Startling facts

• 30,000 is the number of children under age 5 who die every day from a preventable cause.
• 1 out of 7 people in the world have no access to clean water.
• The world's three richest people own more than the combined gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries.
• More than a 1,000,000,000 people in the world live on less than a dollar a day.
• 9 out of 10 kids with AIDS are African.
• Every 3seconds a child under age 5 dies from poverty-related causes.

What are you going to do about it?

www.compassion.com

Oh, by the way...

For some reason I decided to look at the baby blog and I had put up one of those cute tickers that has the growth of the baby. 13 weeks.

Since losing the baby things have been up and down in many respects. There's always reminders of the baby we were planning for and then realizing we don't have the baby anymore. There's people not knowing how to react to the miscarriage. Sometimes resulting in not saying anything at all. No "I'm sorry" or "How are you doing?" It's' not that I feel I deserve those things, but there are some people you'd expect to say those kind of things, but who have kept silent. That's one of the things that hurts the most. Of course, there's the baby conversations that take place and where I use to be included I'm now ignored.

But none of those things prompted this post today.

I realized as I was posting the fire updates from last week that there are likely many little baby reminders that have yet to be taken down. This one was on my profile:

I'm a wife, soon-to-be mommy, teacher, writer, and etc. living life and chronicling it in some sort of way. Enjoy!

Ouch! Soon-to-be mommy. Soon-to-be mommy no more. That's sad. And you know what? I'm not ready to take it down. But that reminded me of the blog I started to keep our family informed about the baby...still haven't deleted that yet. Partly because I want to print those posts and save them, but the other part just wants to avoid that completely.

I did think of something else sad/baby related. My sister-in-law's baby shower is this Saturday for their second little one (a girl...hopefully! The last time the doctor said that it was a boy!). This will be my second baby shower since we lost our baby, and those are hard for me.

But it reminded me of Mother's Day. What am I going to do for Mother's Day this year? Our due date was about a week before Mother's Day and my sister-in-law and me had talked about how cool it would be to dedicate the baby on Mother's day. And now this Mother's Day I won't have a baby. What do I do when Pastor Joe asks all the women who are mothers to stand up to be honored? What will I do? In some ways it doesn't sound like a big deal, but in other ways it's HUGE! When do you become a mother? Once your baby is born or when you find out you're carrying a life within you.

It's just one of those things that I think about now...

am I a mother?

Back Home...

So...hopefully you all are aware of our current situation. We are back home. I guess, I just got so excited to be home and back to a somewhat "normal" routine that I neglected to update all of ya'll on that. We found out a little bit after lunch on Wednesday that we could go home. We quickly packed up our stuff said thanks and bye to Aunt Marie and went home. We really didn't have any damage in our area. The pool was covered in ash and our house smelled like smoke, but other than that things weren't too bad. Except for my car, of course. In the Volvo the driver's side window and sun roof don't close all the way, so I had a nice layer of ash in my car to clean out.

Since then we've been doing fine. Joe went back to work on Thursday and I went back to work on Monday. Some days the air quality is better than others. Monday at work you could feel the smoke/ash in your throat, but today it was fine. Our two friends that I was telling you about who live in the burn area are fine, but not yet home. They won't be able to go home until  mid-November, because their houses have to be decontaminated. Both the Jahnke's and the Bailey's need to have things purified...I guess is the best way to say it. At the Jahnke's they said it looked like a window was left open because ash was covering so much. The Bailey's came pretty close to losing their home. The fire burned a tree in their front yard and burned their trampoline on the side of the house. If I remember correctly neither area has electricity or clean water yet. So...both families are living in hotels until things get cleaned up. The Bailey's adjuster told them not to even open the fridge, because it sucks in all the fumes from the fire and if opened could start another fire (not quite sure how...but that's what they said)...

Well...that's pretty much it on the home front for now. We'd love to hear from you all!

Love,
Jess

...Christ in you, the hope of glory...Colossians 1:27...

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Wednesday Morning Fire Update 10-24-07

 
So...there's a few things to report:

• The two northern fires have converged as predicted.
• We're still not allowed back into our area. On the news this morning they said that they were seeing hot spots on Camino del Sur. Just to give you some perspective Camino Del Sur is the street that Brandon's old high school (Westview is on). The exit for Camino del Sur is off of the 56 and it is two exits above us.
• Another thing is the power grid for San Diego is in bad shape. One of the main corridors in the south is out and the other one near Camp Pendelton/San Onfre is threatened. So...that's not good. Water, electric, and gas are out in some areas....we'll see what happens with the grid.
• They're saying that the air quality today is the worse that it's been all week. And we can even tell that from Tierrasanta. The sky is pretty brown looking north (toward our area). We left Grandma's house (where we're sleeping) and are at Aunt Marie's house (where we have the wireless...woohoo!) and you could see ash in the air and it was gathering on car windshields. Spot, Joe's dog, had ash on him as well. We're still safe here. No evacuation orders yet.

I think that's about it for this morning. Talk to us people...we're bored!

Love,
Jess

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Lunch Fire Update!

Right now we're at Joe's aunt's house in Tierrasanta, which is the area my family lived in when we lived here before. We're just waiting to see what to do next. They're saying they wouldn't be surprised if the fire goes all the way to the coast.
 
If you remember Angie Bailey from the wedding (she was like my coordinator person) they went into our area last night and when her husband went back to their house at 5am this morning he could see fire on the hill across from them. They live more in Poway about 15-20 minutes from us, but the fire has moved up and around that area, so they don't know if they have a house to go back to...It's crazy stuff to watch.
 
If you remember there's like a "small" mountain right behind our church and you can see it from our apartment also but right now that's basically the only barrier between the area the fire is now and our area. They're saying that the fire isn't trailing, but that embers are landing places and causing new fires. So...we'll see what happens. I'll try to keep in touch. I've been keeping in touch with both of my parents if you want to call them. Talk to you later!
 
Love,
Jess

...Christ in you, the hope of glory...Colossians 1:27...

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Morning Fire Update! 10-22-07

Hi Friends & Family -

Nervously I'm writing this e-mail to you...A local friend of mine called at 6:21am and said that our areas are being told to evacuate. So...we did pack some stuff last night and we're packing more as we speak.

The I-15 is closed from the 56 and to the 78, which to give you a perspective the start of the 56 is at our exit about 3 minutes from our house. Sadly, the fire has not been able to be contained, because of the smoke and winds. Usually, the winds will die down during the night making it easier to see the fire and where it's going and be able to fight it, but now it's gotten even worse. Over night another fire started in San Marcos and the fire has gotten closer to the Wild Animal Park. Why we're being evacuated is because the fire has moved under the I-15 by Lake Hodges, which is about seven (?) exits north of us on the I-15. And with everything else they're saying evacuate when you're told to evacuate, don't wait to be told a second time. So....I'm packing it up people...Joe's out getting gas.

I'll send another e-mail when we head out.

Love you guys!

Jess

Christ in you, the hope of glory...Colossians 1:27...

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