Fallbrook on Fire

We are happy to report that the Khoury family is fine and well. We were evacuated from Fallbrook on Monday and remained refugees until Friday, when we were allowed to return to our home. Needless to say seeing our home for the first time after the evacuation was a relief. The fires came within a mile from our home. That's too close for comfort.

As we were evacuating I snapped this photo of the smoke and fire coming towards us. When we got the evacuation call it was blue skys over the house and smoke to the north. By the time we got a few things in the car and drove away it was raining ash at the property.

Here's Nader and Bella pulling away from our house. You can't even see the sky it's so full of smoke. It was eerie how dark it suddenly became.

Here we are driving North on the 5 freeway. This was taken around Camp Pendleton area and as you can see the sunset was shrouded with smoke. This was the first day of this fire, I am sure it got much worst.

Here is a Google earth map showing our house relative to the fires. Nader figured out how to import the fire hotspot location from the US Forest Service. The Rice Canyon fire started on Sunday on the East side of the 15 and moved into Rainbow and Fallbrook, on a direct path to us. This is what it looked like on Tuesday. The yellow spots are the location of the fire on Monday night, about a mile away. The red and orange spots are the location of the fire on Tuesday. Lucky for us it started to head north into Deluz and Camp Pendalton. Not totally luck, The fire department made their last stand at Gird. If it would have crossed that street, a lot of us would have been in trouble.

Even though we were glued to the television for any type of news regarding the fires, we made the most of our time. We stayed the first night at the Stephen's, our friends in San Clemente and the remaining days and nights with Nader's brother, Brian, and his family in Murrieta. Here's a shot of both sets of twins playing in a lion tent.

Here's Sahara and Maya trying to pour water over their cousin Dominic.

We killed some time at the Temecula Mall which was just about the only place we could go outside the house and not choke on smoke.

Close up of Sahara.

Close up of sweet Maya.

Fallbrook's Finest

Summer time is in full swing in Fallbrook and the vegetable garden and fruit trees are going off. Take a look...

Yummy peaches.

Pomegranates are almost ready.

Squash.

Tomatoes.

Eggplant.

Nader's protea propagation experiment.

Home sweet home.

Did I mention that we have 100 fruit trees. You should see our water bill.

The figs are on their way.

Bananas. I should mention that Nader is very excited about the fact that our banana tree is bearing fruit. He checks it everyday and updates me on it's progress. It's kinda cute.

The passion fruit vine has hundreds of passion fruit.

The Banksia are blooming.

The Safari Sunset Lucadendrian will be harvested tomorrow and dropped off to a local flower broker the following morning. Nader will be complaining about his back for days.

Here's Sahara closely inspecting the purple cone flower.

Lately the girls cannot get enough of the outdoors. They are constantly "asking" to be let outside.

Sahara riding the garden Zebra.

Today daddy built the girls an activity table. This is a project that was inspired by our last visit to Lego Land.

Ta da !! An activity table complete with one compartment for water and another for sand. Sahara enjoyed filling the buckets with water then pouring it out on herself. Maya on the other hand organized rocks in and out of the activity table for about an hour.

Bella was close at hand trying to score a new toy to chew on.

Sahara still preferred the dirt to the sand and was caught red handed in the flower pot.

Stay tuned for more from the Fallbrook farm...