Today two of my Mama's friends had their First Communion!!! They're sisters, and they live in our complex. Their dresses were really pretty, and Mama took some pictures of them. If their parents say it's okay, Mama might post some of the pictures. Okay, gotta go now!!

Violet

Photos from the fire...

Mama took a lot of photos on the day of the fire. She's very glad our house didn't burn up and so am I. Thank you, firefighters!!!!!!!

Oh, and anyway, about the photos, Mama has been busy ever since the fire and didn't get around to editing them in Picasa 3 (which she loooves to do....) until last night. So now I am posting them.

Remember: all the pictures (oops, I meant all but a few) that you see are edited. So they all look different than their original form...some more so than others. And now for the photos.....

Here are two firefighters: the one on the right is our neighbor, Steve, who works with the guys who put out the fire (the other on is his friend). He had just got off work a little while before the fire happened....funny. :) These two pictures were taken out in the grass in the middle of our complex. In our complex we have a bunch of buildings, in each building there are five houses, and all the buildings are arranged in a circle around the grass at the center. (At one end, though, there aren't any houses, there's the clubhouse and the pool.)

Mama went out in the parking lot. There were a lot of firefighters and fire engines and hoses......

This is in the parking lot of the church that Mama and Auntie and Uncle see out their windows.....don't know why the ambulance or whatever that is was there. Oh, maybe it was 'cause the Red Cross set up something over there in the church for the people whose houses had burnt. They gave them some stuff and a "credit card" with some money for them to buy stuff.

Mama really wants to put words on this picture, something about heroes maybe 'cause the firefighters are sort of heroes....got any ideas? (Lizzy?)

Same people, different picture....

And a really WEIRD edit on this one.... :P

When Mama was watching the firefighters spray the house to put our the last bits of the fire.....
She saw a rainbow!!!
(of course, it's edited to make it stand out more.....)

Here is Bridgie (short for Brigdett...don't know how it's spelled), the dog we were watching because her owners, our friends, lived in the building that burned. None of their stuff was burned, they only had a little water damage to their walls and ceiling. Now they live upstairs next door to us!!! :)

And here is the sunset that night. Mama loves to take pictures of the sunset and sunrise, and since she was out there with her camera already.....

Edited to make it pinker, but Mama likes the original better. What do you think? (Please, Lizzy?)

That night there were firegfighters there all night to make sure it didn't catch on fire again, which made Mama feel a little safer.....

The next day.......

A fire engine was there. The arson investigator came to see how the fire had started. It started somewhere around the chimney and obviously was not on purpose. Grampa knew the arson investigator!! He had met him before at work.

This is to show how close (and how connected) our building is to the building that burned. On the right is our building. On the left is the burnt one. The stairs the go up are so the people who live in the upstairs condos can get to their houses. Our friends whose dog we were watching (and whose fish we are still watching....) now live in the upstairs condo on the right of the picture....at the time of the fire, no one was living there, which was a good thing, since the worst part of the fire was in the condo up above on the left....where a couple and their one year old daughter lived. Down below them was another couple, but they don't have any children.

The roof caved in on the townhome since it has a vaulted ceiling, and on the condo that got burnt worst 'cause it was burnt so bad the roof couldn't hold itself up anymore. Part of the townhome's roof fell down in the "street"--it's more like a parking lot. There was a lady who lived in the townhome. The day before the fire, another lady had moved in because she was renting a room from her. I don't know if the lady who rented a room in the townhome got any of her stuff.

In this picture you can see that part of the roof is hanging down--the firefighters cut that off later that morning for safety. Since all the buildings are the same layour, the window on the far left is the one that's Mama and Auntie's room in our building, and the one next to that (middle window) is Uncle's room in ours. The other one is the master bathroom.

Here's a view from by the building, looking towards our building.

This sign was on all of the garages and houses except...

...our friends' garage and house, which had this sign.

Mama really likes this picture.

This one is very hard to see, but it's looking from outside into the townhome's living room. You can see that the chimney fell down into the living room, which created a big hole into the the garage behind it (the garage belonged to the people who lived in the upstairs condo that got burnt really bad) and the master bedroom of the condo below the one that got burnt really bad.

Here is the front of the townhome, you can see that the living room is a mess..... (and to Lizzy--we don't have a deck, just sidewalk up to our door; not all of the townhomes have a deck, only this one and another one.)

Here is a firefighter in the garage that belongs to the people whose condo got burnt really bad....talking to a firefighter in the living room of the townhome!!!!! If you look closely, you can see him. It seems so weird that there is no longer any wall in the back right corner of the garage...

A few days later.....

These people are all helping the lady from the townhome get all of her stuff out (they're her friends). Everyone whose house got burned got any stuff that was not burned or messed up out of their houses....and most of them have found new places to live for a while. The couple who lived down below the condo that got burnt really bad now live in our building, in the upstairs condo across from our friends whose dog we were watching, the man who lived up above across from the condo that got burnt really bad is going to move into another condo in our complex that's in the building across from the one that burned, the lady from the townhome is staying with a friend, and the couple who lived in the really bad burnt condo are staying with family.

And now there's a company that's coming and cleanign up the house, getting all the junk out and stuff....so everything is pretty much okay. They may tear the building down all the way; if they do, Mama'll take pictures and post them. Okay, gotta go now!!!

Violet