Thanksgiving was a little different for us this year!
Jason got up to run the Turkey Day 8K as he does every year. I stayed at the house to feed Ivy and get things ready to go to my grandmothers for lunch. Ian spent the night with my aunt and uncle so he was already in Union.
After Jason got home, we sterilized some bottles and then hit the road.
We backed out of the driveway...but before we could get to the end of our street, I made Jason pull back in the driveway and run back in to check my flat iron. My biggest fear is my house catching on fire. So, he did...and when he got back out to the car, he said, "your flat iron was off, but I unplugged it anyway."
So, we backed out of the driveway again and started down the road towards Union. Then, Jason and I couldn't remember if we had put the garage door down. So, Jason called our neighbor Will to check. Sure enough, the garage door was still up. So, instead of having to turn around and go all the way back to our house to let the door down, we asked Will to run over there and put the door down for us.
Finally, we arrived at my grandmothers. Shane blessed our meal...and as soon as he said, "Amen", Jason's cell phone rang. It was our neighbor Amy telling us our house was on fire and that smoke was coming from the gables. I will never forget the look on Jason's face when we told me our house was on fire. It was like a bad dream. Being 30 miles away knowing your house and everything in it was on fire. Awful feeling. My biggest fear was happening! Jason left immediately without lunch and my dad followed after him. I cried and my entire family cried with me. My mom made me eat something as we waited for Jason to report back to us the extent of the damage. I don't even remember what I ate. I just remember saying, "Satan is attacking us, Satan is attacking us." I started going through my morning in my head because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what could have started a fire. My first thought was, "Jason, I thought you said my flat iron was off!" However, Jason's dad was already at the house and the firemen had told him that the fire started in the kitchen. I had not lit any candles that morning and we had not cooked breakfast because Jason brought home Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast.
Finally, Jason arrived at the house and called and said that the kitchen was completely destroyed and that there was smoke damage over the entire house. The 30 minute ride back to Spartanburg seemed like it took 3 hours! When I got to the house, it was so much worse than I had envisioned in my head. The fire chief said that if the fire had burned 5 more minutes, they would not have been able to save our house. They could tell from the burn patterns, that the fire originated in the microwave area. As I mentioned, we sterilized some bottles right before we left, but the microwave had cut off. So, our guess is the microwave shorted out and caused a spark.
The ironic thing is that Jason and I spent SEVERAL hours (I am talking 6+) cleaning on Wednesday in preparation for decorating for Christmas on Friday. The house was SPOTLESS! We were supposed to be sitting by our lit Christmas tree, watching Elf, drinking hot chocolate tonight.
Here are pics from our traumatic day:
