Here We Are, 9 Months Later....

No, we are not pregnant.

As you may or may not remember, joseph and I got married 9 months ago. And the 3 or 4 days following our wedding were quite eventful. Probably what I would consider the most eventful honeymoon any new couple could have ever asked (or NOT asked) for. And most of those events were like a Ben Stiller movie gone wrong.

Lucky for Team Brevetti, we have a sense of humor. And lucky for us, we've had a pretty uneventful first 9 months of marriage.

So, of course, when the weather starts to get nutty the world must have realized it was off balance. And when the world is off balance, it means that it needs to be shaken back on track. And this is where the events of 9-month-marriage-anniversary-honeymoon-trainwreck begin.

The weather has been uncharacteristically cold these past 5 or so days for an Oklahoma March. On Saturday, we received some cold air from the North that has put our mid-March temperatures of 75-80 degrees down into the high 40's and low 50's. Yes, I realize that this would be typical of Michigan March (so take note, northerners: I am not complaining, merely setting up my story), joseph and I thought this might be a good time to try out our firewood supply.

Saturday evening, our good friend, Eric, brought us some firewood. I was oug grocery shopping, and joseph and Eric took it upon themselves to start a nice fire. It was cozy and comfortable. Joseph and I slept out in the living room together on the couch and enjoyed it. The wood burned itself completely up during the night, and Sunday morning the ashes were waiting for us.

After church, I started another fire and it burned through the afternoon while joseph and Mark had a FIFA date. We were getting pretty used to this comfortable and peaceful way of heating our house just enough to not need the heater, but not too warm that we're burning up. Sunday night, joseph had to drive into work to incubate some bacteria for Monday's experiments. I was nervous about leaving the hosue with the fire not completely dead, so I volunteered to stay behind. We knew we'd be gone only a short while, so we called our next door neighbor (Daniel) to let him know we were leaving and that there was still a little fire burning in the fireplace. I asked him to please call the fire department if the house caught fire, and then to call us. He said not to worry and that he'd stop it with his body and the fire department would not be necessary. Joseph and I laughed about it and drove downtown.

We were gone a lot longer than anticipated, as we stopped by Eric's house and filled the backseat of Rasheed with firewood. And stayed to chat for a little while. When we got home, we found the fire almost out and the house as we had left it.

Joseph put another log on it and re-lit the gas and we pulled a big blanket out onto the floor and fell asleep in the living room again. Monday morning, the fire had gone out, wood was completely burned up, and only ashes were left. Joseph and I went to work as normal.

I had to stay late at school Monday, and it was so nice when I got home to find that joseph had another fire going in the fireplace. We were getting spoiled! He had it roaring particularly well, so we decided (yet again) to sleep on the couch together that night.

Tuesday morning, when I woke up, the fire was out. However, all of the logs were not burned up like on previous mornings. For whatever reason, the fire had gone out before it had used up all its fuel. Before I left for school, I looked at the fireplace and took note of the situation. I blew on the ashes and wood to see if anything was still going. It seemed alright.

I was at school when joseph sent me a text saying that he closed the flu and went to work. This made me a little bit nervous, so I left school during first hour to open the flu. I didn't want our house burning down! Especially with our sweet puppies in their crates! I rushed home, opened the flu, and examined the logs. They were not burning or smoking, but I figured that just in case I should dump water on everything. I took a large glass and dumped 3 or 4 glassfulls of water on the logs and the ashes. They sizzled, and I blew on everything to see if there were any embers still lit. All clear! I rushed back to school.

Tuesday night, we decided not to light a fire. Our house was starting to smell a little bit like smoke, and we wanted to sleep in the bedroom that night. The flu was closed from when I got home from school that day and turned the heat in the house back on. We both noted that the house was stinking a little bit like smoke and I promised I would clean it Wednesday when I got home.

Sleeping in our bed felt nice for the first time in several nights. I woke up around 4AM and noticed that even in our bedroom it smelled like campfire. I was a little annoyed, but figured it was probably my hair and my pillow (which had been out in the living room for the past several days) and went back to sleep.

I'll bet you're wondering when this story gets interesting, huh?
Well, it's about to.

5AM joseph and I are both woken up by the blaring sound of all of the smoke detectors in our house. He and I run out of the bedroom into the kitchen to find that it's full of a vague cloud of smoke. The living room is worse. I grab a towel and head to the hallway to start waving it around to clear the air and I look over to the fireplace to find a significatly well-roaring fire. I quickly pulled my sleeve over my hand and reached up into the fireplace to open the flu. I ran around opening windows and turning on fans and joseph and I were waving kitchen towels furiously trying to get the beeping to stop.
Our fireplace had started itself!

Obviously, the thoughts of "thank goodness we were home!" and "it's a good thing our smoke detectors work" and "we are very lucky it stayed in the fireplace!" were running through my head. But they were equally mixed with "this is probably the most hilarious thing I've ever done at 5 in the morning!" and "this would happen to us!" shooting through my mind as I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the entire situation.

Joseph and I may not like to go out. And we may be somewhat boring in ourlist of extracurricular activities. But I will tell you one thing: Life with Team Brevetti is NEVER boring!