So I Almost Burned the House Down Today

Let me just start this off by informing you that I am not on top of my game today (even more not on my game than usual I should say).  I woke up this morning with a raging sinus headache, a horse voice and sore throat.  It is Monday, so Peter has a half day, which means I have a fuller day.  And it was cold and rainy.  And Brett worked late.  Perfect storm.

But really all those things were not to blame for me almost burning the house down.  The real reason is because we don't have a pantry.  I dream of the day when we own a house with a pantry.  That day will be magical.  That day seems so far away right now.  Until then, this is my "pantry" - stacked wooden crates in the corner of my dining room.

Looks amazing right?  That isn't actually the annoying part.  Campbell is.  She is an absolute piglet who wants to eat at all times, and when food is visible she screams for it.  Her favorite thing to do is pick up that Utz container in the bottom left of the photo and bring it to me yelling - SNACK!!!

The container isn't actually filled with Utz pretzel Sticks - it is full of snack size zip lock bags that I prepackaged with snacks to make packing lunches easier.  I HAD three of these snack tubs filled.

Many evenings when I am cooking dinner she will bring me this giant snack tub screaming for a snack because she couldn't possibly wait five minutes for me to finish cooking.  It turns into her in tears at my feet and 80% of the items from my "pantry" on the kitchen counters because I take them from her and put them where she can't reach.  It is super fun.

This evening I finished cooking and sat down to eat with the kids.  Then I noticed a smell.  For whatever reason I ignored it. I was in the middle of nursing the baby, attempting to assist Campbell with using a fork to eat rice while also trying to get a little food in my own mouth; so I guess I didn't feel like I had time for one more thing.

Then the smell turned into black smoke bellowing from the kitchen.

I dart into the kitchen and find that one of the snack tubs had been placed on a burner that I had been using and not only was hot, but it was also still on.  The entire bottom quarter of the tub was melted into the stove, snacks on fire, smoke everywhere.


Me - EVERYONE RUN!

My older three kids ran out the front door coughing, realized it was raining, ran back in, there was a furious scramble for shoes and umbrellas as I turned the burner off and ran the snack tub outside.

This was around the time that Brett arrived home.  Now, Brett is used to coming home to a little nonsense - we do have four kids under 6 years old - but this was a little much even for our house.

We stood outside in the rain until the house was enterable (I can't believe that was a real word) again.  I did run inside to grab plates of food that hadn't been finished.  We all stood together finishing our plates of dinner in the rain like normal people.  I can only imagine what people driving by thought.

Here is an after photo of my stove.  The photo actually doesn't do the damage justice, because most of the plastic is still liquid at this point and thus clear.

Once we re-entered the house we rushed the kids into a hot bath (to warm them up after the rain I made them stand in to eat their dinner) with fans blowing the harsh cancer smell away from their rooms.

I plan to enter this post in a mother of the year competition.  I am a shoe in for the winner.