The fire

September 16, our next door neighbor's house burned down and our house would have burned too except for the bravery of Dad and Bradley who watered down our house to save it. Dad went into intensive care for 3 days and has had some health struggles ever since. Bradley was sick from smoke and so was pretty near every one of the family. And Ashley twisted her ankle getting everyone out. But we're all getting better. Here's is the neighbor's house:
Dad being treated in the ambulance before they took him to the hospital.
And so, we spent 3 weeks and 3 days in hotels. Here we are caravanning to the hotel.
Hotel life got very tedious but it wasn't all bad. We could jump on beds:
And spent a lot of time visiting:

Not sure why this picture is upside down, but whatever. Playing cards. (Don't play Tanner in Presidents. Hey kills.)

Tyler really doesn't let go of this motorcycle and car. Even in his sleep.


Every night they had salads at 5:30. We spent a lot of nights here.
Tabitha would make us drinks every night: Roy Rogers, Shirley Temples. We made them run out of cherries a lot.
Emily and Jason and the kids came out for Sunday dinner.


We had a lot of hot chocolate.
And ate out a lot. Tanner was very happy to have steak.

Notice the blood drops on the table? Tanner!
The bus came all the way to the hotel every day to pick up and drop off Kaylee, Faith and Logan.
We swam.


And we could walk to Riverfront Park from our hotel.
The view from our room.


Then we finally got to go home. Dogs:

Dogs and kids:
Cat:
We got tired of waiting for the restoration team to pull our carpets so we could go home so we did it ourselves. Thanks for all the hard work of Emily, Jason and a friend, Clayton too.
J.D. helped. So did all the kids.
Jason was an old pro at this.
Kaylee did two closets all by herself.
Tanner too.
And then we remembered why we wanted to come home so bad. Our yard.

And plenty of room for grandkids:

And Grandpa and Tyler enjoyed the full moon on the first night back.