Pink Robes & House Fires

Just kidding, this isn't our house it wasn't this bad. 

Our old farm house had the kind of heaters that were not forced air but ran along the floors attached to the walls the length of the room. In some rooms they were on all the walls in others only some. I think they had water running through them. Hopefully you get the idea anyway.

I kept my beautiful fluffy pink robe hanging in the bathroom about a foot or so above the vent, it never got hot from hanging there but one day while going to the bathroom I noticed that the bottom of my robe was turning grey. That puzzled me. I got the boys ready for school and off on the bus then went to confront my husband about the robe because I was sure he had something to do with it.

He looked at my robe, got down on his hands and knees and then looked at the vent, then he put his nose right up to the vent and sniffed. He got up and calmly said, "There is smoke coming up out of the vent."

I couldn't see or smell any smoke, I thought he was crazy. He went outside the bathroom and pulled up the carpet on the floor. Under the carpet was the removable door to the basement, just a Michigan basement but for some unknown reason the heater was down there. Then he lifted the door and flames shot up to the ceiling from down below. I shrieked and he threw the door back down, grabbed my hand and we ran outside. Stay here he said and ran off around the other side of the house. He is such a smart man, to smart sometimes. He ran to the back of the house and turned off the gas at the tank. Then he came back to me and told me what he did and that he was going to check to see if that did the trick or if we needed to call the fire department.

He went in and came back to get me. The fire died when he turned off the gas. He then called a friend's dad who worked on heaters and he said that it wasn't properly ventilated down there and we were lucky to be alive. The heater was trashed so we installed a new one up above the basement and made sure that it was properly ventilated.

I said he is to smart because I often think, that old house could have burned down if we would have just went outside and called the fire department and I would have been fine with it. Oh, but we would have missed so many adventures that I've yet to share.

I do think that we have had an angel looking out for our safety though and he was working overtime in that old house.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have you ever had a house fire? Even a small one?

Thank you for reading and have a blessed day.

Pushing the Bus

It was a typical Michigan January. The snow was deep and the wind was blowing. Like usual when that kind of weather hits the roads were getting some pretty good snow drifts.

Jim was home from work that day because of the weather but the kids still had school. The storm had stirred up really good about the middle of the day and by the time that we were expecting the school bus the roads were very nasty. Jim had gone out to use the snow blower to clean out the drive way and the drifts that had gotten quite big in front of our house. I was inside making supper so I didn't actually know any of this that had happened until all the excitement came in the door.

With all four kids now in school the youngest being in all day Kindergarten we had enjoyed our day and looked forward to their arrival from school. The bus was coming down our road towards the house but the drifts were to high and it became stuck just past the neighbor's house still a quarter mile from us. Jim noticed and stopped working in the driveway, grabbed his shovel and started walking down to the bus. He promptly started digging out the tires only to find that the bus was on a patch of ice too. He walked back up to the door and told the bus driver that he would give her a push to start rocking it back and forth a little.

You can imagine the excitement of the thirty kids on the bus all ranging in age from high school seniors to our little Kindergartner. Most were telling our sons that there was no way he would ever be able to move the bus. After just a few minutes they were on their way and the entire family was back at the house everyone talking over one another as they took off their snowsuits and boots to tell me what had happened.

"Mom did you see that Dad was awesome!" Alicia said as she burst through the door.

"No one thought he could do it! You should have seen their mouths hanging open as he pushed the school bus!" Justin added as he was unzipping his snowsuit.

"I told them my dad can do it he is stronger than he looks, he does construction for a living." Jacob proudly exclaimed as he was hanging up his little sister's snowsuit.

"Dad was strong! He pushed us out!" Alannah added as she wrapped her little cold arms around me and buried her cold nose in my neck giving me my usual after school hug.

"It was nothing we used to get stuck in the snow all the time and push the bus back when I was a kid." Jim said as he was coming in. "Now who wants mom to make us some hot chocolate?" he added.

I was glad everyone was excited and four years later, my children still talk about how their daddy was so strong that he pushed the school bus and how all the kids were amazed. They said all the kids were in awe and said "Don't mess with Mr. Howe he's strong." The kids insisted that I include this story in the blog.

Happy Father's Day to my fabulous, strong husband from all of us. We love you.

Happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there have a great day!

I Brought a Date to Our First Date

Ha! Ha! Right. No joking I really did bring a date to our first date. In my defense I was an unknowing party that it was supposed to be our first date.

So we met on Halloween and bumped into each other a few times after that because we obviously hung around the same people. Then a friend of mine invited me to her house for Thanksgiving dinner. It went something like this:

Friend, "We are having some people over for Thanksgiving, not family, just friends. Would you like to come?"

Me, "Sure, that sounds like fun who all is going to be there?" Then she lists off couples that I know but fails to mention that Jim will be there. So, I'm thinking I better bring a date so I am not the odd man out. I ask my friend that I had drove up to Michigan with from Florida to come along and be my date for Thanksgiving dinner. He was happy to oblige me.

We show up with a bottle of wine for the hostess and she gets a little flustered and asks me if I can help her in the kitchen. After taking me into the kitchen she explains that she was setting me up with Jim that I wasn't supposed to bring a date.

That would have been nice to know ahead of time. LOL Oh, well we sat down for dinner and I was seated between Jim and my date. Not really awkward at all because after all my date was really just a friend. Then after dinner my date took me home and Jim came and picked me up from home. We drove around all night talking, watched the sunrise and he took me home. (At that point we still hadn't had our first kiss.)

So, now I have a funny story to tell about how even the worst of beginnings can lead to wonderful things, 4 kids and twenty years of marriage later, I only love him more.

First Meeting

In honor of our 20th wedding anniversary in a couple days, I thought that I would share a few fun romantic stories over the next couple days.
I lived in Florida before I met my husband. So, one day I was just messing around with my friends at the beach like usual, and a guy friend of mine started talking about how he had a little girl in Michigan. I asked him why didn't he go see her since he missed her so much. He explained that he didn't have the money for the trip. I being the crazy nut that I was at that time said, I got some money let's go see her. So off to Michigan I went.

We arrived on Halloween. We pulled up at his friend's house who was expecting us so she threw a party. We walk through the door and just inside sitting on a chair was this very handsome young man with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was holding a glass and the liquid inside that glass was a florescent green. Me being a curious soul walked right up to the handsome stranger and asked him, "What is that?" He handed it to me and said "It's a green monster, try it." So I did and we chatted. I found out his name was JIM and met a lot of other people there that evening also. What I didn't know was that a year and a half latter, we would be getting married.

Still my favorite mixed drink, 21 years later is the Green Monster. :-)

First House Fire

Once back at the farm, we woke up to a house full of smoke are oldest was 4 and we had a 2 yr old at the time. We grabbed the kids put them out in the car backed it up to the end of the driveway and called 911.

My husband went back in to try and figure out what was causing all the smoke which was so thick you couldn't see but we saw no flames.

He came out as the volunteer fire trucks arrived grabbed a stick out of the yard and went right back in then came walking out as the firemen were opening the door with a t-shirt in flames at the end of the stick. Threw it down in the drive way and the firemen stomped it out.

They teased him because they went to school together (small town) and said it was the easiest fire they ever put out. Then they went through the house to make sure that was it.

What happened was the 4 yr old went down to the bathroom during the night and thought the light was to bright it was a bare bulb because I had broken the cover changing it that day so he threw dad's
t-shirt from the hamper over the light then proceeded back to bed and left the light on. Scorched the wall a little but no real damage. Crazy huh.