One Crazy Weekend!

This weekend was relatively insane! Spencer (my youngest brother) and Katie had baby Karson on Thursday at 10:01 pm. He weighed in at seven pounds, nine ounces and was 20.5 inches long. They brought him home Saturday and Spencer emailed pictures later that night. I have a fairly rigorous schedule this week and I didn't know when I'd get a chance to go up. I had to teach my first Young Women's lesson (I was called as the Laurel Advisor three weeks ago) on Sunday and so I didn't think I'd make it up there, but after seeing the pictures Spencer sent, I didn't want to wait. Mom and Dad came and picked me up and we started up. Once we got into Sardine Canyon I said something about how we should have waited a week and the leaves would have been at their best. As we continued driving, I was forced to change my sentence. They were PERFECT!! It was a beautiful fall drive. It's important that I tell you I took these while the car was going 60 mph through the window, because they aren't great pictures. Anyway by the time we got to College Ward, I called Spencer and asked him to put a pot of water on the stove to boil so we could cook pasta to have dinner with them. We arrived at their house about 10 minutes later and Spencer and Katie were in the parking lot of their apartment complex, Katie with a towel on her head, holding Baby Karson. I made a comment about whether Katie always comes out to greet her guests with a towel on her head, and as we were parking we noticed smoke billowing out of a window in their apartment. We climbed out of the car and Spencer told us that there had been a fire in the kitchen and while he had gotten the fire out the smoke was too heavy for them to go back inside. Katie had been in the shower and Spencer had put the pot of water on the stove to boil. There was a pan of oil on the stove that they had used earlier and looking back later, Spencer concluded that he must have turned on the wrong burner and the oil had heated up to the point of catching itself on fire. When Spencer saw it he ran Karson into the bathroom where Katie was just getting out of the shower, so she put Karson on a towel on the floor and proceeded to quickly dress while Spencer ran to try to get the fire out. He searched for baking soda, but couldn't find it in the smoke, so he grabbed the pan off the stove, threw it in the sink and in a moment of sheer desperation turned the cold water on the pan. He knew that you're not supposed to put water on a grease fire, but he was desperate. The fire was out, but the house was full of smoke so he shouted to Katie to get the baby out of the apartment and Katie ran from the bathroom to the front door and out into the parking lot. Spencer followed her after opening a few windows, but had already inhaled quite a bit of smoke so he was coughing and wheezing when we pulled up. Katie took Karson and sat in Mom and Dad's car and I went to the front door to assess the damage. The house was filled with thick smoke and though several windows and the front door were open it wasn't doing much to get rid of it. I held my breath and went in to open some more windows. After a minute I came back outside and asked Spencer if they had a fan so we could blow it out. He said they only had ceiling fans so Dad and I went back in to turn on the ceiling fans in the living room and master bedroom. On my way back out, Spencer asked me to grab Karson's car seat which I did. The smoke was still heavy and Spencer wanted to get some stuff out so they could go home with us. Dad and I headed back in and went into Karson's room. The smoke was really bad there and as I went to the closet to try and find clothes for Karson, Dad opened the window. It was really bad and I couldn't tell which clothes were the right size before we couldn't breath anymore. We raced out of the house and I told Spencer they needed to call the fire department because it wasn't going away on its own. I called 911 and Dad talked to the dispatcher, telling her that the fire was out, but we needed someone to come and get rid of the smoke. Also there was a 3 day old baby and we didn't know if he was okay because Katie didn't know if he had inhaled the smoke or not. Within moments a policeman on a motorcycle pulled up and in his wake, 3 fire trucks, the fire chief, an ambulance and one more policeman in a car. The 12 or so fire fighters went in to assess the situation and then pulled out some fans and within about 10 minutes the smoke was gone, and there was only an odor which dissapated pretty quickly. A paramedic checked Katie and Karson and said that they were doing well, the baby hadn't gotten any smoke in his lungs and that he'd be just fine.

This picture is through the screen in their living room window. There are about 4 firefighters there trying to get the fans situated right. As soon as the firefighters had left, Katie was trying to find a neighbor home so she could take Karson away from smell and at that moment their landlady came home. Katie went over to explain what had happened and Elaine let her in and she took Karson in and stayed there. The rest of us went in to assess the damage to the kitchen and to get their stuff. I walked over to Elaine's, where Katie was trying to feed Karson and after a few minutes, Katie left Karson with me so she could go over and get the stuff she needed to leave home for a few days. I put a towel over my shirt, since I smelled like the smoke and just rocked Karson for an hour or so while they packed up the cars with their clothes and bedding and stuff so they could bring it to Mom and Dad's to wash it all. Katie was pretty shaken up and tried to feed Karson before we left, but she was tense and Karson was screaming, so Spencer gave him a blessing and I went in and told Katie that maybe we should just put him in the carseat and head out, and if he needed to eat on the way home, we could just pull off somewhere. She agreed and I don't know if it was the blessing or the fact that Karson belongs to Spencer,(Spencer always fell asleep in the car) but he slept all the way home. Katie asked me to sit in the back seat with her, because if he cried she wasn't sure she could handle it. I told her I would and she tried to sleep. Around Ogden she asked if he was still breathing and I told her he was and then asked if she was. She said she was almost back to normal again and went back to sleep. We stopped in Farmington where Mom and Dad had left Kaity and Malerie at Kris's and I got my car and headed home, and they headed home. I called Spencer on Monday and he said things were as normal as they could be and Katie got some time with her family so they were doing okay. They were supposed to go back to Logan Wednesday and I'll have to see what happened since Monday, but it wasn't exactly how we'd planned to spend the weekend. It was a good thing we were there to offer moral support though and I got a lot of face time with Karson so that was good. Katie told him I'd be his favorite aunt and I told her that was pretty cool, because Katie has a lot of sisters. Anyway it could have been much worse and I'm just glad everyone is okay.