"Their names were Curry and Dreamie," said Robyn.  "Curry is short for Courage.  Dreamie looked like a dream-sicle.  She was a fluff ball."  As Robyn talked about the cats, she went to her mother's lap and rested her head near her mother's heart.
What did four-year-old Jake do when he knew there was a fire?  "I ran really fast," he exclaimed.  "I only had a t-shirt on, and my underwear.  I lost my silver power ranger."

The smoke alarm went off about 7:15 that morning.  There were four smoke alarms in the house.  The other three weren't working.  The working alarm was in the basement where the fire started.  Without that working fire alarm, four family members would probably have perished.  "That smoke alarm and ten minutes is the reason Jordy is not an only child today," said Audra.
"I had just replaced the battery about a month ago because it was beeping," said Jim.  "But we had disconnected the one in the kitchen because Jordy was always cooking fish and it was always going off."  Jim's advice today would be:  "Don't ever disconnect a smoke alarm."
"The Victoria Fire Department arrived in less than five minutes," stated Jim.  "The response time was in fact fan-tastic, but it seemed at the time like an eternity.  Chief Gary Sohns was phenomenal.  Every five minutes he was giving us an update."
Said Robyn, "One of the firemen when I was standing by the pine tree came and gave me a blanket.  He said, 'No use in her freezing.'"
Said Jordan, "One of my friends has a dad who is a fireman, Mr. Nelson, who was here."
"I think there were 30 firemen here at different times," said Audra.  "They were so prompt and so courteous."
Said Jim, "I believe there were four fire departments and six fire engines lined up down the road here.  Also a sheriff's car and an ambulance.  Then the Red Cross came in about an hour and a half and gave us vouchers for food, clothing, and shelter."
"It was probably all over by 10 a.m.," he said.  'What a mess it was.  At first it's almost surreal, like it's not really happen-ing.  Then you realize that basically it's your worst fear."
Audra recalled some of the first words of her husband after the fire.  "He said he worked so hard to fix up the house and now it's all gone.  We never realized the damage that smoke can do."

Audra picked up Jordan at Chaska Middle School East at 9:15 a.m. the morning of April 2nd and told her oldest daughter about the fire.
"I just kind of went blank," said the 13-year old.   "It didn't seem like it was really happening.  I lost just about everything, except the negatives from my trip to California to visit my cousins.  I lost my cats that slept with me and blankets that people made for me."
Since Jordan's bedroom was in the basement, it was a cool room and she often used an electric space heater for added warmth.  It's the extension cord to the space heater that caused the fire, although the heater hadn't been turned on that night.
"The firemen explained that the electrical flow can continue after it's turned off," said Audra, "and if you set something on top of the extension cords, that keeps the heat in."
Audra said Jordan also lost her CD's and some of her large spoon collection.  Jordan sort of shrugged at those losses and spoke of something else.  "I had a wooden cradle that my grandpa made for me when I was little ... My rollerblades had been inside of it ... You couldn't tell they were rollerblades ..."
What was close to Audra's heart that is forever gone?  She replied, "I can honestly say that I don't think there's anything.  I've got my children.  My photographs were upstairs and they figure they'll be fine after they're washed.  There's not a whole lot of stuff I'll miss."
Jim sat quietly on the front lawn of their sad home, quietly listening, then spoke up.  "There was the clock that my grandmother gave us for our wedding.  It was in the living room ... and my guitar.  Jordy was learning how to play the guitar.  It was down in her bedroom.  I bought it new in 1987."
Then Robyn recalled that her trom-bone was wrecked, but that Schmitt Music and Mrs. Morrissey gave her a loaner "for free."
"We want to say thank you to so many people," said Audra, "to all of our old friends and friends we've just met.  The school district has been wonderful.  And Target Corporation gave us certificates to go through their new sample clothes for our kids."
"After we moved to that apartment, pickups kept backing up to our door with furniture and items we needed," said Jim. 
"My school had a collection and gave us a $265 gift certificate to Target and then another $20 gift certificate to Target," said Robyn.
"My school collected maybe $500 for us and my teacher Mr. Moran gave me his coffee pot," said Jordan.
"One of the teachers, Miss Mowry, gave us a sack load of shoes," said Audra, "and I'm the lucky one because they fit me!"
Audra spoke highly of a company called Christians Incorporated Insurance Restoration.  "They take care of everything for us," she said.  "Our insurance company, State Farm, called them.  They complete the inventory, do the cleanup, restore sentimentals, destruct and construct walls, paint, wood renewal, carpeting, flooring.  We'd be going nuts without them.  They were compassionate as they emptied our house for us and seemingly threw away 12 years of our life."

There were tears from Robyn and Jordan the day of the fire.  Audra didn't cry for three or four days.   "I guess I was trying to have courage for the children," she said. 
Jim took three days off work because of the fire, and Monday morning was back on the job.  The kids are back  in the same classrooms at school.  Jake enjoys being Jake.  From the outside, things don't look so different.  From the inside, many things have changed.
Jordan thinks about what might have been.  "That morning I had been thinking about staying home and sleeping in because I wasn't feeling good," she said.  Jordan is alive because she went to school.
And the other family members are alive because Robyn paid attention to the sound of a smoke alarm, went to her mother, and then did as her mother said.  It's about the best Mother's Day gift anybody could ask for.