A Smokin' Situation!

Yes, you heard right - we had a house fire!  We are admittedly waaaaay behind on blog posts, sad to say.  And this post about the fire is not chronological to what is to come.  Soooo, bear with us.  Too many of you have been pressuring us, and you know who you are =), to get these pics out.  Two posts to follow quickly.  I know, I know - you don't believe me.  Well, it really is true.  I'll prove it soon! =)  

On a more serious note, we are ever grateful to our Heavenly Father for His protection of our home and family! NO ON WAS INJURED!  It could have been sooo much worse.  I need to get better adjectives.  It's convicting as a home school mom, really.  Oops, I just revealed who the author of this is.  This post is getting more and more sad as it continues.  Aheem, o.k., let's move on.  Do tell?  You say, well, here it goes...

We were all home but Nick at the time of the fire.  As you can tell from the melted soffet (aren't y'all impressed I know the right term??!!!) the flames did reach 11 - 12 feet!  When we got outside and saw the entire fence and ground aflame Gray was the man and hollered for me to get the fire extinguisher.  Madelyn was all over it and called 911.  Abigail was gleefully singing in her bedroom upstairs with the door closed doing who knows what with not a clue that every time we came back in to scream at her that we were screaming at her. =)  Then she heard the fire alarm, opened the door and white smoke filled her room.  Then she joined the "party"!  After Gray emptied the extinguisher I got two large boxes of baking soda and we emptied those.  Meanwhile Madelyn was trying to hook up a busted garden hose to no avail so Gray ran back and forth filling up a bin with water and I helped him douse the fire with that. 

At this point the neighbors were gathering to see just how well done we like our burgers and was it really necessary to show off grilling with the flames so high (our one neighbor actually thought we were grilling from the view of his window at one point!).  So, they finished off the top part of the flames with their hose.  Wa-lah!  A smokin' situation!

Now, this is where the 4 (or 5) fire trucks, 1 fire chief truck, and a police truck showed up.

At this point they asked us to all evacuate the house for fear of flames in the attic (where that corner soffet melted).  Thank the Lord there was only a smoke filled attic and a smoke filled upstairs, that also eventually came downstairs.  We're down to only one pet, Razberry Abigail's polish rabbit.  He's safely in Abigail's arms.  We didn't take time to get the cage. 

We had such sweet neighbors and friends that were so helpful with everything.  The firemen and police were extremely professional and organized.  We really couldn't be anymore grateful and thankful to the Lord.  

Just pray for us as we begin the process of the smoke cleaning folks removing all clothe items to treat and wiping down everything else.  Also, the house repair.

Thanks for all your prayers, love, and help everyone! The Lord really has given us peace & I'm sure we'll need grace too!