I almost died last night...

So I had a pretty scary night last night. Charlie was working on his car and it was pretty cold out so he came in and was freezing. Well I suggested that we turn on the fireplace. We have one of those gas log fireplaces that is operated by a remote. The remote works like a thermostat where you set the temp you want and it will run until it reaches that temp and then it will shut off until the temps drops again to which it will turn back on. We watched American Idol while wrapped up in blankets in our toasty living room. So around 10 pm, I put Abbie down while Charlie turns off the fireplace and closes the flue (is that how you spell that?). So we head to bed and just as I am dozing off to sleep I am awakened by the smell of gas. Charlie gets up to go check on it and 5 min later comes back to tell me that the fireplace came back on. Mind you, he has already closed the flue & doors to the fireplace so the gas has no where to go except to fill the house. I immediately go and check on Abbie and bring her back to bed with me while Charlie begins to open windows (it was probably in the lower 30's outside when we went to bed). Thankfully we had an attic fan that allowed fresh air from outdoors to circulate throughout the house. About 10 minutes of doing that, the smell was almost gone and now our house was cold. Charlie told me I could put Abbie back in her room (she was sound asleep through all of this) but I was still paranoid over the gas smell and told him I would feel better if she slept with us so I could hear her breathing.

It was such a scary experience. What would have happened if we fell asleep and didn't smell the gas? And Charlie said when he went to go check on the smell that there was a slight haze in the living room. Would our house have started on fire? Would we have died of carbon monoxide poisoning? Although we do have a carbon monoxide detector in the living room. Too many "What Ifs" if you ask me. I'm just happy that I was able to detect it before falling asleep b/c Charlie can't smell a thing right now with his stuffed up nose.

Oh, and that smoke detector that was in the kitchen, but since painting the kitchen 1 1/2 yrs ago, has been sitting on the hope chest? Well it's going back up tonight. And I don't think I will be running the fireplace anymore. Charlie swears that he turned it off with the remote. I was pretty worried going to sleep last night. I felt so relieved when I & the rest of the family woke up alive this morning.