Groundhog Days . . . .

It's really hard to remember what we did that first week from Monday all the way to Saturday. We were in this strange, Groundhog's Day kind of routine. The routine went something like this . . . .

• Wake up
• Check the phone for any new news on the fire and pray it wasn't getting worse
• Go to the gym and work out
• Go to breakfast
• Come home and check on the news about the fire
• Sit around and maybe play guitar
• Cocktail time at 5 pm
• Dinner

One of the positives was that we did get to spend a lot of time with family. We did go to our friends, Mason and Julie Farrell's home for dinner on Tuesday night, which was a nice break. There was another 'refugee' couple staying with the Farrell's so we got to share evacuation stories, which was somewhat therapeutic.

We ended up making two trips to Santa Barbara to grab more items from our home. Bryce and I drove down on Tuesday afternoon and checked on things. It was surreal to be there on that day. There was ash everywhere and we could see the flames burning in the mountains above Montecito. The house was dark, cold and seemingly in a state of suspended animation. The two Christmas trees we had purchased sat in the family room and the living room waiting to be decorated -- they didn't even have lights on them yet. We didn't spend much time there. We just brought in the mail and the UPS packages and grabbed a few items of clothing and 2 more guitars and headed back up to Solvang.

Here's a map of the progression of the fire as of Tuesday, December 12th. The green areas represent areas that had already burned while the orange were either burning currently or had just burned recently.