September Update

The night before school started, Tristan burned his hand on the stove top.  He slept with a frozen water bottle wrapped to his palm.  This is what it looked like last week!  A huge blister!

Our sweet neighbor Finn was diagnosed with Germ-Cell Cancer this summer.  He is only 18 months.  The community had a fundraiser for him on Saturday.  It was a lot of fun and raised a lot of money for his treatments!  The photo booth was a big hit!  Owen wouldn't be in our picture, but he let Eric and Aura take him for the fire fighters picture!  This picture of Tristan and Wade makes me laugh every time I see it!

The Quigley Trio volunteered a concert for the event!

The man of the moment!  So sweet!  FINNish STRONGer was the t-shirt! (His name is Finn)

Out on the paddleboat

Shawn rented a couple of paddleboards for DeAnne's b-day.  It was a lot of fun!

Pedaling Wade style

Happy Birthday!

We decided the shag needed to go.  Loved the bleached out beach-bum look, but the reason I had boys was so I didn't have to comb hair!!!  Before

Before

Before (Yes, his hair had a party last night!)

During

After

After...not sure what happened to Tristan's after.

Saturday night we had a really cool lightning storm.  What was not cool was that it started 80 fires in the area!  More to come on the fires in a couple of pictures, but I wanted to explain the haze in the background of this picture and why you can't see the cool mountains!  This is the house Jason is building!  :)

Jason and Sue came over to watch the Packers/Bears game with us!  They lived in Chicago for a few years and claim to be fans, but maybe not anymore!  :)  This was half-time and the Packer boys are showing the Bear just how its done!  Go Pack Go!

Ok, back to the fires!  There are fires all over the area.  There is a measurement of air quality and the air is considered hazardous when the measurement is 200.  The record for bad air quality in our area before this week was 368.  The measurement for the air quality right now is over 1000!!!  That means it is 5 times worse than hazardous!!!  Needless to say, we have stayed inside as much as possible!  Schools have kept kids inside for recess and cancelled all sports practices and games!  It is miserable, because you can tell it is sunny (you just can't see it through all of the smoke) and hot (80 degrees) but you can't enjoy it because you can't breathe when you are outside!  Actually, that's not true.  You can't really smell the smoke when you are outside. (I do realize this might be because our nostrils are fried by this point.) That's what makes it even more dangerous.  It doesn't stink, so you don't necessarily think it's bad, but the invisible particles do permanent damage to your lungs.  The positive side is that we've had some BEAUTIFUL sunrises and sunsets!  The reflection of light through the smoke is awesome!

Due to above mentioned fires, Jason decided not to work outside today.  He tiled our shower and put up the mantle!  Apparently it can hold at least 120 pounds!  

Now for some rock....

I found this picture on Facebook.  This is our area from way up in an airplane!

The firefighters build these controlled "fire breaks" to burn an area in hopes of creating a barrier for the wildfire.

A local firefighter took these pictures of where he's been spending the past week!