!  Yay!)

Saying Thank You

I took the kiddos to the fire station.  The one down the street that was first on the scene the night of our fire.  We brought them a box of donuts and a 'Thank you for saving our house!' poster-card.

I had called to set this up and made sure we got the crew that was actually on the scene.  So these guys knew our situation, remembered our house ("Your garden is SO pretty!"  "...Was so pretty.").  I had also let them know beforehand that the boys were still pretty freaked out by the situation. 

The guys were SO cool about that, talking to them about how fire is all around us all the time, we just need to not mess with it and then we don't have to worry. 

We took a tour of the station, and let me tell you, you've never had a fire station tour until you've had one where they say stuff like 'at your house we used this hose'.  They made everything really applicable and personal.

We're so grateful for these guys and it was good to shake their hands (a few of the MANY on the scene that night) and say thank you.  Because it could have been SO much worse and we're grateful that our house was not damaged more.

The tricky part about making the boys feel secure about this whole situation is that we've had this horrible rash of fires around here.  And they see them.  The day we went to the fire house a HUGE fire broke out nearby and we saw it while driving by.  We were sure thinking of 'our' firefighters, who were most likely there fighting it.  The next week we saw another HUGE one.  The kids have seen first hand at least 3 HUGE fires since our fire.  So I'm not sure they're believing me that having your house catch fire is a rare thing.  Monkey asked me "Didn't you and Dad have a fire at your house when you guys were little kids?"  He thinks it's normal.  It's hard to explain how rare it really is, when it's so huge to him and he keeps seeing them.

Why wash the windows...

...when they are melted and being replaced (hopefully this week!)?

I bought some window markers and told the kids to go nuts.  Also because I'm sick of seeing nothing but gnarled fence and caution tape outside my windows.

Boys' room:

Girl's room:

I love hers - if you look closely you can see a temple on a hill.

I drew clouds with raindrops on my craft room window.  The boys made an ocean scene in the playroom (here in progress - the red head drew a rocking shark after I shot this).

I drew some generic flowers in the dining area.

And the girl and I did a space scene next to it.

Oh yeah, another lovely view - melted and falling off siding.  Yay.

It made me smile to see it through the curtains (which are closed because of the ultra-bright late afternoon sun now that there are no leaves on the trees behind us - boo).

My favorite addition:

Because I'm sick of people thinking we don't. 

Anyway, it made me happy and the kids had fun.   I'm trying to think of as many things as we can to make this whole experience more positive for them.  And the windows might as well go out in style! ;)  Seriously, though, I'm not washing them.

Then I made a list of other things I'd love to write on our windows.  The nice ones include:

Yes we had a fire, no we did not start it.

Can I come to your house and stare at you?

Nice weather we're having, huh?

What would you write on your windows so the nosy neighbors could read it?

So, we had a fire...

I kinda still can't believe it, though trust me, it's very very real.

We had a fire. 

It was so so crazy scary.  Traumatizing really.  You don't get over what we saw that day right away.

It burned a lot of our property, including extensive damage to our windows and siding.

It burned our backyard.  Not singed - most of the grass was gone.

We have no shed or much fence.

It burned in spots all over our garden including our fruit trees and most of the plants we'd already put in this year.

It burned all my perennials.

It burned all our shade trees.

We had to leave for a few days because of the smoke/no utilities.

(all of these photos were taken the night of the fire)

I didn't want to blog about this right away for privacy issues and because emotions were just so raw.  I was a mess for a few weeks.  No lie.

It has been harder emotionally than I could ever have imagined.  I held it together that night, even cracked some jokes with neighbors.  But then I kinda fell apart.  And I would think I was okay, and come back to the house and fall apart again.  And again.

I'd have mad days, sad days, and smad days.

Crazy hard.

I've been working on patience (a lesson I needed maybe?).  Patience with my crazy emotions, with people around me, with how long everything has taken to get fixed.  Oh wait, nothing is fixed yet except the A/C.  I am ready for everything to be done.  It's been hard seeing the neighbors' houses being worked on and not ours (it affected quite a few families - ours is the 2nd worst as far as damage goes).

