DON'T WORRY - WE'RE SAFE!!!!

Hello Dear Readers (however many of you there might be)!

I (timmy) thought I would just take a minute to let you know that we are SAFE! We are NOT one of the 3/4 of a million people who've had to be evacuated because of these crazy fires. These fires, as you may have heard, are being rapidly spread by the Santa Ana winds - which blow east to west. Pasadena happens to be one of the further inland parts of LA - so the fire won't be coming out here. We also aren't directly in line with the winds so if a fire did start here, it would be quickly contained. So now you can sleep. Goodnight! :) Our good friend Amy Freeman is here and we took an awesome hike today on Echo Mountain and we could really see the smoke. At 1 pm, the color of the sun reflecting off the ground looked like sunset colors, not midday. Our neighbors told us today that they actually saw ash coming down like snow in Pasadena. I've got a few pictures attached for you to see. Please pray that we get some rain and that these wild fires stop.

In other news - Deb, Amy, and I had a great weekend visiting Deb's sister Pattie in San Diego. It only took us two hours to get down there. We got to spend time at the beach, shopping (ok, it was really the ladies dong the shopping), and we went down town for a nice dinner where I swear I had the BEST Mahi Mahi I've ever had - so good, in fact, that I took a picture of it. YUM! But it really was a fun weekend and if you haven't been, San Diego is just Gorgeous!

Tonight was really neat. Deb and I (ok, it was Deb) sent a homemade invitation to each of our neighbors last week inviting them to come drop in and have some milk and cookies with us tonight - Tuesday 10/23. We really just wanted the chance to meet our neighbors and show some hospitality to them. Three different apartments (out of 12) showed up. It was a really nice time and we look forward to getting to know them better as time goes along. Deb's cookies were AMAZING! We really enjoyed getting to talk with our next door neighbors. They are from Iran and couldn't be nicer - greeting us with hugs and kisses. We even got to meet their grandchildren and daughter in law.

So day by day we are establishing ourselves here. We're REALLY loving it. When you move from so far away, you really have no idea how it will turn out - but this is turning out to be so much fun! We've hosted our first out of state visitor - thanks Amy - we're waiting for more! Ok - I gotta get to bed. I'm working on a project for Bette Midler tomorrow :) Love you all!