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January 18, 2006

Thank God

Yesterday was a day have hallelujahs.

I woke up yesterday around 7am, got up to check my email, and there was an email from my brother in law to an article about a fire in Pinebrook in Edwardsville that destroyed an unoccupied house. Imediately, I'm like, OMG. Our house is unoccupied. Our house is in Pinebrook. After some googling I discovered that it was actually not our house, but the house next door. Good gracious. I later found out, after calling my sister's mother-in-law frantically, that her father-in-law had gone up there at the height of the blaze at 2:30am, and called my parents at 3am St. Louis time (which is 11pm Hawaii time).

Luckily, by some miracle,even though the fire was "Big. Massive. Huge." and took 2 hours to control and another 2 to put out and the fact that our neighborhood is such a FOREST, somehow the fire was contained and our house, unharmed. There's apparently some minor roof damage, and a window facing the house that burned is cracked, but that's IT. We have a house. Hallelujah.

After the shock, which still isn't gone, we started thinking about the stress we missed by not being there. We wouldn't have known everything would be ok. We probably would have gathered the cats, packed some bags and stood in the street all morning praying that our house didn't catch.

Thank God that we have friends and neighbors and family-by-proxy who went by and took photos and kept us posted enough that we're just thankful we have a house and thankful we weren't there to be traumatized.

In the morning yesterday, we finally partook of the $27 breakfast buffet. Well, I did. I have a thing about breakfast - good breakfast. I love it! Cameron and Mom humored me, but got breakfasts that cost a bit ledd than mine. But it was worth it! After that we planned to go to the beach, but decided to stay in and look at the beach. After my dad finished his conference meetings, we all headed up to Lahaina town, the former capital of the islands. It's a great, neat old town, with a ton of shops and restaurants, and a great view. Here's my dad and us girls in front of the world's most gigantic banyon tree - well, part of it - it takes up a city block.

After eating at Bubba Gump's, which I'd successfully avoided up until then but have now been won over, we headed back. About 10 minutes into the 45 minutes drive, Cameron realized that his wallet was gone. We went back to Bubba Gump's, to no avail. We drove by the parking lot where we'd parked, to no avail. We drove home, thinking about how he was going to get on the 3 remaining plane rides without ID...

As we were putting the key in the door, ready for our mission of credit card replacement and logistic discovery, he got a call. A man had found his wallet on the ground and taken it back to his hotel, where they used his license to call directory assistance and get his roomate in Belleville, who gave them his cell number and mine. Hallelujah #2.

And for that, for it all, we had some wine.

Posted by nikl at January 18, 2006 11:44 AM

Comments

you all had quite a day, alright. it's nice to be reminded that there are honest and helpful people in the world. some days you wonder. but yesterday was truly a day of blessings.

Posted by: kira at January 18, 2006 10:53 PM

Two things....
1.) Amen to your house NOT being burned down..but curious...was there anyone living in the house that DID burn down?

2.) To the man that found the wallet and returned it....GOD BLESS THAT HUMAN BEING!!!! There are like 8 people on the planet that do stuff like that anymore. I hope he WINS the lottery or gets a promotion or something!

I'm glad you're all safe and having fun. I also love Cameron's little slipper socks! Yeah!!!
Jeff

Posted by: Jeff W at January 19, 2006 11:40 AM

No, there was no one living in the house that burned down. They were selling, and had moved out that day...

And it's all about golf socks.

Posted by: nikl at January 21, 2006 12:00 AM

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