Fourth of July "Gap Fire"!

The past few days here have been CRAZY! On my way home from work last Tuesday I noticed right above our house in the foothills a fire had started. Little did I know how MASSIVE it would soon turn out to be. We live about one block away from mandatory evacuations and were VERY concerned if we too should follow those orders. We have amazing firefighters who have been working non-stop since last Tuesday night, July 1st and so far it is about 24% contained. Luckily it has moved far enough away where it is no longer a threat to our city. I can finally put away all of our belongings that we packed up in our car. Joe of course packed up all of his electronic stuff and made sure it was safe while our wedding pictures were still in the garage. He reassures me that if we did have to evacuate he would have grabbed the pictures from the garage on our way out!
This picture of our home was taken around 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 3rd! Within hours the smoke that loomed over head quickly turned into an "ash blizzard" and you could barely see the homes across the street due to the heavy smoke, ash, and power outage. It felt like a scene from a movie! We had three straight nights without power in 80-90 degree weather. Let me tell you how miserable that is especially when you are pregnant!
These two pictures of the flames were taken from our driveway!

We didn't let the fire ruin our Fourth of July though! We headed to my brother's pool and enjoyed the holiday smoke and ash free followed by an amazing BBQ and fireworks!

I am extremely grateful for our ward having harped on having your 3 month food supply ready! Because of this we didn't worry about our food in the fridge spoiling and all of our emergency supplies like: flashlights, batteries, candles, etc were handy and very accessible!