Slowly returning to normal

Last night we opened a good bottle of wine to celebrate our return home. Considering that all of our wine could have gone up in flames, it seemed like a good time to pull out a special bottle.

This morning, I was able to put Aaron in his Jumperoo where he happily jumped until I made him some cereal which he ate in his highchair. Simple things, but after spending 3 nights away from home without his Jumperoo or his highchair, I really appreciated them. While at my parents house, we to hold him most of the time he was awake (or put him on the bed in our room where he could play with his feet) since we had no contraption into which to place him and the floor wasn't safe with a puppy running around and twin 4 year old boys. And although I managed to feed him on my lap or while he was in someone else's lap, it's definitely easier to do in the highchair.

We saw a map today of the homes that burned in our neighborhood and it confirmed what I had guessed - the fires came within .5 miles of our home. We can't see the burned homes from our house since they are over the hill from us, so seeing the map really made it clear how lucky we were. We heard that there were a lot of firefighters in this area protecting our homes and I know there were helicopters doing water drops. Although 20 homes or so burned in our neighborhood, they were mostly homes adjacent to the open space. The firefighters managed to keep the fire from encroaching further in.

When we were under evacuation, I was worried about our home, but also felt strangely detached. I love our home and neighborhood and I'm a sentimental pack rat that has closets filled with "stuff", so I expected to be more concerned about losing it all. But I think having Aaron has changed my perspective. We had packed up photos and some mementos along with our clothes, so we did have some of our irreplaceables with us. But I think the important thing is that I was with Thom and Aaron and my family was all safe. I'm sure I would have been upset if we did lose our house and its contents, but at the time, I had my family and nothing else was important enough to lose sleep over.