House Fire

Just a quick little post to say that we had a fire in our house tonight!! I guess there is a first for everything in a new home, including fire. I decided to make Shaelyn some mac 'n cheese for dinner tonight, and put a pot on the stove to boil. Since Shaelyn is still working on getting her top teeth to come all the way through (plus, I've seen 3 more teeth trying to make an appearance), she's really fussy in the evening and wants to be held all the time. Point being, I didn't have any extra hands to help me out. Anyway, I put the pot on the back right burner since the front right burner still had a pot holder on it from getting cookies out of the oven last night. I didn't want to have to move the pot holder and the cookie sheet, so I just put the pot on the back burner and turned the burner on high. Unfortunately, I've always been a little dyslexic when it comes to turning on the correct burner, so of course I turned on the front right burner, not the back. After turning on the burner, Shaelyn and I went back into the living room to watch t.v. Suddenly, I heard crackling and looked over to see FLAMES - a foot high - coming off the stove. Weird that I didn't see or smell smoke first, but whatever. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen to find the pot holder on fire. I immediately turned the front burner off and panicked about whether to throw water on the fire. Even though I knew it wasn't a grease fire per say, it was a fire on the stove that has grease all over it. I didn't even know where the baking soda was. Shaelyn was crying, I was panicking, and all of the sudden the smoke detector did finally go off. At least I know it works - it is LOUD! I made a decision to throw water on the flames - right decision. The flames went out immediately. But then more smoke filled the air from the fire being put out. And did I mention that the smoke detector was loud?! Michael wasn't home from work yet, and I didn't know how I was going to be able to turn off the smoke detector since it's on our nine foot ceiling. I just knew I had to get the smoke out of the room. So I opened all the windows (while Shaelyn is screaming away because she's scared and I'm not holding her) and the smoke detector finally turned off. Drama over. But the house smelled like smoke for another 2 hours. And I was terrified the entire time I cooked Shaelyn her mac 'n cheese. Needless to say, Michael and I have an appointment at Lowe's tomorrow morning to purchase a fire extinguisher or two.

So if you don't have a fire extinguisher in your house, come meet us at Lowe's tomorrow so you can be prepared too. They have an all purpose extinguisher for $9.98 - you can stock up!