A close call

When I finished my last post, I knew what my next post would be. We were approaching the one-year anniversary of what I think of as "liberation day" - the day when we walked our daughters out of the baby home where they had lived for three hot Russian summers and two cold Russian winters. While we were "officially" their parents on July 14, the day when their names technically became Hope and Leah, we didn't get to be with them, to assume custody, until July 29. I was planning the post in my mind. Would I put then and now pics? Compare them, and us, to now? Talk about what a year it's been?

But the year wasn't done; fate wanted to cram one more big event in.

I preface the news with this: We're OK. It could have been so much worse.

We had a fire. As in house fire. As in flames, a 3:15 a.m. evacuation, a 911 call, fire department (at one time 3 or 4 trucks), the police department, an ambulance, lookey-Lou's. Again, we're fine. There was lots of damage to the exterior back of the house, but it's liveable and...we're fine. Scared (me, mostly), but fine.

We were all asleep, when our front doorbell began ringing, ringing, ringing, followed by someone/s pounding, pounding, pounding. I threw on my glasses, raced downstairs as Brian was getting himself together and raced to the front door. I thought someone was hurt, had had some kind of accident and was coming to our house as a haven. Or, I though, maybe someone was trying to get in. But when I got to the door I heard young female voices screaming. "Your house is on fire! Your house is on fire! Wake up! Wake up!"

Hope and Leah emerged from their room, I cracked the door, heard that there was a fire in the back of our house and said "Thank you" as I shut the door and ran to the back door. I looked out the sliders and saw...flames. Orange. Brian was running down the stairs by now, I yelled that there was a fire and to call 911, and turned to the girls.

I amm so incredibly proud of our girls. So, so proud. Without question, when told to put on their shoes, they did. There was no, "Is this the right foot? I want THAT pair. Where is the red pair?" They simply put on shoes. I grabbed the dog's leash, checked on Brian, who was now on the deck with a soon-to-be-melted hose putting water on the fire, and the girls (human and canine) and I went to the neighbor's front yard and then porch.

Fast-forward through scary images forever in my mind of firetrucks, emergency lights, firefighters, the sound of a chainsaw in our backyard.

Then it was over. It was out, the firefighters wrapped it up, we said thanks to the neighbors who had come out to their porch to wait with us and keep the girls occupied, and came inside.

Fast-forward more. What we know is this: The young women who woke us up (about 14-16, I'd guess) were out (I don't know why, but I don't care. They saved us) said they smelled smoke, wondered why someone was grilling at 3 a.m., saw our back yard was alight with an orange glow, saw the fire, ran to the front.

The big question, after, "Are you OK?"? What started it?

We have no idea. We don't know. We won't know. It was the second deck fire of the firefighter's shift.

So, now we move on. The insurance guy came out and we hope to have an estimate next week. We worked on the initial clean up today (and maybe the girls played a bit and got a bit sooty, in an attempt to take a bit of fear out of the whole thing). I'm trying to not play every moment of the morning over and over and over. I'm also trying to think about what if. That's way too much right now.

We were very close to disaster.

So, I hope tomorrow to post the one-year-of-being-together story.

God, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.