Celebrating Father's Day & Zallens birthday!

(We actually did this after the the blessing (next post), they are out of order!)
We were able to spend Father's Day in Mesa with my Dad. I feel so blessed to still have my parents and that they are still enjoying life and doing well. Dad just turned 84 in June! Mark & Holly are in Arizona for a few weeks, so we also celebrated little Zallen's 2 year old birthday! He is such an adorable little boy! Kaemon decided that he should have a "Monster Truck" cake, so Auntie Lisa really out did herself!

Kaemon and Kingston loved playing with some of Zallen's toys, they are having fun getting to know each other again!

Milea has to wait for London to get a little bigger to play with! I didn't get a picture of London, she's always moving to fast!

This cake was not only awesome, it was delicious too! Good job Lisa! It was a fun Father's Day and Birthday party. My folks are always so good to feed us all and let us have loud, rowdy get- togethers at their house. We all love them so much, they are so good to us!

Blessing Baby Bolden

On June 19th, which also happened to be Father's Day, we attended the baby blessing of our 8th grandbaby, Bolden Leo Crosby. Mark & Holly came all the way from New Orleans!

This is Great Grandpa, Leo Rae Huish, holding Bolden Leo!

Mommy & Baby!

Its hard to believe that they now have 4 little kids! What a beautiful little family! Bolden came as quite a surprize. Back on April 19th, we got a phone call telling us that we have a new grandson! No other previous announcement was ever made! However, there were a few of us that suspected something when we were all together over Thanksgiving, but felt it would be rude to ask!!! That won't ever happen again!!

Look at all those good-looking guys!

Bolden was so happy to have his great-grandparents there- Rae & Norma Huish and Don & Lillian Dawes. Of course both sets of his grand parents too- Jon & Jill Huish and LaVerl & Shelley Crosby. We were so glad they waited to bless Bolden until they came to Arizona!

Bolden had quite a crowd of people there to show their love and support! It was a happy day!

Lots of pictures of the Walllow Fire's destruction...

This is how it looks heading up Water Canyon. We still have a few trees, but lots of blackened ones.

These pictures are all taken right from the road going up to Milligan Valley.

You can see that the fire was right at the entrance into our property.

The fire went right around the old outhouse and didn't burn it, but it definately took our family cabin.....

All that's left is the foundation, the tin from the roof, the fireplace, the burnt hot water heater, the stove and the old fridge. Its hard to believe that something that took so long to build and to fix up could all be gone in a matter of minutes. LaVerl and his Dad, Melvin spent many hours together working on the cabin. I guess we still have the memories.

LaVerl did find the fireplace screen that he made for his Dad for Father's day one year. I remember the day clearly. Melvin needed something in our garage and the screen was in there where LaVerl had been working on it, so I didn't want to let him in. He got a little upset with me and I finally had to tell him why. He sure was proud of that fireplace screen with the rench-R brand on it. Just one of the many memories of that old cabin, along with Gpa's hats!

The fire came in from the back of the cabin where we had lots of wood stacked. It burned this big tree and the cabin, but basically left everything else.

It burned right around this little old cabin, probably because of the concrete foundation. Maybe we will just have to fix this one up now. I remember the day my dad moved this cabin from a far corner of Milligan Valley because the forest service had re-surveyed and it was now not on our property. My Dad was in the mobile home moving business and had a 'low-boy' and he knew how to do the job! It was quite a feat!! Another memory!

And now this is all that's left, its just heart breaking for us all! One of the things we are saddest about losing was the brand board that Gpa made. He had branded onto a big board all the brands that were registered at the time Arizona was made a state. He included that names of the owners of those brands. It really was a piece of Arizona's history.

Oh, how Grandpa loved to go in on a cold day and build a fire in this big old fireplace. He love a good hot, pretty fire to warm him up after he'd been out in the cold for so long.

The fire didn't even touch this little fort the kids built while their Dad and Gpa worked on the cabin.

Gma & Gpa Crosby loved this big covered porch! They loved to swing in the swing that J'net got them and look out on the beauty of Milligan Valley.

The fire came right in across the property fence line, but luckily, didn't burn very far!

It burned in front of the pond that is dry because of the drought and no snowfall this winter.

This is where it burned on the backside of the barn.

As you can see in this picture, it burned right up to the barn, but it never caught on fire! We are so lucky and feel so blessed that the big old barn, where we have had so many fun activities, didn't burn. We have had dances, Halloween spook alleys, Show Choir retreats, Ward parties, family get togethers, Cookouts, and reunions held inside this barn. Many wonderful memories!

One last picture of the terrible scene of what this fire has done to our beautiful forest. It will take a hundred years to be what it once was. We blame mis-management and the spotted owl! Our forest could have been used as resource and kept many jobs for those who lived here. Now its all gone, all burned and all wasted.

Keeping Busy.....

For those of us who chose not to evacuate, we were told we could NOT leave our property, if we did, we'd be escorted out of town by the police. That might be a problem for some, but we had plenty to do around our place to keep us busy, mostly Dad, he always has lots of projects and never enough time to do them. We actually enjoyed being 'kept at home'! I thought this was a really cool picture!

Dad loves his little skid steer! We/he hauled all kinds of stuff! I helped a little!!

He also started getting ready to put in a big 'pit' BBQ! Its down by the orchard. If he would've had the block, he probably would've gotten that laid up too!

Did I mention, he also loves his new dump trailer that helps him haul off all the junk?

