The boxes are mostly unpacked and the organizing of the home is beginning to slow down. Which means I actually might have a brain that is functioning again. Then again, I have children, which is seriously hard on the brain...but I digress.
There are several things that have happened in the past couple of weeks that I am incredibly thankful for, way too many to mention in one post.
But I wanted to tell you how very grateful I am for God's protection the first night we had the New House.
As I mentioned before our household goods had to be delivered on June the 4th, but the new carpet couldn't be installed until the 5th. So we had our movers move all our stuff into the tiled areas (and in the garage) and left everything locked up in the house where it would stay until the following afternoon, when The Mister would be done with work and some friends could come over and help us move items/boxes to their proper room. That day I was able to completely unpack the kitchen, including the pantry.
The kids had been down the street at the Cousins house all day and I went over to pick them up before we left. They took a quick look at our now very full house. While The Mister and I sat with our mouths gapping open with the enormity of work that lay before us, The Boy and The Girl saw a the potential for a really good game of Hide and Seek.
As I sat on some boxes and watched The Mister continue to do some last minute honey-do's, I vaguely remember that my body was screaming at me for two different things: Either get me some caffeine or put me to bed! I also remember hearing The Girl squeal with delight at the great potential our new pantry had for Hide and Seek. Not only was it fairly large and roomy, but it had a pocket door and it's own light! With a switch! Which is so great for when you don't want to hide in the dark and you are to short to reach a string pull!
I finally decided that what my tired self needed was dinner and a Diet Dew, 'cuz we still had 3 months of living in my parent's house to pack, clean and load up. We locked up with our brand new key and went to my parent's house.
At 9:30pm I finally laid my head down because I couldn't stand myself anymore and The Mister came to me and said that he didn't really know why but he had a funny feeling he should go back to the house. I thought he was so tired that he had become delirious and told him to just lie down, but if he was going to go anyway, could he take some of my stuff over there so that I didn't have to haul it out there in the morning?
I didn't hear him come to bed. In the morning he said that everything had been OK, but he still had an unsettled feeling.
That unsettled feeling is called:Owning Two Houses. I kissed him lovingly, and sent him off to work.
I got my coffee and headed out to the house, and here is an interesting bit of La Vida Trivia, before I had kids I had virtually no sense of smell. I couldn't smell perfumes and I would pretend that I could smell the scent of flowers. Unless it was really strong (like as in rank) I couldn't smell it. But when I became pregnant my nose went into over drive. Since then I have been able to smell a variety of different smells (both good and bad). I can differentiate between flowers and perfumes, and coffee, and I was privilege to those lovely years in diapers, but I don't have the best sniffer. I have to give the milk carton to The Boy to test the milk. He's like a Bloodhound, that Boy.
All that to say, sometimes I smell things and I am not sure what they are. Sometimes I need help.
But when I walked into the house that morning I smelled smoke. A very faint, very quick whiff of smoke. I couldn't see fire, and I didn't know what it could be, so I ignored it. I thought all was well.
I puttered while I waited for the carpet layers. I couldn't do much since all the unpacking hindered on these guys getting the carpet in. I decided I would open the pantry and look at the shelves and dream of how I would organize it's vast shelving (my last pantry was a bit small.). Plus, I thought that this would be a good time to look at my Kitchen Aide mixer, since I know that it missed me for all those months. I opened the door and there it was again. Strong. The smell of smoke.
I looked up and realized that the painters had taped a brown paper bag around the light fixture to keep it clean of paint, and the light was on. Had been all night.
I quickly turned the light off and poked my finger into the bag and a pile of black ash fell to the floor. There hadn't been flames, but that bag had smoldered and burned. It was a quiet but very potential threat to our new home. There was nothing stopping that little smoldering bag from bursting into flames and burning everything we owned. All our "stuff" was nicely packed in flammable, brown, cardboard moving boxes.
I literally fell to my knees. Right there on my kitchen floor. Surrounded by boxes and waiting for carpet people, and thanked God for staying the night. For saving my house.
2 comments:
Praise God Kellie!! That is the kind of story that needs to go into your family lore of when God had his wings of protection around you. You might even want to scrapbook that ;-)
Forget scrapbooking! Stencil it on the pantry walls!
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