So at this glorious event of fall festivity, each table is hostessed by a different woman from our church. That woman provides the plates, silverware, and DECORATIONS for the table.
I was priveledged to sit up front at this beautiful table.
Guess who hostessed it?
Brooke!
(I'm sure we had the most fun at our table- what a great group of ladies to spend time with!)
Here is my friend Ashley's table. Very nice!
And another gorgeous table hostessed by Lisa Anderson.
So Greg was the "sound guy" for the ladies fall fellowship this year. Notice that it's the LADIES fall fellowship. That means Greg was the only man in a room full of a hundred women. So of course he did his sound stuff...
But he also got commissioned to change the water jug in the water cooler, and other manly duties.
Yeah Greg! Way to represent your gender!
Here is a picture I took when we visited before the fire...
Here is the same hillside now. You can see how the fire came right down the hill.
Here is the petting zoo area now.
And here is the strangest part to me. The entire field of sunflowers is fine except for one big area right in front (sorry it's hard to see through the fence that was put up). My best guess is that an ember flew in there and started to burn it, and they put out that spot before they all caught fire.
I promised you all some pictures of Lombardie Ranch from after the fire, and I finally took them on Saturday! Here's a look:
Here it is before
And here after.
If you look closely you can see a black charred area in the center of the screen. Those were hay bales. You can also see some of the trees in the foreground took some heat.
Notice the straw horse and buggy before...
And after.
The horse and buggy survived, but the antique car behind it was scorched.
By the way, the house on the hill in the left of the picture was Mr. Lombardie Sr's house. They saved it, but his daughter's house over the hill is gone.
Here we are! Getting Addie into her Halloween Costume!
First the nose...
See?
I let mommy draw on me for a minute, then I wouldn't have it anymore, so I got a tiny little nose drawn on.
Getting on the wings...
And I'm ready to go!
Because she had a crummy nap today, we took addie Trick or Treating at a local shopping center that offers early Trick or Treating. She had a great time, as you can tell.
Daddy and his little bug.
Addie practiced using her "Please" and "Thank Yous."
And everyone made a big fuss about how cute she was!
For those of you not familiar with the title phrase, it is the Old Testament name for God which means "The God Who Provides." This is a common exclamation around our house when we see a need met, and especially when it is met above and beyond our expectations. Such was the case this weekend.
We have been scouting for a toy kitchen for Addie for several weeks now. We had been dissapointed to find them more pricey than we expected- even used ones! So when Chris & Brooke Kropf came by on Saturday night and announced they'd found one for FREE sitting next to the dumpster at a friend's apartment, we were pretty excited. We went to pick it up on Sunday and were even more excited. It was clean and in great shape, and did I mention FREE?! (My favorite word). The little (or not so little) bargain hunter within me lept for joy. 
Addie was pretty excited about it too, although too young to appreciate it's free-ness, she liked it just the same. She played with it for 45 minutes straight. Which, for someone under 2, is a loooooooong time. 
We were also treated this weekend to a visit from our friend Ruth. Here she shows Addie how to knit. Please forgive Addie's disheveled look, Daddy did her hair. Addie is now a professional knitter and will be making you all scarves for Christmas.
Yes, I realize it has been awhile since I last posted. It has been so long in fact, that our hometown here has made the national news TWICE since I last posted. But wait- that was only two weeks ago! What can I say? This is an EXCITING place to live!
First, the day we went out to the pumpkin patch we got stuck in ridiculous traffic on the way home. Why? There was a serious accident on the nearby freeway involving several semi trucks. They shut down the freeway for a few days in order to put out the fire from the accident and make sure the surrounding road and overpasses were structurally sound. Shuting down a freeway is always a big deal, but this was REALLY a big deal because this is the stretch of freeway that brings all northern traffic into LA. In fact, they had to detour all the traffic off the I-5, through the streets of Santa Clarita. In fact, right down the very street we live one block from. SO- you can imagine the traffic! We tried to go out as little as possible. It was pretty wild.
But not as wild as what happened the next weekend! (And this, I'm sure you've all heard about on the news). We have been told that the national news has really emphasized the fires in San Diego, and said less about what happened here. And yes, those fires are bigger and were more destructive, BUT- there were some serious fires going on here last weekend!
