Colorado - "A warm welcome"

Our trip to the States was wonderful.  We spent amazing quality time with all parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends.  It was a fun, exciting, and all around great 5 weeks.  The kids and I left two days after school got out and let me tell you how my kids rocked our international flight!  They were helpful, respectful, and so well behaved.  It went very smoothly and for that I am so thankful because it was extremely tiring for me, but so worth it. 
We arrived Monday morning knowing that there were forest fires extremely close to my parents home. We had tried to delay our flight by a few days but the airlines wanted to charge us over $7000, and for that kind of money I could travel elsewhere if needed.   So Monday was great seeing everyone.  Tuesday I ran 4 and 1/2 miles in the morning with my brother and the air was mostly clear, with little signs of what was to happen 8 hours later.  After checking the news my parents, younger brother, and I headed to Denver to the LDS temple.  We left my kids at my parents home with my sister-in-law knowing that she would leave the kids there to go to her home (5 minutes away) after a couple of hours.  All seemed well, until 4pm when all hell broke out with the fire.  We exited the temple and used the phone to find out that there was pre-evacuation orders (which the neighborhood next to us had been in for 2 days).  Then 10 minutes into our 45 minute drive home came the reverse 911 call and the most excruciating 30 minutes of my life.  Evacuate NOW!  Fire everywhere, structures on fire!  And my kids in a house by themselves...as I write this I am crying thinking of the fear and guilt that racked my body as we drove back to Colorado Springs.  But God was watching out because my older brother had happened to go home early from work that day.  He and my sister-in-law hopped in the car and raced the 15 minutes (which took more time due to 26,000 people evacuating) to my parents and got my kids.  It was the most sweet feeling when he arrived at the house.  My brother and his wife did something for me that I cannot explain in writing.  And I have to say that both of them were sick, and then emotionally they gave all to get there and drive my kids out.  Which was no small feat, it took 2 and 1/2 hours to get back to their house. 
So this is a long entry, but I wanted to write it down.  I am grateful for family.  I am grateful that my family will drop everything and literally race into a fiery inferno to rescue my family.  God was watching over my family that day.  We were blessed that the fire did not take my family's home.  I am grateful to the firemen who worked so incredibly long and with such danger all around.  I am grateful to the police, the forest service, the people of Colorado, the utility people who in the fire went to each home individually to cut off the gas, and the list goes on.  And I am so grateful to my sister-in-laws parents who took us in for a whole week, feed us, and loved us.  It is a big deal, we are not a small family.  My heart is full.

I will blog about our actual vacation later...there are no pictures from the first week...my camera left behind in the evacuation.  However I took these very pore lighted pictures on Monday night of the smoke outside my parents home.  By Tuesday morning it was not like this and the smell of smoke was much less...however fire and winds are unpredictable as I have learned.