Mish-Mash

Well, that's just weird. As recommended on Tristi Pinkston's blog (http://tristipinkston.blogspot.com/), I took the sandwich quiz. It turns out I'm a ham sandwich. What's freakish is that it's actually pretty much right on for me. Very strange.

You Are a Ham Sandwich

You are quiet, understated, and a great comfort to all of your friends.Over time, you have proven yourself as loyal and steadfast.And you are by no means boring. You do well in any situation - from fancy to laid back. Your best friend: The Turkey Sandwich Your mortal enemy: The Grilled Cheese Sandwich

http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca

In other news, the anniversary was wonderful. We stayed in the Carribbean Sea Cave at the Logan Anniversary Inn. We both fell in love with the room and decided we wanted a boat bed and a watefall jacuzzi tub. Here's a few pictures from the room:

This is on the ceiling. Amazing, isn't it?

That's the door to the right and the bedframe center and left. Check out the artwork!

Here's the boat bed. Cool, eh?

And here's the happy couple. There wasn't anybody around to take the picture, so I did it myself. Not bad for a first try, if I do say so myself.

The fourth of July was a little anticlimactic after last year's fire. Not that I'm complaining! It was just strange. Every so often I'd look at the clock and think "The fire alarm went off about this time last year" or "The fire engines showed up about now".

I know I've mentioned the fire before, but for those of you who don't know the details, here's the short version: the boys decided they hadn't had enough fireworks last year and snuck a box of matches up to their room. Where they got them from, I don't know, as I thought I had all the matches locked away. Regardless, they found them and started their own miniature fires in the carpet, then would blow them out before it got out of hand.

Evidently that got boring, because next they set the curtains on fire. Unfortunately for them, the curtains were a basic cotton cloth went "whoosh" in a heartbeat.

About the time they started to scream, the smoke detector went off. I ran upstairs, already seeing the orange glow from under the door. I threw it open, yanked them out, ran downstairs, grabbed the phone, dialed 911 while I ran outside for the hose, talked to the dispatcher and got the hose unscrewed about the same time. I tossed the phone, ran back in the house with the hose stretched up the stairs. It just barely reached to put me in the doorway of their room. I yelled for my mom to turn on the water, several times, and finally it came on. I squirted it across the room and had the fire out within three minutes of the time I found it.

My kids were understandably a little freaked out, but were more worried about their new stuffed animals getting burned up than anything. I don't think it really hit them how serious it was until I went away in the ambulance. I had a little bit of smoke inhallation and the EMTs wanted to make sure it hadn't gotten in my lungs. I was fine, but as I left, the neighbors later told me that the kids started sobbing.

It was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. My heart still races when I remember the shock of seeing the orange glow from under the door, the smoke detector screaming with the kids.

I'll never look at Independence Day the same again. For me, it has become something personal. Not to minimize the freedoms our country has fought so dilligently for, but that day has for me also become a day of fighting for my family, of freeing my children from the harm they themselves had created. It was a day of lessons learned and of bonding with my boys in a way we hadn't before. The finally knew they were staying. They did about the worst they could do, and still we kept them. We didn't send them away like they'd always feared. No, we not only kept them, we loved them and taught them about choice and accountability and repentance.

Through the fire, their hearts finally found a home.