Setting the World on Fire

When the Granddaughter celebrated her second birthday, she got such a thrill blowing out her candles that we had to keep relighting them for her. She was so into the candles, she didn't even care about the Barney cake I lovingly baked and decorated for her. Do you have any idea how much purple icing it takes to make a Barney cake??? She and her mom (our Oldest Daughter) were living with us at the time.

A few months later, during the holiday season, Hubby and I hosted a sit down dinner party for a small group of friends. It was one of those beautiful December evenings in Phoenix - just chilly enough to feel Christmasy - and everything was decorated to the hilt. We served Chicken en Papillote, which is a seriously great and impressive dish if you haven't tried it yet. And, of course, we had candles everywhere.

You know how you're relaxed and everything is feeling sooooooooo good ... good company, good food, good times? We had just started eating dinner when we heard a loud thump from the back of the house. A few seconds later, the Granddaughter comes racing down the hallway toward the dining room in her jammies. She has a red mark on her forehead and her hair was crackling and smoking ... no kidding! She's in a panic hollering, "I booned my haiw, I booned my haiw!" (Translation: I burned my hair.) One of our guests, who is a nurse, jumped up, grabbed her and stuck her head in the kitchen sink to put her out.

Since our daughter and granddaughter did not want to be included in the dinner party, they had been hanging out in a bedroom watching TV. When OD went into the laundry room to switch wash over, the Granddaughter thought this would be a great time to go check out the lit candles in our master bathroom. She climbed up on my vanity bench and leaned over a candle to blow it out, catching her hair on fire. When she realized her bangs were sparking, she jumped down, smacking her forehead on the counter in the process.

Of course, during the uproar dinner got cold and let me tell you how good food tastes with the smell of burning hair hanging in the air. The Granddaughter is 14 now and she just loves it when I tell this story! She is, in her own sweet way, still setting the world on fire!

So let's go back a generation to when our two daughters were having a sleepover. I think they were in 6th and 8th grade at the time. It was summertime so they had friends over for the night, but we still had to get up early to go to work. They had been pretty loud, it was late and I was getting crabbier by the minute. They were all together in one bedroom and I ripped open the door and told them if they didn't pipe down, everyone was going home. If we heard one more peep out of them, the party was over!

I stomped back to our bedroom and crawled into bed thinking we could finally get some sleep. Pretty soon there was a quiet knock on our bedroom door and our youngest daughter says in this timid voice, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I think our bedroom is on fire."

They had been playing a board game and knocked a lamp over that sparked and caught the bedspread on fire. Hubby leaped out of bed and raced down the hall, grabbed the bedspread and took it out in the yard to lay it out on the grass and stomp on it. While nothing really bad happened, I can guarantee we didn't have any sleepovers for a while after that!