Thanksgiving comes early this year

It's 3:20 or so in the morning, nearly an hour after hearing knocking/banging and somewhat unfamiliar voices alarming my daughter and myself to get out of our house, grab our pets and get to the safety of either of our vehicles in our driveway, even though its plenty cold outside. Thankfully we did just that, and everyone in *our* home is fine.

Hopefully everyone in the home immediately behind ours is fine as well, though there's not much of that home left.

For those that don't know this part of the story, we live in a mobile home park. The neighbor directly behind my daughter and son's rooms is the neighbor I'd be talking about. Separated by about 20 feet of distance between the homes, if that.

The neighbors were waking us to tell us that the home behind us was on fire.  Fully involved.  Flames shooting out of the roof, out of the windows, etc.  All we could see was the bright orange/red flames reaching for the sky and possibly reaching for other homes on either side of the short distance that separates the homes in the park.

Luckily for neighbors on one side of that home, there is a drop in elevation that helped to protect that home.  On the other side, there wasn't enough stuff in the yard and/or not enough dry grass for the fire to get going in other directions.  That fact was part of what kept us safe and secure as well.  If this fire had happened back in the late summer, early fall with dry grass that hadn't seen rain in a long time, things might have been different.  If we had more dry leaves on the ground, same thing.

As we raced out of the house, me quickly tossing on pants and a shirt, she (my daughter) grabbing a hoodie, her purse/bag and a school bag she uses, we grabbed the puppy and the kitten and got out to my car with my daughter crying somewhat hysterically -- mostly from shock, and somewhat because she was upset that bad things seem to keep happening to us.

I gently reminded my daughter that on the s-it scale, what we were going through right then was nothing. Yes, our family has had its share of s-it happen (search on prior articles for that tale if you wish), but any time you can walk away from a potential disaster/tragedy, well, in the words of a country singer's song ... This ain't nothin'.

Seriously, we still have our home. We have the "stuff" that my daughter was concerned with losing (I've still got to get her to get into some counseling about her own hoarding issues), we have our pets (including the birds which we had to leave in the cages as we made our way to safety). We've lost an hour or two of sleep. Other than that, we're fine.

Yes, for us thanksgiving is here early this year.