He's been spending lots of time in his greenhouse! Its looking so good! We've been picking lots of lettuce, green beans, broccoli sugar peas, cilantro and other herbs, and beet greens. We put most of the herbs in the dehydrated and dried them.

He back dragged all the dry grass along the side of our house. This area had lots of old wood and stuff that might burn if the fire came that close.

The fence had come down and people were driving through our property, so he decided to fix it and put up new posts and wire. However, he was out working on the day that the smoke was really bad. The air quality was off the charts with particulates in the air that day. He had been wearing a mask, but wasn't the day he chose to do this, I don't know why.

It was smokey all 5 days we were stuck at home, but we had our ozone machine going in the house, so it didn't seem bad in there.

Moving more stuff, he is getting so much done around our place, its looking lots better!

I spent a couple of days binding our cookbooks, about 180 of them. My friends did all the other work on them, so it was good that I got to do something to help. I also got to fix dinner for some of our neighbors whose wife's weren't there and they could just come over the back way, through the fields. I told Laverl that I was supposed to be on 'vacation'! He stopped inviting people over!

When Bret was here, he raked all the pine needles from around the trees and away from our gas tanks. Then LaVerl wet it all down really good.

LaVerl mowed in the orchard and then irrigated it and the garden.

We've got lots of corn and squash coming up, so hopefully we'll have a good outside garden too.

More piles of stuff he moved to the other side of the big ditch so it couldn't catch fire! When we can finally burn again, then it will be gone for good.

We spent a lot of time watching the helicopters fly by our house with their loads of water or fire retardant. Even though we could see fire on the mountains around us, we never felt threatened where our house is in the middle of fields around us. However, we found out on Friday that our cabin in Milligan Valley burned to the ground, nothing left but the fireplace and refrigerator standing. We are heart sick about losing the cabin, LaVerl and his dad rebuilt it from the old orginal Brown homestead that only had logs about 6 high left. They built an upstairs and another big bedroom on the back. Lots of hard work, but lots of wonderful memories. Oh how Melvin and Martha Jo loved that place! However, we were told, that no trees were burned in our little valley and that the old barn is still standing. We feel very blessed to still have that much.

FIRE and SMOKE in Eagar!

As most everyone knows by now, (my internet was knocked out) the Wallow Fire that started May 29th, down by Bear Wallow is still out of control! It has grown to over 340,000 acres and still has 0 containment! The towns of Alpine and Nutrioso were the first to be evacuated on Thursday, June 2nd. This is what the smoke clouds looked like from our house in Eagar that day.

On Friday June 3rd, we went up to our place at Milligan Valley to retrieve some motor homes that had been brought up for our big family reunion coming up July 4th! The smoke was pretty dark behind the old barn. We wonder if it will still be there by then.

We are hoping and praying that somehow the fire goes around Milligan Valley. As of yesterday, we heard all structures were still there. We also have an old cabin there too and many wonderful memories of LaVerls parents, Melvin and Martha Jo. Gpa loved this place and so do we!

On Monday evening, June 6th at 9:30pm, a knock on the door, flashing lights, and we were delivered a pre-evacuation notice by a police officer! We laid in bed and couldn't sleep after that, thinking about all the things we needed to do to get ready for a fire coming our way! By June 7th, Tues. the skies were getting darker with smoke. The smoke clouds looked like they were filled with fire! By 3:45pm, everyone south of Hwy 260 were issued evacuation orders. Tami took Blake and Chad and left for our place at Roosevelt. Ryne left to work over in Show Low. We had to sign papers because we chose not to evacuate! It was scary because we knew the fire was coming our way. By that evening, this was our view from our driveway, looking towards Jack's house.

This is Jack's house and the mountains right behind him. The fire looked like a river of lava flowing down the mountain. When the wind blew, the fire would flare up and get brighter. It didn't last long before the smoke covered the flames. These are our beautiful mountains surrounding our little town. I can't even imagine what it will look like when this if finally over!

The threat they worry about is these clouds that drop burning embers miles ahead of the fire and start up spot fires everywhere. They look very ominous and frightening. The smoke has been pretty thick here at times. In the evenings it seems to lift a little. Yesterday was not a good day, the wind blew fiercely all day, gusts up to 45-55 mph. Greer was safe, but then the winds changed and it is now in danger again.

This is a day picture, although it seems pretty dark. The sun looked like a bright neon orange ball. I'm thinking of prophecies talking about the sun and the moon turning to blood in the last days.

I took this of an airplane flying right over our house. The bag of full of fire retardant they drop on the fire. They use it to save structures and property. They have lots of big planes now and over 3,000 people helping with the now 2nd largest fire in AZ history. Bret came on Wed. evening and somehow got through the road blocks. He was worried and wanted to come help his dad save the house. Once here, he realized for himself that we are not in imminent danger, but we were glad for his help and concern!

This morning I took this looking back at the Finch's home behind us. The smoke was really thick because they did a lot of back burning right in the meadows going up Water Canyon.

While we were out cleaning this morning, looking out over our greenhouse, I could see flames and lots of smoke. I don't know if this was the back burn, or the fire, but as you can see, the wind was blowing it back, which is really good.

This is standing at Chad's little fence. Yes, our mountains are burning! We feel our town and our houses are safe, but it is devastating to think what this will mean to our community that depends on our environment for our economic stability. I don't know what will happen to our town now, we are in a very sad situation. So as of Wed. we can't leave our property and we don't know for how long, but for as long as the evacuation order is in effect. LaVerl has been finding plenty to do. The next few days will be stressful, but all we can do is pray for God's help in getting this fire under control!