Maggie had been sitting on the couch reading with the candle on the end table, and she decided it was too bright. So, logically, she chose to deal with the situation by putting a tissue over the top of the candle to darken it. And then, shockingly, the tissue actually caught fire.
All this time, I had been cooking dinner. It is important to know that my oven is old and has venting issues that mean that whenever I am cooking something and open it, even if nothing it burnt, the smoke alarm goes off. So, when I opened the oven door to tend to the chicken, the BEEP BEEP BEEP just ticked me off and I ignored it because it happens almost every day. Little did I know that there was something that looked frighteningly like this: 
going on on the other side of the wall.
So I calmly walk into the living room with a hammer (literally around Maggie and the burning brush) to turn off the smoke detector. It really confused me that it wouldn’t go off until I started to smell something… amiss. By this time, Maggie has dropped the burning tissue onto a snowman indoor doormat thing that Lisa lent me. The fire was out by this time, but Maggie is still speechless and starting to panic and sob. The rug is burnt, there are burnt wisps of tissue flying around and all I can come up with to say is “Maggie, why? Maggie, what?” And the smoke detector is still going off.
Poor Maggie shook and cried for a good 10 minutes. Stagg dealt with the wreckage while I held Maggie, made sure she wasn’t hurt and then very calmly went over some basic fire safety rules. Like paper and fire is not a good combination, and fire is hot and when you accidentally start a fire in the house, even if you think you can handle it, CALL FOR HELP. Meanwhile, Maggie is trying to explain that she knew there was trouble when the tissue burst into flame, but she thought she could blow it out. She said she tried really hard, and blew and blew, but the fire just got bigger.
Stagg told them that if they can’t respect the candles, we won’t burn them anymore. I told him that we would still burn candles, but the girls wouldn’t be allowed in any room with a candle burning in it anymore. This, of course, brought on a whole new set of sobs because, “Like my bedroom?! That is so unfair! I just know that you are going to light a candle in my bedroom and then I WON’T BE ABLE TO SLEEP!” I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got me a drama queen over here.
Meanwhile, Katie had been looking through a cookbook for kids. So while all the chaos is going on, Katie is running through it to show me pictures of the new things she wants to cook with me. She has no idea what they are, but the sure do look like fun. And by the way, what’s going on in here?
We got very lucky. Maggie managed to drop the tissue before it burnt her, and there were so many things that could have gone wrong(er) and ended up with a really big fire. Instead, we got comedy gold.
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