The Day Our House Burned Down and What Happened After (Part 1)

June 15, 2012. That was the day. Well, actually, that was the morning. 2:30am, to be exact. That was when Shawn and I were awakened by the shrill, piercing screech of the smoke alarms in our home.

The weekend before had been our state's homeschooling convention; we try to use that weekend as a getaway weekend. We leave the kids with grandparents and have a date weekend. We are overloaded with information, participate in fabulous seminars for 3 days, listen to engaging speakers and just generally re-group. I LOVE our HS convention!! This particular weekend, I had gone to every one of Crystal Paine's seminars (she's the Money Saving Mom if you didn't know!), bought our curriculum for the next year and had a nice time with friends and my hubby.

The night before, Thursday evening, I had auditioned for our church's Praise and Worship team. I was nervous, to be sure. I mean, I did go to college for Music Education with a vocal concentration, so I can sing. I wanted to be on the P&W team for a long time, I just hadn't had a chance to audition. When I came home from the practice knowing I was accepted, I was so excited!

That night, my world was turned upside down.

The smoke alarms started going off, waking me up first. Shawn woke up soon after, and we both knew something was wrong. We stumbled around the smoke-filled house, trying to find a fire. We couldn't. There were no flames, only smoke, and lots of it. I felt the Lord speaking to me at that moment: "Get the kids. Get out of the house." Yes sir! I grabbed Elijah (who was 1 and a half at the time, still in diapers, a crib, and in his own room), and Shawn grabbed Noah and Aaron (7 and 3 at the time, and together in the same room), we got in the car and pulled it out of the garage. I then called 911 from my cell phone.

Because of where we live, just on the edge of one city, (and because I was using my cell phone) the 911 call was answered by the neighboring city, and had to be transferred. As I was calling, my sweet husband decided to go back in the house to look for the fire some more. I was telling the dispatcher we have a fire, don't know where it is, but there's smoke everywhere, etc., and then Shawn comes running back out saying "I found it! I found it! It's Ok!". When I relayed that to the dispatcher, she said that they still had to send someone out, and I was fine with that. I hung up the phone, we turned around to look at the house, and we literally saw it go:

Come back tomorrow for the next installment!