Friday, March 27, 2015

And then the house exploded

Bramble Berry's COO and CMO recently went to Disneyworld in Florida for a computer conference. It was a sacrifice but someone needed to go =) Norman is always thoughtful with the kiddos and he brought back presents for them from this trip.
Behold the power of Mickey! Both the kids love their introduction to the magical word of Disney.
Chris recently had a birthday. The kids and I made a deck of cards with 52 things that we loved about him. They enjoyed eating mini cheesecakes and the entire process. 

Chris and our good friend Erin both share the same birthday so we also had a mini girls' celebration for our Pisces friend.
The kids both are having a fantastic time competing for time and love with both parents. This generally means that we try to figure out how to distract one and love on the other one. Sometimes, this doesn't work, and we end up carrying them both at one time. What's really great is when the  kids both start sparring in our arms, hitting each other, while both of our arms are occupied holding them.
Jamisen has taken to building forts all over. He actually slept in this fort for two nights. That is, before the house exploded and we were driven from our house and his forts.
At roughly 3:05 p.m. on Friday the 13th, the boiler in our downstairs blew up in a spectacular fashion.
It launched itself into the next room over, our wine storage area, cooking the wine at 200 degrees for about 5 minutes. We had our boiler checked and serviced in January of this year. It should not have blown up. The investigation remains ongoing as to why there was an explosion.
Chris got the call from our nanny and immediately came home, calling 911 as he did to alert them to the fact that we had a natural gas repairman in the house earlier that day. He suggested that the first thing they do when they arrived at the house be to turn the natural gas to the house off.
It's a good thing he did because the entire house was rapidly filling with natural gas, slowly flooding the house with natural gas, working its way inexorably closer and closer to the pilot lights on the stove. He phoned me on the way home. I logged into the nanny cams, saw the entire basement filled with smoke (which we now know was dust and steam) and was close behind him to get home.
The second Nanny McKenna (Mommykenna) heard the explosion, she rushed out of the house, saw smoke coming from Lily's room and immediately rushed to save Lily, exit the house and call 911. Luckily, Jamisen was with Chris for the afternoon. Typically, he would have been playing in the playroom during Lily's naptime. Lily's bedroom was/is directly above the blast zone.

The entire house lifted off the foundation during the explosion. The wall that blew out was a load bearing wall and the supporting beams under the home were also taken out. While we were in shock, and still are, we recognize that the situation should have resulted in the serious injury of one or both of our children and our nanny. We feel lucky and extremely blessed that the entire situation turned out the way it did with only a house to fix and no one hurt.

Here are just a few of the news media outlets that covered this story:



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