Life's Scary Moments Put Things Into Perspective

A fire can really put things into perspective. I've been trying to write this blog post for a week now. Last Sunday we had a fire at my house. Thankfully no one was hurt. 

A stranger I am forever indebted to woke my husband and I up at 4am, banging on the door and ringing the doorbell. I am one of those people that wakes up easily but takes for ever to actually WAKE up, my husband can sleep through anything but as soon as he wakes up he is all the way up. I stumbled to the door after smacking my husband saying get up someones at the door and don't seem to realize that its really bright inside. I yank open the door and right as she says "YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE," my brain starts working and I realize its a bright and orange glow, like a bonfire only magnified by 100. I turned around and saw the fire was outside, by this point my husband was awake and running down the stairs. I grabbed my phone and called 911, not realizing the wonderful stranger already had. I grabbed my car keys and my son whose room was right next to the fire and threw him in the car, I ran back inside for the baby, her carseat and the diaper bag (which lives in the carseat if the baby isn't in her carseat) and put them in the car, then I loaded all the dogs up.

While loading the dogs up the cavalry arrived - 5 fire trucks, an aid car and another Fireman (I think he might have been the chief but not sure, I see him around he drives the East-Pierce Fire SUV) came racing in, lights and sirens going.

My husband during all of this was attacking our deck, which was burning, with the hose in effort to save the house (it worked, even a fire fighter said if he hadn't had done what he did, while stupid, it was worth it - my husband saved our house). Our woodshed was a total loss, the plastic gutter on our shop melted, the back wall of the shop is covered in soot, the trees next to our wood shed had to be cut down do to fire damage and the whole edge of the deck is burnt. We lost a couple shovels and axes. My sons outer pane of his window cracked (intense heat + cold water).

The fire was caused by a loose ember from smoking fish. What we think happened was, when my husband was finishing wetting down his embers from smoking the fish, the water spray kicked an ember over into the woodshed and caught the big pile of VERY dry branches. 

Everything literally happened in less than 10 min. The stranger woke us up at 4:06am (I'm weird I know, I notice the time but my brain doesn't click that the orange is FIRE), the cavalry arrived at 4:09 and our family (including the dogs) was out of danger by 4:11. Thankfully we were all ok and still have our home.

The fire was out and we were allowed back inside before 5am. It was truly the scariest thing I have ever lived through. I have had my son go missing (and be found), been in a horrible accident, lost too many friends and family, I've even had a personally horrifying thing happen to me. Nothing was as scary as the fire and how close it came to my son and my family. 

I didn't want to let my babies or my husband out of my site all day. I had to, nap time etc came around and I was trying to keep a sense of normallacy for the babies and the dogs. 

All the stress came crashing down on me though and the kiddos and I escaped to the inlaws for a week while my poor husband took care of the dogs & worked too many hours. 

I have contemplated many things over the past week and the fire really put things into perspective, things I thought mattered really don't matter, and things I thought I didn't matter truly do.

We have spent the week doing a little more snuggling and a lot less TV watching, and now agree that family  time is better spent enjoying each other than things. We didn't think we watched too much tv or enjoyed our things too much but we realized thats not how we want to remember family time. We want to remember it enjoying each other and the things we love to do together - camping, the outdoors and just being together! We thought about what we want our memories to be and they don't include the tv or other stupid little things.

I will always be forever grateful for the stranger passing by and East Pierce Fire & Rescue.