i learned how to use a fire extinguisher today!!

everything happened so quickly, i hardly knew what was going on.  i was going to make some vegetable broth so i put a stock pot in the back burner and turned the burner on.  turns out i turned on the front burner.

i went back to the table to give connor a bit of food and suddenly i heard a pop, pop, pop.  i turned around and there was a fire on the front burner!!  a FIRE!  i didn't even see it before but a plastic cover for the microwave was on the front burner and now it was on fire!  it wasn't just a little fire either, the flames were reaching all the way up to the microwave and totally encompassing the large burner.

i ran over to try and put it out.  i almost grabbed the stock pot of water but i got near the flames and it was so hot already that i couldn't reach behind it.  then i got concerned about grease fires.  embarrassing fact:  my burners have been smoking a lot lately because i really need to clean out the little burner do-hickies so i was afraid that there was a lot of grease under there and if i threw water on it, the fire would spread.

so then i ran to the front room to the utility closet and got out our fire extinguisher  given to us by mason's mom as a house warming gift when we moved up to wellington.  (thanks judy!)  i ripped open the box and ran back into the kitchen.

by that time, andrew had noticed the fire and let's just say he was concerned and in true andrew form, was firing off questions quicker than i could even register tham.

"what are you going to do with that mom?  why is the stove on fire?  what did you do?  why did you light a fire?"

i didn't even know how to use a fire extinguisher, i've never used one before, but i remembered something about pulling out the pin.  i really have no idea how i knew about that but i guess it proves that if you learn something once, it will come back to you when you need it.

thankfully it worked the first try (i can so see myself standing by my burned down house still trying to get the dang fire extinguisher to work!).  a couple shots later and the fire was out!  thank goodness!

connor was laughing, he thought the whole thing was hilarious, and andrew was freaking out because, by then, every every smoke alarm in the house was going off.   he really hates the smoke alarms and who can blame him.  they go off more than i care to admit because of my dirty stove.  i think i'd better just bite the bullet and clean it and/or buy a smooth top stove.  we didn't have these issues in the last house, we had others of course, but at least we weren't battling the smoke alarms.

i ran around the house opening up every window and door with andrew on my hip clinging so tight i could hardly breathe.  all he kept saying was, "i'm afraid, i'm afraid."

it was mind boggling with all the noise.  every smoke alarm is on it's own frequency and timing so the chorus of all of them together was, well, alarming.   i'm sure the whole neighborhood could hear.  dogs were barking because of all the commotion.  so embarrassing!

somewhere in there i had called mason.  i'm not really even sure why because by the time he got here i had all the smoke alarms off and we were starting to calm down.  i think i was just in shock and didn't know what else to do.  he came in the front door and andrew said, "look at the BIG mess mommy made."  mason surveyed the damage and said, "you could have used water.  there wasn't enough grease for a grease fire." 

ok.  so i guess i didn't need to learn to use a fire extinguisher today afterall...


this actually happened on friday but i didn't get the pics uploaded until today.  :)