TOO many close calls with DEATH..

[A bit of an exaggeration but I'm a drama queen, always have been always will be, so lets just leave it at that.]

Thursday morning, went on a hike up to Timp caves, but didn't actually go inside, on the way down with my aunt Janelle & my little cousin Anne, my spectacular mommy dearest warned us about a rattlesnake by #6, so with that knowledge we continued to skip merrily down Timp, literally (we are precocious and proud of it!) about 20 minutes pass & believe it or not we completely forgot about this snake, we stumble upon a rattle going 100 mph & a serpent claiming his territory on the trail, i of course i (being the so called drama queen) scream, cant even find what words to say, frantically pointing & eventually i am able to stammer out SNAKE! Anne & Janelle don't see it in the chaos but with my scream in my mind they automatically start jumping, but because they cannot see the snake they jump towards it, so what do i do ? scream louder of course, Janelle in all this panic manages to get her sunglasses off which then opens her eyes to the rattle snake between her legs, up she goes towards me & Anne attempts to run & gets hit by the snake on her tennis shoe, luckily, long story short.. ever tried to walk down a mountain with your legs trembling so hard its like an earthquake? wouldn't recommend it.

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FIRE

So basically.. these pictures explain themselves, but the only thing i really can say is in the midst of my emotional break down packing journals pictures & important documents, it really made me realize what was important to me, what could have been replaced, & what meant the most.

[my front lawn to the left,]

[close up, fire coming over our ridge]

[my neighbors backyard]

[neighbors backyard above]

[below my backyard]

[my backyard]

you can see how far this fire came and how it ever so quickly got closer to my house! we were evacuated but as you can tell NOBODY left and we all worked to dig trenches, water down our homes, and yards, and get every ones animals out since everyone on this street alone, all own horses, dogs, and everything else. It was put out, eventually, and all my cousins were still in town from out family reunion so they came to help too, they know how it goes, their homes were in the Sandiego California fires a couple years ago.

and now we have this beautiful little charred mountain behind us [:

we sat on the fence at one point and thought, dang wheres our hot dog roasters?

 ~

thanks to all those who helped us work together and thank god literally, he answered every ones prayers.

[:[: