Friday, November 30: Mark comes home from work at about 10pm and tells me that he is going right to bed because he has to go back in at 4:00 am to gear up for the high winds that were forecasted.
Saturday, 1:00 am: Half asleep, I notice Mark answer his cell phone and say "ok". A call from the night crew on watch.
4:20 am: The phone rings and I notice Mark isn't in his bed. This isn't a surprise as I knew Mark was going in to work. He immediately says 'have you guys gotten the call to evacuate?'. Uh, no.
So the packing begins......I did a much better job packing this time compared to our evacuation scare this summer; clothes, computer, documents, kids, dogs---check.
Cooper was calm throughout the entire process. He asked if we were packing for St. George. I explained that we had to leave our house because there was too much smoke and the fire fighters needed everyone out of their way so that they could work on the fire. I didn't think he needed to worry about our house going up in flames. No child should ever have to worry about that.
Once the car was loaded, I woke Cruz up and told him we were going on an adventure. As we were getting ready to pull out of the garage, Cooper remembered something he wanted to bring with him; a dream journal he made at school the day before. He had hidden it in a safe spot so that he could show his Daddy the next time he saw him. That was the only moment where I got a little choked up. I saw it as a metaphor that the only thing my baby boy wanted to bring with him were his dreams. And then I chuckled to myself that I might be reaching a bit.
The rest is pretty much the same for the next 4 days. We stayed with 2 different families and split it up into 2 nights each. I figured we didn't want to become the analogy of houseguests and fish. I am beyond grateful for our friends and Estes Park family.
As always, we are very proud of Mark and now our town is as well. The community support was pretty amazing to witness. Mark gets to see that all the time throughout his fire season but rarely are we in the mix.
We are home. We are together. Our town still stands. Thank-you Mark, thank-you firefighters, thank-you friends, and thank-you Estes Park for taking care of our family.
----photo collage taken from Estes Park news.
1 comment:
Yay! I'm glad all is well!!
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