I must admit, 2017 wasn't my year, as I am sure it wasn't a lot of people's favorite year. It was full of ups and downs, happiness and sadness, and just plain craziness.
For me it started out with a major surgery to fix an issue that almost killed me the summer prior. This surgery was badly needed and forced me to slow down for the two month recovery.
Less than a month after, the best part of 2017 happened. Our first nephew was born! He is the sweetest little boy you could ever meet. He is so handsome that people stop in their tracks to see him. We are blessed to have him in our lives and so lucky he is only a 5ish hour drive away.
While I was recovering from surgery, I ended up joining an online Health & Beauty company that blew up in popularity. I instantly had a huge group of people join my team, was making a bunch of money, and the products were flying off the shelf. This business was starting to take over my life. Ever waking second was spent trying to ensure my team was learning, I was hitting my sales targets, and that customers were satisfied with their product. This was fine for the first couple of months, because I wasn't working my regular job. Once I went back to work, I was struggling more and more to keep up. The leadership of the team I was on was changing processes and ways of doing things on almost a daily basis. To be honest I just couldn't keep up. This same leadership was also asking more and more of the "leaders" and some of the asks were against my beliefs and business acumen. I eventually fell out of love with the leadership, starting hating ever second of being involved with the company, but still loved the products. I made a decision that I no longer wanted to be associated with the leadership team I was associated with and that I would stop selling for this company. The moment I made this decision a huge weight was lifted, that I feel was holding me down. Yes I gave up a legitimate source of additional income, and a team that had massive potential, but to me, it just wasn't worth it. People think I am crazy for giving that up (including a trip to South Africa), but I have zero regrets.
The summer of 2017 started off great. I headed to our annual Silver Icing conference in Vancouver at the beautiful River Rock Casino. It was a BLAST as always. Who wouldn't love to hang out with 100 of your "online BFF's" for the weekend, improving your business skills and having way too much fun. These weekends are so refreshing and soul fulfilling. This one did not disappoint.
These conferences usually start on Friday and end on Saturday night. During the Friday session, I had checked my Facebook page. I am starting to see some posts that a wildfire had started and burned through a community that is only 30 minutes and about 20k from my house. Within a short amount of time, it devastated two communities. By the grace of God, and the hard work of Firefighters, the fire did not burn the whole town of Ashcroft and Cache Creek down. The fire was spreading fast, and new ones had started in numerous areas north. One of my fellow stylists is from Williams Lake area and her neighbourhood is on evacuation alert. One of the other stylist got a call from her husband who was at a family cabin in the area, and he was under alert. I had no idea what I would see when I got home from the conference.
Upon driving from Vancouver to Kamloops, I saw a few smoky areas but nothing too bad. As I got closer to my neighbourhood, I could start to see the smoke. When I got to the police checkstop which was just down the road from my house, they asked me where I was going. I explained I lived in the neighbourhood just down the highway and we were not under evacuation. They let me through with no issues. As I got home, the smoke in the air and the dryness of the air caught me off guard. When I left a couple of days earlier, there was still green leaves on my one scraggly tree. Now they were crispy and brown. The bunch grass was also crispy and looked like hay. There was smoke plumes that I could see in the distance.
My husband had come home early from work and was asleep when I got home. He had worked a night shift the night before so he was exhausted. I honestly turned it into panic mode. I ran around the house like a mad person gathering everything that I thought we would need to take if we got evacuated. I grabbed house docs, jewelry, pictures, and anything sentimental. I piled it all in front of our main door. When my husband got up we figured out a plan of attack. We had to figure out a place to store his old vehicle which we had just took to our property a couple of weeks before. We also had to pack up our cargo trailer and put it somewhere. Luckily two of our friends in Kamloops had room for us to store them for a bit of time. We also prepped our property by cutting down weeds around our house and shop. We moved anything that could easily catch on fire away from the structures. My vehicle was packed with the most important stuff including a go-bag. We decided we would put the dog in doggy daycare while I was at work so that we could get to her quickly if there was an evacuation.
A week or so went by and it seemed like the fire wasn't coming much closer to our place. Upon coming home from work one Friday there was a very weird looking plume of smoke coming from the West, and it looked like an area north of Cache Creek was on fire. My neighbour had come over and we watched the fire for awhile. The smoke cloud was getting bigger and bigger. My neighbour left to pack up some stuff, and I got some stuff ready just in case. I went to bed that night a bit worried. I sleep with ear plugs in, which I really need to give up.
At 6am the next morning, my neighbour was banging on my bedroom door. Apparently the night before the cops had banged on my door, but I didn't hear them. They had just came to her house to tell her we were on evacuation notification. They had said there was no answer at my door but she knew I was home. About 30 minutes later a copy came back down the back road and stopped at my back gate. I could see him coming so I went out to the gate to chat with him. He told me that we were on notification as a precaution. That was enough for me, I decided to head out to my relatives in Vernon to spend a couple of days. I grabbed my work computer on the way through Kamloops so I could work from home.
This cycle went on for the entire summer...on notification, head to Vernon, come back a couple days later. At one point my neighbours across the highway (1500ft away from us) were actually evacuated, while we were still on notification. That two lane highway road is really going to stop that fire from crossing!
By mid August, the fire was still wreaking havoc. It had been on again off again creeping towards our area. Most days were pretty smoky. One day I was at my friends in Kamloops for a get together. I had put the dog in doggy daycare for the evening and picked her up before heading home. I was getting updates from twitter that night that they were loosing the battle in an area quite north of our place. It was a very clear night, so I could see a bit of an orange glow on the way home above the wooded area that they were fighting that night. To my surprise when I got home, it was actually clear. That was the first clear night in weeks and weeks. As I drove into my neighbourhood and down the driveway, I could see spots of flames in the hill about 10km away. This was the first time I could actually see the flames and it was terrifying. I watched from my deck for about an hour and could see numerous areas that had small orange areas, and I could see the odd tree candling on the hillside.
The fire situation went on until the end of August. For a couple of weeks we had the Firefighter Camp just down the road. I may have had to stop in the store next door for cool summer treats more than usual for those two weeks! One day we had a pretty good rainfall which really helped the situation. I was never so happy to see rain. I may have shed a few tears!
Thankfully we had an uneventful Fall season, and a decent start to winter! Our furnace was causing issues around Christmas, and is thankfully pumping heat right now! We ended the Christmas season with a lovely get together with neighbours at our house. It was a good old fashion blizzard, but we still had a house full of neighbours, an amazing seafood chowder (recipe to come in the next post) and lovely conversation!
I will be starting to blog more this year. I find it a good way to relax, I just need to find more time to actually write.
I hope you all had an amazing 2017. I know that 2018 will be amazing!
Jen
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