TOO close for comfort!

As if it isn't bad enough that we have to prepare for the alleged "BIG ONE" that is supposed to hit California any day now and crack off a piece of Orange County into the ocean....we now have to deal with fires. The fires started early Saturday morning, but seemed pretty far from anyone we knew. We all went on with our days as if everything was going to be okay. As the afternoon went on, we watched as the fires got closer to Anaheim/Yorba Linda. Well that is where Mark's mom and dad live, so we started to get a little nervous. Ken and JoAnn had left for Temecula earlier that morning and found out about the fires and started heading home. Unfortunately, the freeways were all closing because the fires were so intense. They had to get re-routed all the way through La Habra - basically several hours out of their way. Around 3:30pm, Mark received a call from his friend Darren, to let him know that another fire sprouted up about 2 blocks from his parents house and in Darren's words he told Mark to "get his parents s@#T out of there"! Mark and I packed up the kids and dropped them all off at our neighbors house in hopes we can get to their house and get the animals and some pictures. Meanwhile, Ken and JoAnn's neighbor, Pat, packed up the animals and got out of there. By this time, their street was on mandatory evacuation. Their other neighbor, Jim, stayed behind and was giving us constant updates. He stayed with another neighbor, who was an ex-fire fighter. All the while, Ken and JoAnn are stuck on the freeway trying to get home. At this point, we all feel a little better knowing the animals were safe, but Mark and I continued our journey to hopefully pack up some valuables. We got to a main street that was back up for miles, but fortunately, Mark knows a super secret way around it. So we started a treck through a neighborhood in Villa Park and successfully reached another road that would have led us through to their house. However once we turned right onto this road...we were quickly greeted by police officers who detoured us around to right back were we started. We asked if we could go through if we lived there (Mark still has his parents address on his drivers license) but they said DENIED! There was nothing left for us to do, se we turned around and headed home. Ken and JoAnn ended up staying at our house that night with their dog, cat and bunny. By around 8 pm, we learned their house was out of harms way. PHEW! On a sad note, the apartments that Mark's sister, Courtney, used to live in was burned to the ground. Fortunately, she moved out in June. Though there were alot of homes lost and the fire continues to burn, our family was fortunate and dodged the fires.