"Tea Fire"

It's been a wild ride for the last 48 hours here in Santa Barbara... the fire was directly above our house and for all of Thursday night into the early morning hours of Friday we were able to see flames from the fire from our guest bedroom window, which was quite scary and very intriguing to say the least. The area that we live in is just on the periphery of where all the evacuating was happening on Thursday from 6 pm - midnight. Steve and I put Ben down around 7 and waited, watched, lost power numerous times, lost cable and internet (YIKES) and then sat in the car eating dinner listening to the radio for a while until we realized that we too might need to leave, so we gathered the items that we needed (amazing how our life was deduced down to 2 gym bags of clothes and toiletries, one bag for Ben with toys, diapers and clothes and one box full of a few files of important documents, a backup harddrive with all of our pictures, financials and documents and our laptops.) Really makes you realize what's truly important. We had both cars packed and ready to go and then we waited, talked with neighbors, and waited some more.

Around midnight, we decided to lay down to try and get some sleep as most of our street had evacuated and we were still wondering if that was our best bet. With waking up Ben, trying to get him re-settled somewhere else, we realized that we'd be in for an even longer night than we already were, so we stuck it out (despite the sheriff coming onto our street with a bullhorn shouting "Santa Barbara residents in this area - this is a mandatory evacuation - please leave your homes immediately". We had a plan, knew we could be out of our house easily within 2 minutes after grabbing Ben if we needed to leave suddenly, so we stayed. We slept fully clothed, with the radio on and set the alarm for every 90 minutes to be able to check on things and listen to the latest. Finally we got up about 5 am and the haze over SB was like nothing we'd ever seen before... and the smell... OY!

Here is a picture from the pier in Santa Barbara around 8 pm.

All in all, we were safe and glad that we didn't leave. Ben woke up at 7 am and had no clue as to what happened all night and I'm surprised he slept so well with the helicopters literally RIGHT over our house all night... it was crazy. But, we're safe. However, so many people are not safe and they've lost their homes and all of their belongings. I think the current count is 225 homes. So sad.

Thanks to everyone for your calls, text messages, emails and kind offerings of support, help and a place to stay. One really finds out how much they are loved during a situation like this and we felt REALLY loved, so thank you!