In short

Two Friday's ago our neighbors house started burning down at 10:30 at night. Our house is about 18 feet away. We had to evacuate (and I mean grab the baby, and shoes, and get out) our house, stand in the snow for awhile while dark smoke billowed upward, mingling with the white flakes, and eventually leave to a friends house where we could sleep safely for the night. Well, sleep.... actually not so much. Between a wired toddler and extreme worries about the state in which we would find our house the next day, very little sleep was actually had. My most favorite moment of the night: Corrina finally fell asleep, so Dave and I were lying dead still (2:15 am). I began to think about the state in which we left the house (mid Carcassone game with a new Dave's-birthday-gift expansion pack we were playing for the first time, trying to get Corrina back to sleep after a waking.. nightmare maybe... we were sitting at the table, drinking tea.... oh Sh*t (pardon my french, but feel the stress!) we left candles burning on our table!!!!) and to make a long story short (ha, not really) dave went back to our house. Thankfully he found it standing with no fire damage. The police and fire people were still working on securing our neighbors house, putting up boards, cleaning up, etc.... The police office allowed dave to go back into our house to 'close' things up for the night.
Some funny details of the story: a week or so earlier I had called the health department because of all the garbage (large and small) spilling out in every direction from our neighbors house. Apparently upon inspection the house was condemned. When I first got outside in response to our neighbors yelling "fire" I found one hysterical (intoxicated?!) person and one very calm person who proceeded to announce to me: "Oh well, the house was going to be condemned on monday anyway..." In my very unknowledgeable opinion, I think they burned the house down to get the insurance money to rebuild! And rebuild they are!
Another funny detail: after about 5 minutes of standing on the street, going over in our head which area of our house may catch fire, Dave decided to go back in to get the computer! A fire person found him and kicked him out, with computer in hand! Dave tried to lock the door, and they wouldn't let him... they made dave give them the keys and locked up for us!
The majority of the fire was coming out of the top story of the house, out the back windows.
The side of the house bears dark burn marks from the flames. They all go in one direction: away from our house! They reach up to the roof, and at least 6 feet across the back of the house. Had the wind been blowing the other direction, toward our house, well, we try not to focus on attention on that. Praise God we are safe, and by all accounts our neighbors are physically safe as well. Priase God that our house is fine! We are glad to not be making a house insurance claim at the same time we are making car insurance claims! That would just be ridiculous, maybe. Although, i would take that over civil war, so, if we put things into proper perspective, really this was nothing!
I did mean to share this little story in short... really...

This weekend Corrina and I got to accompany dave and his youth group (along with two other church youth groups) to a really neat bible camp for a tri-youth retreat! It was great fun. I loved connecting a bit more with our youth, and meeting tons of other young people as well! Corrina got so much attention and exercise, and I got to relax and not cook!
Now we are home, back in the swing of things, and I have my last exam for the semester tomorrow night. I hope that things get 'boring' again... I could use some normal!