Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Practice Your Fire Drills

The past few days have found us rushing around, packing to go on a short vacation to Park Rapids. Monday morning, as I was sliding a pan of bars into the oven, I heard a clunk. It sounded like something dropped onto the bottom of the oven, but I couldn't find anything. So I dismissed it and walked away to help Ellie out with a sliver. Carlie shouted that the stove was on fire! When I checked, I found the oven full of flames. Chaos ensued. I had to put the fire out with the extinguisher. I had told the kids to get out of the house, which resulted in a lot of yelling, crying, and screaming -mostly from the kids. :) The story is long but the end result is that we are all fine.



The Negatives-

*Fire...enough said
*The Clean-up...who knew that using an extinguisher for 10 seconds would make a mess over the entire main level? Literally, the stuff even got inside of the kitchen cabinets.
*Scared Children...a couple of years ago our neighbors had a house fire which took their entire home and garage.
*Ruined Pan...a new Pampered Chef stone pan (which is a replacement for one that broke) is destroyed.
*Fire Plan...didn't work as smoothly as we have practiced and talked about. Glory didn't exit the house with the kids, but instead took the opportunity to play in the bathroom sink.

The Positives-

*Emergency Workers...responded very well and were very nice. This included 2 police cars and a large, red fire engine. Doesn't hurt that one firefighter could have had his own calendar :)
*Emergency Practice...we have not really had many emergencies, and I think this was a real eye opener for all of us.
*Some Kids...did an awesome job in the situation. Ellie was so proud of herself for listening and not going down to her room to rescue her "snugglers" (blankies), and her "animals" (stuffed).
*Faith Booster...the kids gave all credit for our safety to God.

The Funnies-

*Caleb...coming back in to rescue Glory, but saw all of the smoke and began to scream.
*Micah....jumping into his little swimming pool, fully clothed, while I was sorting things out with the emergency workers.

1 comments:

Hilary said...

WOW...glad to hear everyone is okay.