Too Much Excitement!

Eliana's birthday party is tomorrow and we've had some excitement leading up to. Too much, in fact! I've been working on making cookies and cupcakes for the big day. Today is the day to frost the cupcakes for tomorrow.

This morning Dad and Leif took Ellie hiking up to the top of Sacajawea, the highest point in the Bridger mountains. Along the way they saw a mountain goat hanging out up there and took a bunch of pictures of it, but I'll have to post those later.

While they were gone I went garage sale-ing with Taylor. I got some GREAT stuff for Ellie!!! I got a little Ellie-sized wooden rocking chair for $5, and a pop up playhouse/train with two rooms and a connecting tunnel for $9. I also got her some snow boots for this winter ($1) and an umbrella stroller with a sun shade and storage compartment ($3). It was a great outing!

After everyone got home and had lunch, I went out to the backyard to find Leif. He wasn't out there. But when I stepped out onto the deck I noticed that.... OUR BACK FENCE WAS ON FIRE!! So was the corner of the field behind it. I called 9-1-1 and they said they'd send a firetruck out. In the meantime, Dad, some neighbors, and a kind couple who was just driving by pulled out as many hoses as they could find and tried to keep the fire at bay. Eventually the firetrucks arrived, but not before the whole field was burned and the fire had reached the large metal shed on the property as well. Something inside the shed exploded with a hearty "BOOM!" shortly before the firemen extinguished the flames.

As it turns out, the fire was actually caused by something on the other side of the subdivision. A transformer over there blew and started a fire, then caused a chain reaction and triggered this transformer, which shot sparks when it blew and started our fire. Our back fence is burned and will have to be replaced. Thankfully, though, it is the boundary fence for the subdivision and is their responsibility, not ours.

I am so thankful that the wind was blowing away from our house. Otherwise the fire could very easily have burned up our yard and reached the house before the fire crew arrived. There wasn't any damage to anyone's homes, thankfully. I don't know who owns the metal shed or what was in it, but I've never seen any activity over there, so I think it's probably just storage. In any event, it could have been much worse, and I'm thankful that it wasn't.

And now we have a great conversation piece for the party tomorrow.

"What happened to your fence?"