Hugs from our Guardian Angel

It's been a week since I've posted! I am truly sorry to any of you who have looked up my site since I've now been added to the Catholic Mothers Blog reel. As this is my project during nap times of two children, I normally get a few posts within a week... however, this week kicked off with a BANG, literally!

If any of you are from MN, or are Vikings fans, you'd know that this past Sunday was NFC championship game where the winner would determine who would head to the Super Bowl... this means nothing to a southern belle who was secretly rooting for the Saints (because, being Catholic, who else could I cheer for? I mean seriously...) Anyway, due to this big game, I had decided to cancel the youth group for our parish; normally I do not do cancel any youth event due to a silly sporting game, however, I did know that most of our city was shut down due to this event specifically.

This being said, my hubby and I decided to invite some of our friends over to "watch" the game, but really just enjoy each other's company. "Uncle" Texas, soon-to-be "Auntie" Texas, and "Auntie" WinWee came to play with Bumble Bee (as seen above) and my daughter just loved the attention! She even showed off some of her dance moves! Granted, at this stage in life, her moves consist of beating the air with her elbow (kinda like flapping a chicken wing), and stomping her feet to whatever beat she can make up as she tries to circle around our room. But even so, it was mucho cute!

And then, it happened. I told my hubby to leave the kitchen to go and call his sister; I knew I could watch the stove top with the pot boiling something inside... it's not like he had anything in it, right?

WRONG! After what seemed like half a minute, there was steamy stuff coming off the pot, I looked over to see a SPARK! Thinking that it must just be boiling water, I figured I needed to lift up the lid and let the steam settle down before a bigger mess happened. Oh Sweet Virgin Mary, I did pray. As fire lept out of the pot... at this point, what is a gal to do, but scream for her hubby...LOUDLY!

And there, like a super hero... Hubby came flying into the kitchen for the rescue! With his quick thinking, he knew it was not water, but oil in the firey pot. Therefore, as EVERYONE should know: YOU DO NOT USE WATER TO PUT OUT A GREASE FIRE. EVER!!! Please note the severity of this, duely noted on youtube. Bit of a hardcore Public Service Announcement, however that demo kitchen is about the same size as ours at home.

So back to the story... SuperHubby grabbed the pot, even though he probably shouldn't have... to keep the overhead cupboards from starting ablaze (side note, our fire was much bigger than the one on the youtube video, about 4 feet high at this point). Unfortunately, the pot was so hot that Super Hubby dropped it. Both SuperHubby and Auntie WinWee were on the wrong side of the kitchen, split in half by the firey pot. He lept like an elk over the fire, ran and grabbed our son T-the Tiger, brought him to the entry way (where Uncle and Auntie Texas and Auntie WinWee took our children to safety away from the fire), and SuperHubby started beating the fire with one of our pink towels. Now, please know that our Baking Soda was in one of the cupboards right behind the dropped pot! Despite no t having access to the baking soda, he was able to beat the fire out.

Now where was I during this time, you might ask? I first prayed that my guardian angel would help my hubby and Auntie WinWee get out of the firey area alive. Which as the picture shows, my angel seemed to hold the fire with a hug from his wings. As soon as they had both Olympic-sized jumped over the fire of doom. I was calling 911 as soon as my hubby would hand over the phone (SuperHubby didn't think we needed 911, and he was so composed that we all thought "it wasn't a big deal" as he was stating holding the pot of burning hell, you know... have a 4 foot fire in our midst...yeah right!). Then I was soon yelling at the poor operator who wasn't listening to me- did she speak emergency english??, and running down our apartment hallway. In the hallway, I discovered at this time, some less-than-smart person took the hammer for the fire extinguisher container (what a funny jokester, may he rot in the firey kitchens of below), and so I decided my palm would be the best place to ninja chop the glass in order to obtain the fire extinguisher (thank goodness for all those games of Ninja Ah at youth group and YMCA day camp days!). However, by the time I had handed off the extinguisher to Uncle Texas to bring to SuperHubby, my man had already taken out the fire. Please note that he saved more than just our apartment, he saved the lives of many neighbors; since to our surprise NO ONE knew about the fire, since our apartment smoke detectors are not linked to each other... allowing us to only knowthat a fire is in our building after it penitrates into our own apartment and thus setting off our own smoke detectors. AWESOME... (side note, we are currently looking for new housing options for the near future).

Shortly soon after (and a little too late), the police, fire fighters, and ambulance came. As SuperHubby was badly burnt on his right hand, I brought appropriate people into the apartment to show them the damage, and really to grab my babies diaper bag and coats. One fire fighter even said under his breath that it was a miracle that this was the extent of the damage and that SuperHubby was able to contain the flames himself. Yea...that's my huband. As noted in pictures above, the grease was only a half an inch from the electrical line beneath our oven. It was a miracle that all of the grease that was all over the kitchen had not caught flame as well.

We found out that I need to rush SuperHubby to the emergency room to see how badly burnt his hand was; myself and my ninja chopped hand had only a small flesh wound and a little black and blue edging (from how strong I am!). Turns out, he had deep 2nd degree burns and possibly a little 3rd degree burn. Throughout his pain, he inspired me due to his reactions to the pain as he kept offering up all the pain for someone else's conversion. (SuperHubby's hand a day later, at doctor's office... he suggested I post this... yuckie!)

Thankfully, our friends watched our children nearby so that they would not become restless in the hospital. And as soon as I sent word to Fargo, Momma Allex was rushing her way down to help us through this tough time. She spent 3 nights with us, helping me with the babies, and allowing me to help SuperHubby since he was right hand dominant impaired. So Wednesday morning, I made the second hardest decision in my life (the first was to NOT receive any medication through child-pushing process of labor)... and I put my trust in my amazing in-laws to watch my two precious angels while I help my SuperHubby the next few days recover with hydrotherapy and wound cleansing at the hospital. The other major blessing, we've received is the amazing generousity of kindess from parishoners who have offered up prayers for SuperHubby's recovery as well as AMAZING meals that SuperHubby and myself get to indulge ourselves with as we have no use of our stove for a little while, at least until our land lady comes back from her vacation. So I guess, that's where I've been the past week, instead of blogging, I've been mothering my hurt SuperHero...