Escaping the Smoke

As I've sure you have all heard, some IDIOT set fire to the hills behind our home here in greater Los Angeles. I can't begin to imagine the devastation some people are facing right now, losing their homes and everything they own, being evacuated and feeling completely helpless. Luckily, our home has never been in danger, but we are close enough to the fires that the smoke was pretty bad.

So many people were saying that they wished they could get away from the smoke for a few days....and I realized that I COULD! My kiddos are young enough that they're not in school yet, and I didn't have any firm commitments Mon-Thurs, so I took the kids and went to my Uncle & Aunt's home in Santa Barbara. We wished we could have brought daddy with us, but it was a fun trip regardless.

I took the kids to a really cool park one day, then the next day to the beach (neither of which I have any pictures of, unfortunately---though in my defense, I was doing the beach without other parental help, and it got tricky at times.) The next day I went with them to the Museum of Natural History where they had a butterfly exhibit. Avery didn't quite understand the idea of sticking her head in this cutout...

Here's my best attempt at a close up of one of the butterflies.

The museum was located just behind the Santa Barbara Mission, which we didn't go inside, but I got a nice photo it of anyway.


The next day I took the kids to the Santa Barbara Zoo. They loved it! There's a great kids' play area in the middle with an "ant hill" that all the kids slid down on cardboard squares. So fun.



GO AVY GO!!

Here's Mr. Alex going back and forth through this "log tunnel" in the play area. He is SO FAST at crawling now. I think he'll also be walking any day now. Such a sweet and fun boy.

We came back home on Friday and everyone here said the smoke was 100 times better that day than it had been all week. So I guess we picked the right time to leave. THANKS so much to my aunt and uncle for putting us up for four nights! And special thanks to them for performing "minor surgery" on Avery's scalp when she fell off the bed and cut it on the end table. We used Krazy Glue to put it back together!! Her wound is healing beautifully. Now I know I should stock superglue in my first aid kit.