Rob and the California George Family

We are definitely out of harm's way now, but the fire is still going. It is heading south and east. As Shoo noted in his Blog, it could head up and over Saddleback Mountain and/or the surrounding foothills into Riverside County. The map shows the extent of the fire as of today.

Governor Schwarzenegger was at El Toro High School (the blue pin at the bottom of the picture) yesterday touring the evacuation center and giving a short speech. It was cool to see our local school in the news, but unfortunately under sad circumstances. The link above has a video of his speech. You can clearly see "El Toro" and part of "Chargers" at the top of the video as it starts.

We don't get snow days here in SoCal. In fact, I can't remember an unscheduled day out of school for any reason (Earthquakes, Riots, etc.) in Orange County (I may just have a bad memory?). However, today the entire Saddleback Valley Unified School District is closed due to smoke. With the Santa Ana winds gone, we are left with a campfire smell and smoke permeating the area. The kids asthma and allergies are definitely being triggered to a small degree. The kids are just happy to skip a day of school. I don't think that it has sunk in yet that they will have to make up the day later. Oh well, let them enjoy it for now.

The picture below is my windshield after sitting in the driveway all night. The ash was like a light snowfall yesterday and last night.

Labels: Family

First off, we are completely out of the way of any of the Southern California fires and in no danger. However, the Santiago Fire is close.

We first saw the fire on Sunday night as we returned home from a Girl Scout event. The flames were visible from many miles away as they burned up various hillsides. Yesterday, I went to work and our building was directly in the smoke plume from the fire. The building's good ventilation systems allowed us to stay and work, but the Irvine Spectrum shopping area was nearly a ghost town for the day.

We live about 2 blocks from El Toro High School. As of yesterday afternoon, the gym there is being used as a Red Cross Evacuation Center for people that had to leave their homes due to the Santiago Fire. When I dropped Bethany off for school, I saw that it is definitely getting some use. There were lots of cars, RVs, boats, and people around. I saw a number of people walking their dogs in the area.

Tonight was supposed to be a Volleyball team practice for the girls, but that has been cancelled due to bad air quality.

We have had fires close to home before, but this is the closest we have been to the effect. Don't get me wrong, this is not a complaint post. It is more one of relief that with all of the devastation around, we are not directly part of it.

Anyone trying to figure out how to help can visit this Red Cross web site.
http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/profiles/disaster_profile_CAWildfires.html

At our kids' elementary school, they have a "buddy" system that is really cool. I never experienced anything like this when I was in school. Basically, the younger grades (K, 1st, and I think 2nd) are teamed up with older kids (4th, 5th, and 6th grades) to get together periodically to work on projects. This makes the younger kids feel special by having an older friend and the older kids get a great sense of responsibility and the opportunity to know what it is like to tutor/teach.

Hayley has a Kindergarten buddy named "Chloe" this year. Hayley's comment is that "she's so cute!" Hayley still has fond memories of her older buddy from when she was in Kindergarten. It's fun to see her on the other side of the relationship now. Andrew and Bethany went through this program too and had great experiences.

Labels: School

Yesterday, Andrew George turned 20 years old. There is now one less teenager in the world.

Andrew was born the same day that 18 month old "Baby Jessica" was saved from a well that she fell into in Texas. I remember writing in the "headlines on the day you were born" section of his baby book. Not many of us have an event on our day of birth that is reviewed 20 years later.

Happy Birthday, Drew!

Labels: Andrew, Birthdays

The Girl Scouts have a series of awards that lead to the Gold Award (the Girl Scout equivalent of the Eagle Scout rank). The series starts with the Bronze Award and then goes on to the Silver Award. The Gold Award is completed by the end of High School. The awards require leadership, meeting goals, and performing a community service project.

Bethany and a friend worked together on their Silver Award service project last summer. They chose Ronald McDonald House of Orange County as the organization to work with on their project. They each put in more than double the service hours required.

The main focus of the project was a “books on tape” type of deliverable. The girls gathered around a dozen cloth bags and included a set of children’s books in each bag. They then recorded each book to an MP3 file and made a CD for each bag that matched the books in the bag. They also raised funds to purchase portable CD players for each bag. Ronald McDonald house now checks the bags out to kids who can listen to the books on CD and read along.

We recently delivered the project to the grateful recipient. In addition to the book bags, the girls also delivered the following items:
• Notebook with paperwork for book bag checkout system
• 51 pounds of can tabs (they recycle the aluminum)
• Several boxes of donated adult and children’s books for the house library
• Several boxes of donated food from a neighborhood food drive

I don’t have the exact statistics for pounds of food or number of books, but the delivery jammed the back of our Suburban.

It was a nearly overwhelming project, but the girls stuck to it and got it done. It was easily as big or bigger than many Eagle projects that I have seen.

Labels: Bethany, Scouts

My family purchased a Nintendo Wii for my birthday this year. I've only tried it a couple of times so far, but it has been a lot of fun. The "next gen" offerings for XBox and Playstation didn't really hook me. Using the motion sensitive controls on the Wii adds something unique. Sure, I can't see a player sweat realistically in my sports games, but who cares. Swinging the controller like a bat to play baseball or using the controller in a motion like rolling a bowling ball is very fun.

By the way, the pitcher does sweat when playing baseball in Wii Sports. It is a cartooney sweating that is fun to watch. Sorry Microsoft and Sony, but I choose innovative play mechanics over improved graphics.

From what I have heard from others, this will be a game that I am more likely to get the family to play too. I remember a skiing game on my old Mattel Intellivision that was a lot of fun for non-gamers. The Wii seems to have a similar appeal. It will be interesting to see if I can get my wife to play.

Labels: Birthdays, Games, Rob