Howdy,

I'm at the hotel's "business center" so I can at least keep an eye on you guys if only briefly ;)

Thanks so much for all the prayers and such for us - we really appreciate it! Things could have been so much worse - God is good. My daughter Mahala was woken by the light from the fire, and came and woke me up. We immediately woke everyone else (it was about 3:30 a.m.), they followed the drill, went right downstairs and out the front door away from the fire, so we were all out in a little over a minute. The house is stone (the garage was wood frame), and that plus the fire door and the fire-retardant wall board really saved the house. Had it been a frame house, we probably wouldn't have made it out.

Our garage with both vehicles, bikes, Christmas decorations, tools, freezers, etc. is all toast. The Christmas decorations will be the hardest - a lot were handmade or special gifts. But we have good memories of those My nice huge kitchen is an absolute huge mess - some fire, and a lot of water damage. We had our own ice skating rink in there Saturday afternoon We did lose the kids' computer and MIDI keyboard, but I'm pretty sure all other instruments are ok, if a little smokey. So I guess I'll get to incorporate all those little changes I should have made the first time around to the kitchen ;)

I've been at the house this morning starting cleanup with the crew. I think we'll have all the bedrooms and upstairs rooms done today, but the real challenge is going to be downstairs, where most of the smoke and soot are. We've had some warmer weather lately, and my thoughts had been turning to spring cleaning, but I wasn't planning on it being this thorough, and with a crew helping

Folks have been great helping out with kids and loaner vehicles (both ours were totalled) and just in general being great friends. We are blessed )

I'll keep folks posted as I can, but it will probably be sporadic for a while here. I have to get in touch with our ISP and make some kind of arrangements for getting internet again. Our dish had been mounted..... on top of the garage

ttfn,
Sherry