Well, we had our first experience living in "fire territory" yesterday. The hill up behind our apartment caught on fire and ended up burning about 80 acres before the fire department was able to completely kill it. I was driving back home from Costco and a friend called to ask if we were o.k. or if we had to evacuate.  I figured that I had better hurry home and see what was going on! While I was on the freeway we had to drive through an area that was being targeted with the water dropping helicopters. Of course they weren't dropping water on the freeway but around it. My car was getting drops of water and ash on it as we inched our way up the 101. Anders was pretty excited about all of the "moke!" and whenever a fire truck would wail by he would say "mmm help". He did think that the smoke had something to do with choo choo's as most of his life revolves around trains right now.

From my patio we can see the hill where the fire started. It's right above the park that we walk to.  While we stood outside watching the fire fight we waved at the big helicopters that were flying over so low that we could almost see the pilots inside. It was quite dramatic and it made me extremely thankful for the fire department! It was amazing to see how precisely they hit every little spot of flames that would pop up. It was an incredible effort and the fire was out by mid afternoon. Impressive!