The Knoll Fire

On Sunday afternoon, we were all just hanging out in our house.  It got kind of dark and felt like a storm was rolling in.  We looked out the window and saw a very gray sky. 

It wasn't long before we realized that it was actually smoke and not clouds!

The hills behind us have caught on fire before, but this felt different. 

We realized the fire was getting closer to our house and started seeing ash falling. We started to gather belongings just in case and then we were told it was time to evacuate. 

That was an adventure in and of itself. Carsyn had a broken arm, we had two giant labs, two cats, 5 cars, three kids, two adults, and had to decide what was most important to grab quickly.  Needless to say, we learned a lot that day! We got loaded up, and started to head to Salt Lake to stay with my parents.  Our next door neighbor's husband was out of town, so Rod was so kind and stayed behind to get her and her daughter out safely.  

We headed up Redwood Road with the rest of the city and crawled to a safe place. 

Luckily, we have incredible firefighters and they were able to keep the fire away from most all of the homes in Saratoga. We ended up going home super late that night. 

Below are pictures of the fire burning at night and then the area it burned all around the lake. 

 

Moab!

 Rod and I have had the opportunity to do some white water river running a few times and love it so much that we wanted to share that experience with the girls.  

We planned a trip to Moab - of course it hit right after the world shut down for Covid, but luckily we were still able to go!

In case Covid didn't make things tricky enough, our trip was also right after Carsyn broke her hand and Tyleigh had knee surgery to have her cyclops lesion removed. Great timing on our part!

This was Carsyn's makeshift sling in the car to give her hand some relief while we drove. 

Tyleigh was just getting delirious - I guess the blanket helped!

Camryn just laughed at both of them!

Rod wanted to spend a day driving razors and introduce the girls to the amazing climbs in Moab. Baby Lion's Back, Fins and Things, and Hell's Revenge. 

Carsyn tried to convince us she could drive with one hand. 

It didn't work out so well for her, so Camryn ended up driving one of the razors, while Rod, Tyleigh and I drove in the other one. 

It was beyond impressive to watch Camryn tackle the climbs and be so brave!

Tyleigh took a turn driving as well!

The views at the top of the climb were breathtaking! This was looking out over the Colorado River. 

Baby Lion's Back was a little tricky.  At the bottom of the hill, there was a little rut and the tire of the razor got caught in just the exact wrong way. I was petrified the razor was going to flip, but Rod got the girls out of the situation safely. 

That night, we took the girls on a midnight hike to see Delicate Arch.  It was so much fun! Camryn is an incredible photographer and captured this beautiful picture of the arch and the stars up there. It will always be one of my favorite photos!

The next day, we went white water rafting down Westwater Canyon! 

Covid rules made it so that we had to wear masks until we were outside. 

Such a cute picture of these four - but the fact that Carsyn has a cast and Tyleigh has a knee brace should have been a huge red flag and indicator that this wasn't the best idea!

The girls were a little nervous about the rapids - they are after all Class 4 rapids, which can be pretty intense. We reassured them over and over that we had never flipped and wouldn't flip today either . . . 

We sent Carsyn and Tyleigh in a different boat with all of the supplies - it's a heavier boat and has less chance of flipping. We felt better about them being in that boat to protect their injuries. Their boat went first and everything went fine. 

Then our boat went. . . 

The Flip!

Max!

Another boat went down the wrong way, which affected our timing, which ultimately caused us to hit the rapids wrong, which tacoed our boat and SPIT all of us out! As Camryn tells it "we went down Skull Rapids, we got tacoed out, and then she hit the Rock of Shock and ended up in the Room of Doom!"

The boat landed on top of some of us, and we had to use our hands to walk ourselves out from under it. Poor Rod and Camryn kept floating downstream with some others and got caught in "the Room of Doom" with another boat that had flipped. They loaded up into a rescue boat, which ended up flipping again! Rod took a good hit to the head with one of the metal support bars and got cut. Max was our favorite part of the story and is still quoted to this day!

In the moment, it was a little traumatizing, but now we laugh and it has made for an awesome story! 

I am just grateful we all came out mostly uninjured and that Carsyn and Tyleigh weren't in the boat with us! Camryn is a trooper - not anxious to go again, but a trooper anyway!

Moab is such a fun place to visit - there are some quirky places and things there to say the least (like the Mystery Machine at the Alien Gas Station below), but it is some of the 

most beautiful landscape I've ever seen!

We had such a fun weekend! These are some very tired girls!

Carsyn's Broken Hand

Carsyn came home super late one night and started to talking to Rod and I. We were already asleep, so it took a minute to fully comprehend what she was saying. 

Her and Jared were messing around and he dropped her and she said she passed out and really hurt her hand. I figured she had sprained it or just jammed it pretty bad and sent her to bed.

The next morning, she came in and put her hands fist to fist and said "I think it's fine, what do you think?"

Uh, her entire hand looked like a boxing glove. It was SO swollen. 

We made an appointment to have it x-rayed and sure enough, the bone was broken! No wonder she passed out! We were definitely worried she was going to need surgery, but they decided to just watch it for awhile. It looked like a boxing glove because that's exactly what it was - a boxer's fracture. 

She got put in a splint and ace bandage and was in quite a bit of pain, but this girl is no stranger to broken bones, and is tough as nails!