Surrounded by 2 Huge fires

Please be praying for the fire fighters that are battling these HUGE fires that are burning out of control. We have 2 huge fires burning very close to us...we should be safe but there are so many of our friends who have been evacuated. There are over 100 homes that have already been destroyed. The winds are still blowing strong and hard. The smoke and ash is very thick.

These are pictures I took in our front yard!

UPDATE 9:00pm Saturday: Please continue to pray...the 2 major fires by our house are 0% contained and are 1/2mile away from combing into one HUGE fire. The winds are still blowing strong and typically kick up even more at night.

UPDATE 11:30pm Sunday: The winds have died down and the fire shifted north this morning. Thankfully many of our friends were recently allowed back into their homes. One of our friends came home to their backyard scorched but their house untouched...thank you, Jesus! Many are still evacuated and other cities are still in danger. If the winds pick up again, the fire could very easily shift back this way. Once those hot embers get in the air, they can nail houses miles away....this is what's been happening. Please continue to pray as this fire is massive and only 19% contained.

UPDATE Wednesday: Thank you guys for your prayers. We are all good and pretty much smoke free. The fires are fully contained and it appears that all of our friends houses were spared. What a crazy time. You can check one of our sweet friend's blog, Julee...she took these pictures as they were evacuating their house (this was hours before a mandatory evacuation was announced...can only imagine what it looked like then)

Shoes

Hello, this is Paul. As I was reading my lovely wife's post on '7 quirky things' I just had to respond to one of them in particular; her shoe problem - er 'quirk', right, quirk :P. (By the way, she was tagged 4 times, so don't let her get away with just 9 quirky things, she owes you guys 28!). You may not have noticed, but she devoted more words to the shoe quirk than any other; I'll see if I can help you to understand the magnitude of her quirk, lol.


Shortly after I first met her, she got a job at Patrini's shoe store. I should have known I was in trouble when I saw her spend 90% of each paycheck on shoes (and if I remember correctly, she got a store discount!). It's not clear to me if she had this 'quirk' before I met her or if she just quickly developed it while working at the shoe store, but it was very clear that she had it bad.


Do you guys remember Imelda Marcos? A while back she was in the news for having 1000's of pairs of shoes. I remember looking at Stacy and thinking Mrs. Marcos was crazy and before I could say anything she said with a big grin on her face, "Wow, that's so cool!" If you ask Stacy about the fight between Cinderella and her stepsisters I'm certain that she would tell you it was not about the prince at all, but about that incredible pair of shoes!


I was just commenting the other day on how many shoes we had in the house and she said it wasn't that bad and that she had just went thru and 'weeded out' the shoes we didn't need. After I finished laughing about it, I asked the kids if they thought we could fill our whole living room with our shoes. They didn't think so (oh no, I may have multiple family members with this quirk :S), so we just had to try it out and see. If I counted correctly, there are over 100 pairs of shoes in this picture!