Family Trip to the Park + Our First Campfire This Year

I'm not sure how I was able to keep up so well last year with all the happenings in our lives. I'm completely out of order lately! So this post happens to be from last Sunday when we arrived home after our train ride to Izaak Walton Inn. When we pulled into town around 3:00, it was simply gorgeous out. The weather was perfect park weather too, so instead of napping, we took a trip to the dinosaur park.

 Charlotte loves to swing! She was just a mess of giggles and snot. Ridiculously cute too!

 Dad helped her down the slide, but she wasn't too sure about it. 

 Like usual, Hunter and JP ran around like crazy kids. There was an attempt at playing pirates, but it didn't last long. 

 I feel like every time we go to the park, I take a picture of them in this rocket. Now I need to find all of them...

 This green thing is one of JP's favorite things to play on because it swivels. He and Hunter both love getting dizzy on it. For example, see this video of him last summer. So much fun!

 After being gone for the weekend, I had no idea what to do for dinner, so Perry set to work on getting the campfire ready while I ran to the store for hot dogs. Hunter and JP LOVE roasting hot dogs and again, the weather was still nice enough to enjoy sitting by the fire. 

 Enjoyable for everyone except this chick. She hated it.

 They loved it. 

She told us how mad she was about this campfire the whole time. Refused to eat anything in lieu of crying. Even her crying is cute!

Backyard Camping in October

We went camping the other night. Sort of. Except we slept in the house. 

 We've been promising the boys all summer that we would have a campfire, but with all the fires going on, there were restrictions in place that we didn't dare break. So the other night, we made it happen. 

 They were so excited to roast hot dogs over the fire! 

 And they cleaned up there plates just in time to have S'mores!

 Love this kid!

 These boys were super excited to roast marshmallows.

 And even more excited to eat them! I almost teared up when after dinner Hunter, without prompting, volunteered to start taking stuff inside to get ready to make S'mores, and then JP jumped up to help too! They sure know how to melt my heart!

Charli and I warmed up by the fire for a bit, but for the most part, the "camping" was done by Perry and the boys. Poor little Charli and momma are recovering from a bout of thrush, and weren't completely feeling up to being outside. 

Lolo Fires

Normally I don't blog about news, but since it's so close to home, I figured I better. 

On Saturday evening, a lightening storm started several fires in the Lolo Creek Canyon. (This is close to the area we went camping in April.) Two of which are super close to Missoula, approximately 10 miles. One is known as the West Fork II fire and the other is the Schoolhouse fire. Both of these fires are located just off of Hwy 12 south west of Missoula. Although they started off as two separate fires, they are beginning to merge, as the West Fork II fire jumped the highway, and are headed in a north eastern direction toward Missoula. 

Most recently it has been confirmed that 4-8 homes have been take by the fire as it continues to burn approximately 5000 acres. Despite the number of homes taken so far, several hundred home have been given pre-evacuation notices between Sleeman Gulch, about 2 miles out of Lolo, to Bear Creek Road, about 12.5 miles out of Lolo.  Early Monday the two fires together totaled about 70 acres until the wind picked up. According to this article from the Missoulian, the fires then started burning so fast you couldn't even out run it in a car. Eek! I pray no more homes are taken, and more importantly no lives are lost!

Kurt Wilson/Missoulian

Kurt Wilson/Missoulian

Deputy Will Newsom

Kim Patrick

This was the view my sister had of the fires on her way home. 

I can't imagine what it would be like to lose your home to a fire. After giving it a lot of thought, other than my kids, of course (!), if I had to evacuate from my home the two things I would make sure I took with me would be my Hitachi hard drive because it has all the videos and pictures of my children on it and I would hate to "lose" all those memories. The other thing I would take with me would be Great Grandma Sadie's shadow box given to me by her daughter because it is a family heirloom. I honestly can't think of any thing else in my home that is more important to me. Everything else is virtually replaceable, though it may be hard. 

What would you take if you had to evacuate your home?