Fire and Rain

It has been several weeks since the fires were in our area but we are still having the effects of them. Just a couple of weeks ago we had another day where we had ashes falling from the sky. That is not as unusual as it sounds. I have seen that several times since I have lived in Orange County. We will hear about large fires and then the next day or so we will see ashes falling and have them all over our cars. Well we had had to clean up the ashes from inside our house as well as all around our porch and back yard area after the fires. My husband actually took the indoor/outdoor vacuum outside to do it a few times. Sounds crazy, but there were ashes all over our porch and the furniture there, on the barbecue and eating area in the back and all over the play equipment in the back yard. The kids would be filthy and still get filthy whenever they go back there and play from the soot. It turns out that the fire got all the way up to the back of our fence in our back yard and burned the fence in a couple of areas. Obviously we are very lucky to still have our house, but we are getting tired of the soot.
Well, last weekend it was really windy. I always open the kids windows when they get up so the rooms can air out. Last Saturday I walked outside to get something in my car and saw that it was covered with ashes again inside and out. My husband had taken the car seats out and brought the car to get washed. All three of the car seats were sitting in the driveway and were covered with ashes and so were the front two seats because the sun roof was open. I went inside and up to the kids rooms and there were ashes all over the rooms. It was such a bummer to clean it all up again. The air smelled so bad we decided to go to the beach to get some fresh air.
We spent most of the day in Laguna Beach. We walked along the ocean and then let the kids play in the playground for a while before we had dinner there and headed home. It was Sasha's first time going to the beach. It was warm and sunny and just a perfect day down there. It smelled fine and wasn't windy there either, which was great. It started raining Thursday and rained Friday as well. You think it would have washed away the smoke smell but it actually is stronger for some reason. It smells like a wet ashtray or a wet campfire outside. It is pretty bad in my area. In the weeks after the fire the smell would change from day to day. It almost always smelled like smoke, but some days it was a bad smell and some days it was okay. It had finally gotten so that we didn't notice any smoke smell when the wind and rain brought it back.
Sasha has her second tooth (bottom right) now. She just got it today. She barely drools at all, but it obviously hurts her because she keeps grabbing me and pushing her mouth into my shoulder when I am holding her. But her appetite is so much better. She seems to always be hungry now and eats a lot. It's a little tricky though. Sometimes we think she is eating and then find out she is just storing it at the roof of her mouth.