New little friend

About a month ago this little black kitten showed up around our house. It was pretty skittish when we would come outside, it would run away when it saw us. It was about the same time that I discovered a mouse in the house too and a mouse nest in the outside art cupboard. Anyway, one morning the boys went to the back yard to play baseball as usual and they came back in shortly because they said there were several chewed up mice in the back yard. Awesome news. The mouse inside was never caught and never found, but there is no trace of it anymore. I'm thinking it went out the way it came in and the kitten got it.
Well, Billy brought it out a little bowl of milk one morning as a thank you for helping with the mice... and it has stuck close by ever since. The kids can all pick it up and pet it and it seems to have adopted our family. Not sure I am too excited for one more thing to take care of... but we give it some cat food each morning and we shall see what happens.  It's NOT allowed in the house, and I am sometimes bugged at how much it sits at the door and meows... but, hopefully we wont have any more mice in the house.
The kids have named it Blackie. Seems to be a good little cat.

New toys

We have been talking for the past 4 years, since we moved over to the ranch, that we ought to buy some quads to play on....
Well, one of Billy's co-workers was selling his and I told him we wanted to buy them!

So we now own 2 mini quads and the boys are in heaven! If it wasn't for the fact that it has been 100 degrees everyday and super humid, we would have already used them way more... but so far, around the house, our little neighborhood, to the mail boxes, and one trip on the ranch has made the boys super happy.  So many good times to come!

This years local fire- Whittier

On July 8th a fire started right by camp Whittier, just a few miles down the 154 from us.  It was a HOT day and it didn't take long for it to blow up and get into some dinosaur brush that hadn't burned for at least 50+ years.
And so our exciting and mostly exhausting week began of being evacuated, going back and forth, escaping the smoke, ash & heat, and being evacuated again.
Luckily, my sister and her family were in town when it started and were staying with her in laws. There was room for us too, so we stayed for 2 nights with them in Goleta. When they left to go home to AZ I thought it was a good time to start staying at home again. I had been back and forth everyday to grab things and mostly to check on the neighbors animals that I was looking after while they were away camping. So I knew it wasn't a big issue to get home and back from town.

We had lots of visits from fire friends during the week. A forest service engine with some of our former neighbors. A SB city engine with 2 fire fighters we new super well. And a Montecito engine rolled in one day to check on us as well :) We felt loved and safe.

Here are some pictures from through out the week that I took of the hillside above us. There was a lot of action around our house for a while, but i'm glad they got a handle on it and it's over with.