Hi, everyone... I don't know if any of you have noticed, but I've been gone for the past 3 days. Most of you probably know about the fires that were going around California. Luckily, no firemen were killed, and only one house was destroyed.

On Wednesday, the fire closest to us started at about 2:00 in the afternoon. After school, I went straight to the barn. When we got there, the smoke was almost covering the entire sky, so we decided not to have a lesson.

The decision was soon made to evacuate the horses to Malibu. We're lucky we made the decision when we did, as you'll soon find out. We had to evacuate all 30 horses in the barn via 3 trailers before 8:00 at night. Once we finally got all the horses into Malibu safely, We went home.

Well, we woke up at 3:00 in the morning to loudspeakers outside saying, "Manditory Evacuation! Please gather your belongings." So we packed some things, put the 3 dogs into my dad's car, loaded Freckles and Baybi into my mom's car, and left for my Grandma's house. Unfortunately we weren't able to take any of the fish, but they're all fine. So we left. At 3:00 in the morning.

Yesterday was also my big girl's birthday. I just feel bad that she had to spend it evacuating to an unfarmiliar place.... We still gave her lots of love, though, and hopefully will be able to buy her a couple "birthday gifts" as soon as we can.

Today, we finally heard that it was okay to go home. We've been here for about a half an hour, but at least we're safe.

Thanks for listening, it's been a long 3 days.

Devon