SCREEEEeeeEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeeEECH!

That's what a fire alarm sounds like going off at 5a.m. in your house on a Sunday morning. Most of you have probably heard about the little fire we had downstairs a couple of weeks ago. An aquarium light had a short in it and caught on fire. When the smoke alarms went off it was in flames. I got up first and went in to see what was going on. Talk about a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. I saw the aquarium light was on fire (thought it was a heater at the time) and yelled at Aaron to get the fire extinguisher. We had never had a fire extinguisher in the house until about a month ago, when the home study safety inspection for the adoption required us to get one. So thank goodness for bureaucracy for once! I grabbed Maddy and a blanket and my phone and went outside on the front steps while Aaron put out the fire. I was just thinking that I should probably go ahead and call 911. I called down to Aaron and he said, "It's out!" He had to use the entire 5# fire extinguisher but it took care of the problem. He got the light and brought it outside. The smoke was AWFUL! It was 48 degrees outside because we'd had a cold front come through that weekend. Despite the chill we stayed outside for quite a while letting the smoke clear out. Thankfully because of how the house is built we didn't really get smoke or ash or anything in the bedrooms. I put Maddy back to bed and Aaron and I started cleaning up the aquarium and downstairs room. We worked for about 3 hours and then got ready to go to church. Went upstairs real quick before leaving and realized that the chemical from the fire extinguisher, ash, dust, and whatever had coated everything upstairs as well. So we spent all day Sunday wiping everything down. You wouldn't think that a 5 minute fire could make that big of a mess. We are still trying to finish up the cleaning downstairs. One thing that happened that was super funny was when Aaron got up and ran upstairs to get the extinguisher, he had a pillow on top of him I guess and I later found it upstairs in the play room/office area. Guess he was moving so fast it kind of just stayed on him for a while like you see cardboard on trash sticking on a car's grill sometimes on the highway til it slows down or changes directions. Here are few pictures of the aftermath, just to show you what a crazy mess everything was:

Did it just snow if here?

Black on the wall and ceiling above the aquarium. Some of it was burnt cobwebs from my poor housekeeping, but some was actually the paint. Need to get some magic eraser cloths and see if I can clean it up enough not to have to repaint that wall.

We had one fish in the tank and amazingly he survived all this and a 24 hour stay in a small plastic bowl until we found a new home for him with a prof at DBU. Fish is still alive and doing well.

Exactly  how we felt after doing all the clean up!