midnight adventure

Last night at 2:20 we heard at knock at the door. Wayne wasn't dressed for the occasion, so I went to the door in my pajamas. (He didn't really want to "share the gospel" with the person at the door. :D)


I have learned from recent news stories that you don't open the door right away, so I turned on our bright porch light and looked through the curtains. I saw a man that I had never seen before, who quickly showed me his Questar badge. I was still a little hesitant, so I began to talk to him through the glass. After a minute or 2, I finally opened the door. He explained that there was a gas leak next door and we needed to leave our home while they fixed it. He thought it would only take about a half hour to air out our neighbors home and get us back into ours. So we woke up Bradley, who likes to sleep in his underwear too, and we got him dressed. Wayne put Elli in the car seat with all her fuzzy blankets, and I made her a bottle so she could go back to sleep. Bradley grabbed his Star Wars books to read, and we were off.


We parked our car down the street and watched all the emergency personnel show up to take care of business. After a about an hour and a half, we were told to go back to our homes and get whatever we needed, and to go stay at the nearby hotel at Questar's expense. The leak was underground and they would have to dig it up to repair the damage and find any remaining gas pockets underground. They thought it would take 2 to 4 hours.

This is how we found our home when we came back to grab a few extra supplies. I had to laugh a little when I thought of what our newspaper man was going to think when he pulled up to drop off our paper. This isn't something you see every day, that's for sure.

We drove down to the hotel in town to find out that it was filled to capacity. So we drove to the next town, not realizing that they don't have any hotels. At that point we couldn't decide if we should drive the 45 minutes to my parents house, or go back to Wayne's little brothers house.

Bradley and Elli were both sleeping comfortably in the car, so we decided to stay in the car and let them sleep. Elli would have been easy to move because of her car seat, but Bradley isn't that much smaller than me anymore, so the days of carrying him out of the car to help him stay asleep are long since past. I didn't want to wake him up again, so we parked outside my Alan and Crystal's house and tried to sleep in the car. Wayne, Bradley and Elli were all sleeping just fine, but I had a headache and couldn't go to sleep. Bradley and Wayne were both reclined in the front seats, and I was in the back with my legs pinned under Bradley with Elli right next to me. ( I was in the back because Elli doesn't always love the car, and if she wakes up in a dark car it's even worse. She will cry until she starts throwing up. It's such a lovely thing!) I couldn't take just sitting there listening to everyone else sleeping so peacefully, so I finally told Wayne to come sleep in the back while I just drove around.

First we drove up to the stake center and Wayne left a note telling the stake leaders that he would be missing the meetings that morning. Then I just headed north, thinking that maybe I would go to my mom's after all. We only made it to the Provo Town Center and I changed my mind about going to my moms. I thought, we would probably just arrive and then they will call to tell us our house has been cleared and we can come home. So I turned around and went back. It was about 6:45 at this point. We just went back to my brother-in-law's driveway and snoozed a little. At about 7:30 Wayne said it would be fine to knock on their door. (The reality is that it would have been fine to knock at 4:30 too, but I felt awful waking them up.) So at 7:30 we were finally indoors again.

Bradley and Wayne went to sleep on the extra bed. But Elli woke up and wanted to play, so I stayed with her. The reason for that was I would be able to take a long nap during Elli's nap because it was my turn to stay home with Elli during church today. Anyway, at about 8:00 we got a call from Questar to do a walk through our home to clear it, and relight all our pilot lights. Wayne ran over alone to do that and came back at around 8:30 to take us home. It was lovely to go home!!!

Bradley told me that he hopes it will happen again because he liked sleeping in the car. He was pretty comfortable with the seat reclined all the way back. As for me, I think I will be okay without anymore midnight knocks at the door.