Kennedys adventures

You know with out lifestyle it really does take a village to raise a child.. and Im pretty sure Kennedy loves it! The first night I was gone her and dad went on a bike ride.

She got to spend a night at Grandma Janas, a night at Grandma Chris's

She went to the Pioneer Days Rodeo with Grandma Chris, Sam and Mindy

She got to play with Teal, who loves to pic and eat fresh tomatoes from the garden

 and she had a special grand kids playday at Grandma Chris's

Macee and Koree doing splits

She took them all to Walmart to pick out paint projects and tv dinners

 and then they went swimming her pool!

 

Plus Monday we had a special Mom Daughter day that consisted of ice cream, a nap together and hanging out all day. Id say shes pretty lucky!

Wildcat Fire

By Friday afternoon (day 2) we had ensured that my fire was out (Curlew) and we were reassigned to Wildcat. When we arrived on scene we were put over the D division. They had a decent line around the fire and were working on a lot of internal stuff at the line. There were several seats and helicopters assisting. 

Wildcat was just over 13,000 acres!

This is how the tender driver keeps track of how much water hes filled. Each one is a different trucks capacity.

We took our good luck selfies in hopes we got to go home that night and shower! It worked!!

That night we pulled into briefing and it was packed. PACKED PACKED. There were over 150 resources on scene!

We were able to leave and rush home to shower for the night. We got to bed about 11.. and were paged out for a fire at 1am. Todd and I were on call for the county. We got back to bed at 3am and had to get up to head out at 4am for day #3. We were once again tasked over D division. We were able to work for just a second but not much. We had to stay on the ridge line for radio communications. We worked when we could but it was a long day of sitting in the truck monitoring 3 radios.

Jana asked if I would take more pictures of Todd and send them to her so I did. Im a good kid like that lol!

How we kept everyone straight in the truck and who was in charge of each truck.

Trying to get radio service in one dead spot...

Towards the end of the day we had to go up on the hill with one of the crews to help out another division. We were happy we got to work!

Dinner that night. 

While we were working this fire two more fires broke out Saturday. The Yost fire and one along the freeway.

Day 4 our division was combined with another and we were assigned IA (initial attack) Since we were still on call for the county and we were responsible for responding to anything that came in.

We started towards a fire in Deweyville that was threatening structures but they got it under control so we could cancel. Then we had to respond to one in Pocatello Valley, but it ended up being in Idaho.

and then another one off Rattlesnake pass.. but that also ended up being in Idaho. They had 2 going at once!

We took another good luck selfie that afternoon so we could get sent home! It may seem superstitious but it has worked every time. If we dont take a fire selfie it either goes to hell or we have to spend the night. Not even kidding.

The night of day 4 we were released and didnt have to come back the next day. We were still on call for the county (holiday weekend) but we were able to go home, shower and sleep in! I was so excited.

Curlew Fire

Thursday afternoon we were just coming back from an accident on the freeway. Spencer was supposed to be on call but had asked Todd if he could cover from 1700-1900. We said no biggie we didnt have any plans. Well exactly 1700 hours a page came in for a fire on Wildcat mountain. We headed to that one. Dad was already in Snowville (aprox 30 min away) and Wildcat is 1.5 hours away for us. So he got on scene and set up command on Wildcat. He noticed there was another fire burning pretty much right next to it. He assigned us that fire and we got more resources responding.  This is the view of Wildcat and Curlew from Hwy 30. 

We made our way through the fields and got on scene. We had just over a 60 acre fire headed fast to the east. We got the east side stopped and the winds pushed to the west hard.

 We were able to get a circle around the fire all while watching Wildcat in the background making sure it didnt make a push for us across the flat. 

 Dusty got on scene and made me the IC5 trainee. Aka im in charge of the fire. This was my first one ever. We were committed to the fire throughout the night.

It ended up being 67 acres

 Wildcat from our fire. You can see there is maybe a mile between them

 We had one blown tire on the tender and one broke valve stem on another truck

I cooked Todd and I dinner for the night lol 

We released all our resources but one brush truck. They were going to be reassigned to Wildcat the next morning. We set up camp for the night.  This was our nightlight. We kept an eye on the fire and slept with a handheld radio on monitoring their fire while we tried to get some rest.

 Those are two glow sticks with flagging between them so no one drives through and makes  line around where we are sleeping. We also had our trucks blocking our camp

 Well during the night, we got to bed about 2 am and as we were all almost asleep (Rilee, Todd, Me and Amy) a herd of antelope wandered into our camp. Antelope are blind at night... sooo I was pretty sure I was going to have to explain on a report how I was attacked by one at night. They came right in between the trucks then a herd of about 10 of them took off running. Scared the hell out of us which turned into a camp full of giggling girls. Poor Todd. Just as soon as it would get quiet one of us would start giggling. About an hour later another herd of antelope came through our camp and did the same thing! Then Rilee started talking about ghosts and haunted cemeteries in the area. Which led to more giggling. Then the coyotes started howling and Rilee is scared of coyotes. We finally got some sleep until about 5am when the coyotes started howling again. Rilee got up and slept in the truck.. which led to more giggling. Finally it was time to get up!

 Todd wanted to take a selfie to prove he was the only one brave enough to handle a camp with 3 girls all night long.. and that he survived.

 Resources were brought in that morning for the Wildcat fire.. we had to eat our MRE's still. It was a pretty decent breakfast.