Prayer of Gratitude

Last night I was sleeping restlessly.  Because of that I was easily awoken to a loud pop sound and flash of light from the bathroom across the hall from our bedroom.

Tyson asked me what it was. My first thought was that maybe one of the boys had gone to the bathroom and as they tried to turn on the light one of the light bulbs went out.  I've noticed before that sometimes when they go out they'll make a little pop sound with a flash.

Although this wasn't a little pop, it was loud enough to wake me out of my restless sleep.  There was no movement in the bathroom so we knew no one was in there. 

However, we could see a faint glow from the bathroom so Tyson went to check it out.  He said in a startled way, "Oh no!"  I ran out of bed and into the bathroom to see that the bathroom fan in the ceiling, the one you turn on when you shower, was on fire. 
To see that orange glow coming from our ceiling freaked me out!

My first thought was that it was a fire in the attic and I ran and grabbed Kellen as I prepared to wake up my other boys to get them out of the house.
As I started heading to the other boys room I saw Tyson go into the bathroom with a cup of water and toss it at the bathroom fan. 

The fire went out.

I noticed at this point that, thankfully, our attic was not on fire.  It was just the bathroom fan itself.  I put Kellen back in bed, luckily he was still asleep in my arms.

Tyson preceded to unplug the fan and remove it completely to see what damage was done to the box in the ceiling the fan fits in. 

It was in good shape, no damage. The fan itself was not so lucky.  The engine was black from the fire and some of the plastic blades were melted.

Recently, we hadn't been using the fan because it wasn't working.  When you'd turn it on it would make a low, grating humming sound, not the normal spinning sound it makes.  It looks like one of the kids had turned it on, who knows how long ago, and since you can barely hear it trying to run we didn't realize it.

The lesson in this is as soon as one of those fans stops working correctly replace it right away or unplug it until you can replace it.  That way if one of your little guys flips the fan switch without you realizing it, it won't try to run until it bursts into flames. 

As Tyson and I fall back into bed we said a prayer of gratitude that we woke up to the loud popping sound. Honestly, if we hadn't, we could all be gone today.  That fire wouldn't have stayed confined to the fan.  Not doubt it would have spread into the attic and burned our house down while we slept.  That is not joke!

I'm thankful to Heavenly Father for waking up just in time.