No garage...no problem!!

Saturday night (well I guess I should say Sunday morning) around 4 a.m. we were quite astonishingly awakened by a loud explosion. Upon awakening we thought at first one of the kids fell out of bed. Chase checked their rooms and came back to bed shrugging his shoulders. The kids were fine. Then we heard distant foot steps running and decided that something was terribly wrong. Who runs around at 4 a.m. So Chase went downstairs and after seeing a orange glow come through our front windows, looked out to see our neighbor's truck completely engulfed in flames. He came in and told me there was a fire and I immediately ran down stairs to check it out. I saw the fire and the first thing I thought of was my children. You never realize how vulnerable you become when you have little ones to protect. If the fire at the front of the car reached the back where the gas tank was, the whole neighborhood would be at risk. While Chase called the fire department I was on my knees the entire time repeating over and over again..."please protect my children, please protect my children." Our other neighbors called and warned us to get our kids to the back of the house because their bedrooms face the street. I raced upstairs to remove them and put them both in my bed.

My volcano loving Sadie was very excited about the fire and wanted to watch the whole thing, but after hearing another loud explosion, we decided to stay as far away from the windows in case they shattered. The fire department came very quickly and put the fire out and after nursing Jack, he went right back to sleep. Sadie, on the other hand, needed a little convincing that the fire wasn't going to come into her room and that the fire men would always protect us. A police man asked our distressed neighbor if he had any enemies to which he responded, "yes, but I don't think I have any enemies that would do this to me." The firemen investigated further and discovered a battery leak which caused the explosion and eventually lit the car on fire. I don't think I have ever been so scared (including the time the Manhattan hotel my mom and I were staying in caught on fire while on the 42nd floor...that was fun:-).

The weird thing is that John hadn't driven his car for a while. It had been sitting there for 14 hours. Strange that a car would just blow up at 4 a.m. after sitting dormant for the last 14 hours. John is a landlord of several properties and I've heard from his last tenants, he's a pretty lousy one. I have my suspicions, but in order to calm my motherly nerves, I like imagining a battery leak much more than a crazy terrorist lurking about our neighborhood. Although the alternative being that my car will just explode while driving around with my two children sends me into hysterics. I'm just glad we don't have a garage and I'm glad John didn't either.

Here's Sadie's version of the story.