I attempted to start a blog and was having troubles, I am sorry for the lengthy post.

Monday, November, 27th 2017

Before we share our story and our updates we want to send a huge thank you to everyone for being here for us during this hard time. We are truly overwhelmed with how kind everyone has been towards us, we are so thankful to be part of an amazing community. The messages, the calls, the donations, the offering to bring us dinner or a place to stay, just thank you so much, we are still working on responding to messages so please know we are doing our best to respond. To all of our family and friends who have been here for us during this time, thank you, we have no idea what we would do without you in our lives.

The morning of Monday, November, 27th 2017 started off like any other,Vinny let our dog Royce out around 5:30am, I got ready for work and the girls ready for daycare. It was our first day back to our normal routine since Thanksgiving break. I knew I wanted to leave the house by 6:30am to get Letty to Cindys(her daycare provider) and then get to Whitneys(my sister) by 6:45am, they were helping take Markee to preschool for us that morning. Around 6:15am our girls were in our living room which is an addition built onto our ranch many many years ago, they did not have any duct work for heat back there so they just had a built in heater into the wall. I turned the heater on for the girls so it would get warm back there for them. 6:30am came we were out the door and off to our drop offs and work. Around 6:50am I remembered I forgot to let Royce inside, completely spaced it off. I let Vinny know and since it was going to be a beautiful day he said he would be fine outside for the day. I got into work and at 7:18am I received a call from Angie(a family friend of ours) what I thought started off as she had our dog Royce (ughhh he had jumped the fence) was actually the phone call that our house was on fire. I remember taking in what she had just said, and realizing this is real but still not sure what "your house is on fire means? like just a small fire? Just one room? What happened?" literally a 100 questions and scenarios playing in my head. I let Vinny know what was going on and as we were talking I realized I knew what I had done wrong, I had accidently left the heater on. We knew the smoke was coming from the back side of the house, Whitney my sister was over at our house waiting for us and relaying any information she could get until we could get there. Once we arrived we were then told that they believed ( and it has been confirmed through the inspector) that the fire started from the heater due to combustibles too close ( I had a rustic bin filled with blankets that had been pushed in front of the heater, that's where they found it. I just remember thanking god over and over that I accidently left Royce outside, I could never forgive myself if he would have been in there.Walking into the home was a nightmare, everything was black, the living room is just an awful nightmare. Even though the structure of our home is still standing we unfortunately lost everything on the first level due to the smoke and heat, they asked us to only grab items that were sentimental to us: my wedding dress, photos of my father and vinnys little sister, and a few other items. The basement was kind of the same situation, unless it has sentimental value that we just needed to let it go due to the smoke damage. Walking away from our home with very little items and knowing we have lost everything is just the most devastating feeling in the world, everything we have ever worked for is just gone in an instant. A lady from our community who experienced a fire 5 years ago said it perfectly " people are going to tell you its okay that everything can be replaced that you lost and everyone is okay and that is all that matters, but that doesn't change the fact that we still hurt". The emotions we have felt the past week have just been unexplainable, we are simply exhausted and devastated and just taking things one day at a time and adjusting to the changes we have had. One of the biggest questions we have seem to found is do we have pictures? My sister Lindsey took the photo the day the fire happened, here is a glimpse of before/after where the fire started(photos are at the bottom) its just truly devastating and we are so sorry for anyone who has ever had to go through this. vintage bohemian wedding dresses

What to expect now?

We were so lucky that Emily ( a friend of ours) was able to find us a rental house right away. We are just outside of Indianola at a ranch in Ackworth, its on a hog farm( which makes Markee happy and Royce too). So now we wait for insurance and the contractor to agree on things and then the gutting of the house will begin, we are looking forward to this process so we can take Markee there, we are not taking her there to see the house how it is now, it has been very rough for her to understand everything. We are prepared to be in our rental for the next 4-6 months so as Markee has said "we are going to have to get use to this smell" . Vinny and I can't speak highly enough of the companies we work for, they have been amazing through this entire process. We are going to update the blog when we have new information to share with everyone. Again, we cant thank everyone enough for being here for us during this hard time. Vinny Gomez