a quick goodbye

About three weeks ago we were forced to say goodbye to a member of the family (well, for those of us/you who consider vehicles more than just a mode of transportation). I've hesitated blogging about it, due to concerns over being insensitive to Travis but he said we might as well go ahead and rip the band aid off for good. Lets start at the beginning... Halloween morning. 

Travis comes into our room to say his final goodbye of the morning and I doze back off to sleep. Minutes later he comes in again and says, "Nicole! My cars on fire!" and runs out of our room. 

What??

So I get up and frantically start trying to figure out what to do. I took one glance out the front door and saw flames 10 feet in the air coming from the front of Travis' car. So, naturally I grabbed my camera :) 

I was a little disappointed that he happened to get the hose hooked up and started spraying the car just as I got the picture, so I missed the really good flames, but hey, I probably shouldn't have been taking pictures anyway. The hose wasn't working and I was panicking because there were dead leaves everywhere and things could have gotten out of control quick. The next thing I know two police officers are coming down our road. I started to get nervous, wondering why the police were showing up and when I mentioned it to Travis he said (in exasperation) "I called 911!" Uhh, yeah. So this is what that number is supposed to be used for. Its a good thing he's cool under fire (he he.) because I tend to lose all common sense.

The fire station eventually showed up too and they told us to get Ethan and Capri up and out of the house just in case the car blew up or the garage caught on fire. It took them 5 or 10 minutes to get the fire out and when they left we were left with this:

It was a miracle that nothing else caught on fire and the car never blew up. I'm convinced Travis was also inspired not to park in the garage that night and to go out and start it before he left for work. If he had just gotten in and started driving who knows how far he would have been and what would have happened. And now--car shopping.