On Sunday, the fun started. There was a small fire up the road from our church and the Sunday School classes had to be evacuated. Thankfully, it was only at the end of our last morning service, so it wasn't as crazy as it could have been. There was also a fire burning in Castaic, NorthWest of here, that brought a lot of smoke over our valley.
Later that afternoon, a fire burned up behind Canyon Country, which is at the north end of Santa Clarita. Greg went outside and took some pictures. The air was orange and it was just eerie outside. Within a few hours, lots of people we knew had to be evacuated, but thankfully all their homes were saved. That night on the news we watched as planes and helicopters dumped water on the hills and a few houses burned down. This was a neighborhood we are very familiar with and it was crazy to watch it all happening on live TV. One friend of ours watched on the news while a helicopter dumped water on his home. The fires came within 50 feet of their house.
By Monday, the fire in Castaic had come closer to Santa Clarita. A few neighborhoods on the NorthWest end of town had to be evacuated (nothing near to us). I was watching an interview on the news of a local guy who fought off the fire with his garden hose at 3 am. As he pointed out at the hills, he said, "the fire went down that way, took out Lombardies, then went over there." For you blog readers who pay attention, that is the pumpkin patch we were at one week earlier. I was so sad to hear that! (On a very happy note, we went to see Lombardie's this week and were thrilled to find it wasn't completely destroyed! A good portion was saved and it is up and operating. I am planning to head out there Saturday morning and will take some pictures so you can see.)
But the fun wasn't over. Monday afternoon a new fire started to the West, near another neighborhood. More evacuations. A few hours later, another fire on the east border of Santa Clarita. This fourth fire was the closest to us, though we still weren't threatened. I knew about it before the news reported it because I heard numerous fire engines go screaming down the road, then helicopter after helicopter flying over us. Here is a shot of one of the water dropping helicopters as it went past.
We can't say how much we love our firefighters! They worked soooo hard. We were thankful to be out of danger and that we didn't have to be evacuated. It was really a good chance to evaluate just how much you love your stuff and what you would do if you lost it all. We spent many, many days cooped up inside because of the air quality. But it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been because the strong winds that made the fire so hard to fight, also blew most of the smoke out of the valley. And now the fires are out and things have calmed down significantly!
Now, I would love to say that the lack of blog posts was due to the traffic or the fires, but really, it is due to the fact that Niki (that's me) is up to her eyeballs in crazy busy-ness! In the midst of the past few weeks, I have been preparing to teach a nutrition class for church (which was canceled due to the fires), preparing the decorations for our church's annual ladies fellowship event (involving much shopping, planning, flower arranging, etc.), preparing to co-host a baby shower, and teaching a friend how to roast a turkey. Our friend Ruth came to stay for the weekend, which is always fun, AND (just so there's no boredom here) I'm starting to plan ahead for Christmas and my sister's wedding (planning gifts, figuring out what everyone's going to be wearing, etc.).
Unfortunately, we also had a very bad week or so right in the middle of all of that with Addie's reflux. Her perscription for one medication ran out and there was a mistake in the new perscription that came from our mail-in pharmacy, so I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with the doctor's office and the pharmacy trying to identify who made the mistake and how fast we could get the right meds for Addie. Though she was feeling pretty lousy for awhile, she is feeling much better now.
Whew! If you have read this far, you are a loyal reader indeed, and I thank you for it! Please be patient as the busy-ness in our lives is due to continue until.... well... for a while. We will TRY to keep the blog up to date, so we don't have to write any more posts that will equal War & Peace, just to catch you up.
Besides just picking a pumpkin for our porch, we also went to Lombardies to get a truck-load of gourds for a women's event at church that is happening in a few weeks. Niki is in charge of the decorations for said event, and wanted to get to the pumpkin patch early to get some really great gourds and white pumpkins. So here is our haul- all loaded up in Gary's truck! (I will try to take pictures of the decorations when they're all set up in a few weeks).
Do I want this one?
Ooh- this one looks good.
Yep. This is the one.
Look! I got to bring it home!
