Happy December Everyone!

I know this is a little late in coming, but I have been down and out with some sort of flu bug.  I finally made it back to my desk this morning and realized we are a week into December already.  Gees, where does the time go to?  I wish it was like when I was a kid.  Time drug on forever.  It took an eternity to go from one Christmas to the next and the excitement was almost more than I could bear.

But now, each day flies by at warp speed and days blend into weeks and months in what seems like a nano second.  I always try to remind myself to slow down at this hectic time of year and appreciate what is around me, here in this wonderful mountain hamlet we call "The Hill".

I like to take an afternoon and do some Christmas shopping down in the village, stopping at one of the local restaurants for a cup of tea and dessert. I enjoy looking at all the decorations and chatting with all the merchants.  I try to do this with my daughter as a Christmas tradition.   Soon she will be grown and gone and these little traditions will be just distant memories.  I hope my two youngest children, who have spent their childhoods here in Pine Cove, appreciate how special it is and how lucky they have been to have been raised in this wonderful community and I look forward to sharing it all with my 4 grandchildren as well.

 December is such a wonderful month here on the mountain.  Winter is just about here, everyone seems to be in a good mood and you can feel the mountain magic in the crisp, cold air.  I enjoy all the beautiful decorations and the spirit of love that abounds this time of year. The smell of woodsmoke fills the cold night air and blends with the fragrance of pine and cedar.  My sister once told me that Idyllwild and Pine Cove smell like Christmas.  We couldn't agree more and we realize that we are truly blessed and incredibly lucky to be living  here in Pine Cove.

 I hope that at this time of year and all year through, we can all be neighbors and help each other when the need arises.  Tomorrow I will be attending the MEMSCOMM meeting and one of the topics we will be discussing is what buildings would be suitable to be used as an Emergency Operations Center should the need arise.  But we need to remember that as residents in a rural area, we should all be preparing to fend for ourselves during an emergency and know which neighbors we need to check on.

Over the next several months, I will be making some posts about what to do or where to go should a disaster befall us.  Having the right information and supplies will help each person to get by if we are isolated during an emergency and have to fend for ourselves.  The chances we will have to do that are pretty high.  Should a major disaster strike, emergency services will most likely be helping the areas that have much larger populations and we will be left to manage things pretty much on our own.  Planning and preparing for this now, will save time and confusion later.  After a disaster strikes, things will be hectic and we will all need to pull together and work together as a team if we are to survive.

I look forward to providing more information to everyone in Pine Cove and in the meanwhile, there is a lot of information here on the blog in the side columns.  Now is the time to familiarize yourself with some of these agencies and how to prepare yourself, your home and your family for an emergency.