We are grateful to be able to live here, though - our neighbors are out of their house until the end of summer while their home is repaired.  That would have been SUCH a huge disruption - can you imagine my red-headed spectrum kiddo being okay with that transition?

The fire affected everything.  Since the pneomonia a couple of years ago my body tends to freak out and make me sick or get a random infection when anything stressful happens.  So I was sick for a few weeks (even turned into an ear infection -yay!). 

It also threw off:

homeschool

speech and match tutoring at the school

dance

callings at church

Aaron's work

going out of town for Memorial Day (nope - gotta fix those melted sprinklers!)

my daughter's next door friend not being here all summer

no backyard for the summer - the kids haven't been able to play back there (grass growing back + dangerous stuff still + no privacy + swingset damaged + can't eat out on the back porch ETC ETC ETC)

putting off the home improvement projects we had slated for this summer.  There will be enough of them going on.  Not much we needed/wanted done of course.

extra Dr. appointments.

our relationship with neighbors - one of which we'll have on-going issues with now that the trees are gone.

no bushels of peaches from our fruit trees (or apples, cherries, pears...),no buckets of berries - probably for a few summers since we'll have to replace them.

our garden!  It was so lush and pretty and produced SO MUCH FOOD for us in the summer.  It's really my husband + Monkey's garden (still).  And it's amazing.  And they're sad.  Even the compost piles are gone.

The girl's birthday.  Had to simplify a little, not get her the big present we'd been planning (because it was a project and we had no time), but her party had to go on.  And it felt SO good to be creative for it. Which is why I was extra sad to lose those photos.

Not to mention our financial plan.

Seriously, name something in our lives - the fire disrupted it.

We've spent hours and hours and hours calling people, meeting repair people at the house, talking with insurance, and Aaron has had to scramble to fix melted sprinklers, etc.  (not to mention decision-making and major stressing).  Hours we'll never get back.  Not to mention that the time Aaron had already spent on the garden this year was for naught.

And none of this was our fault.

We tend to find ourselves looking out the back windows a lot.  The view is so different.

Some days it still smells like smoke quite a bit - and it's been awhile now.

When Aaron mows the lawn, he ends up covered in soot.

With all the sadness and complaining, I cannot deny that we were watched over.

Lots of people were in the right place at the right time that afternoon.  Including Thomas, who was at cub scouts instead of watching everything go up in flames like my other children did.  It was a crazy fast and hot burning fire, and was very dramatic.  So glad he missed (most of) it.  Monkey is still not okay with what happened.

We had propane tanks in the backyard that didn't blow.  Miraculously.

We had tree branches stretching over part of the roof of the house.  The trees burned, and I was just waiting for the roof to catch, but it didn't.

We can live without the shed.

Some of our flowers, grass and some plants are starting to come back.

And we're all okay.  No one was hurt.

(The backyard toys all melted)

The fence?  That's so much harder to live without.  We had such a private, green, shady backyard.  That's gone now.  No more leaves (they all fell - it was fall in the Spring!), soon no more trees.  And people STILL go by our house and gawk and point and take pictures.  And sometimes climb over the fence.  We have caution tape, what's left of the gnarled fence, and private property signs, and still people climb over?!  Seriously.  People are rude.

On the right below you can see the remains of our neighbor's shed.  What you can't see is the remains of our shed, which was next to that.  It's just gone.  We also had a wood fence up against the chain link - not a sign of that left.

We don't know yet how much of a financial toll this will take.  It was looking okay, then scary bad, then not so scary/still bad, then maybe okay again.  We'll see.

Sorry for not being able to blog about this earlier - so weird purposely skipping such a MAJOR part of our lives here on this blog.  But if you look back, you can see hints (if you knew what was going on).  The fire is why our quilts were all washed (by a kind friend), why my daughter washed all the doll clothes and has an air purifier in her room, why I was happy to see one lone iris bloom that made it through.  It's also why I was so glad I got out my camera to take everyday photos of our backyard (seriously, click back and compare).  So green and shady and full of plants!

We'll get there again. 

(Patience, patience!)