Updates

I'm kind of pressed for time here so I will try to keep this short and sweet.

Mark accepted a position with Habitat for Humanity and will start working there next week. It doesn't pay very well and we don't know if it has benefits but it's a start! And he's very excited about working for a good company. He says he's tired of making rich people richer.

As most of you know by now, we had a fire a couple of days ago. I posted lots of pictures on my facebook page so look for me on Facebook and check them out. It started in the small space above the upstairs ceiling and the insulation caught fire and it just spread along the whole roof line very quickly so now we have a bunch of big holes in the roof but at least it's just on the top floor.

Mark and I don't really believe in "coincidences" and the story about finding the fire is truly amazing. Mark "happened" to still be awake at 1:00 at night and he just "happened" to hear some weird clunking noises upstairs in Jacob's room and headed up to investigate. He thought it felt very warm in there, despite the A/C so he started poking around and discovered an orange glow above the ceiling so he grabbed Jacob and tore downstairs and woke everyone up. We were outside waiting for the fire trucks by the time the smoke alarms went off and we heard a loud crash when the ceiling right above the stairway collapsed and we realized that if we had waited until the smoke alarm went off Jacob would have been stuck upstairs! So despite a very messy house and the prospect of being homeless for the next 6-8 weeks, we feel TRULY blessed! We all had plenty of time to get out of the house and the vast majority of our belongings are fine.

Anyway, I will share more later but I wanted to at least give out the basic story. Our insurance agent has already given us a check to get started with hotels and finding some clothes for Jacob (he lost virtually everything he owns!) and we're meeting with the contractor on Monday to start working out the exact plans. We're also very blessed to have such a caring insurance agent. He's already been here like 3 times to check out the damage and see what we need.

The house smells pretty bad and I'm getting a headache so I think we're heading out for a bit - there's a parade this morning and they always hand out lots of candy so we need to get a good spot. Take care and God bless!!

Laurie