Burnin' Down the House

Yesterday morning I finally succumbed to my alarm.

Nursed my daughter in bed.

Got in the shower.

Made Matt and me some eggs for breakfast. (This was around 8:30-ish am.)

Sat and ate said eggs and sipped on some coffee.

** Stick with me. I promise this isn't just a super boring, unnecessary account of my Sunday. There's a wild story here. ** 

Continued to get dressed and ready for church.


Got the children dressed and ready for church.

Dashed out the door in a frenzy to head to church. Had to snap a pic of the kids first. (This was about 10:20-ish. Church starts at 10:30. We live about 20 minutes away. Yes. We were late.)

Church was great.

Worship was fantastic, as usual.

Didn't hear much (or any) of the sermon because I was in the cry room with my adorable, little scream-talker and was catching up with my other mommy-friends.

Left church. (About 12:40)

Headed to meet up with my parents for lunch.

Enjoyed a wild lunch with an excited little boy and tons of Valentine's treats from Grandmommy and PapaJoe. (We were there for awhile.)

Drove back home. (This took about 45 minutes, but I'm only guessing that we got back home around 3-3:30ish.) 

Immediately got into comfier clothes.

Got in the bed with Lydia, hoping she'd fall back asleep. Girl was not having a moment of that business.

After being home for close to 15 minutes, Matt stuck his head in the room and told me that he'd just turned OFF one of the gas stove burners. 

What?

WHAT?!?!?!?!

I made breakfast at 8:30 that morning.

It was currently close to 4:00 or something like that. I don't even know but ohmygosh that's like 7 hours.

SEVEN hours!

It is quite the understatement to say that I spent the rest of the day thanking Jesus for His protection over us.

Of course, I'm sure stuff like this happens to people all the time. Gosh, I can't even tell you how many times I accidentally leave my hair straightener on. But this is soooooo different. I mean, like...an open flame. And yes, we were gone from the house for so many of those hours, but do you have any clue how many times one of us or our little boy walked/rushed past that stove in the hour and a half before leaving the house? Back and forth. Back and forth.  How did one of us not notice it?  

To make matters worse and quite a bit more terrifying...let me back up to the day before.

Matt was gone most of the day on campus and I was home alone with the kids. It was a perfect-weather day. Josiah suggested a picnic in the park. (I have the best kid ever.) After throwing together a little basket of some snacks and a few toys to occupy the baby, we walked over to the park behind our house and set up camp under a shady tree, right by the beautiful, pristine water. (JK. I live in Houston, which is called the Bayou City. That water is 12 levels of nasty. And there was a snake.)

Anyway, we were having quite a lovely time together, doing our best to entertain the many other people enjoying the beautiful weather (because a circus is always entertaining it's spectators) when we smelled the unmistakable smell of smoke. Josiah insisted someone was grilling like Daddy, but as I looked around to survey the area, I noticed the house across the street from ours had smoke pouring out of it. Tons of smoke. It quickly filled the park and we packed up as quickly as possible.

See all the smoke on the right? Our house is on the left side of the street...and one house over.

Before we gathered everything and got our shoes back on, the streets were already lined with firetrucks and ambulances and police cars. We normally would've had to walk right past the house to get home, but we had to go around the block and come up the street from the other direction.

View from our driveway. See the firemen on the roof of the blue house? I was trying to be inconspicuous so I didn't get a better shot.

So. many. firetrucks.

And firemen.

And onlookers. Because, of course.

It wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been, but it was bad. They were there for a really long time until things seemed to calm down. Thankfully, it seems like no one got hurt, but you can tell from the outside of the house that there was a fire.

I still have no idea what caused the fire. But I'm becoming convinced that maybe it was a very tired, very distracted mother of two young children in a hurry to make it to the church-house on time who accidentally left the gas stove burner on...for SEVEN HOURS!

Someone get that woman some more coffee. And a vacation.