On June 10, 2002, our house burned to the ground. Luckily, I was on the road and had my ID with me. Brian lost everything...wallet, clothing, etc. Everything you own is hard to lose, but we have memories of the special things we lost. The hardest loss of all was our English Pointer, Salty, who had hidden under the bed and could not escape. Eight days later, we also lost our 12 year-old Barney who had caught kennel cough while being boarded. We did manage to save Ginger who had to recover from smoke inhalation. Ginger lived almost 3 months in an outdoors pen in the hot Mississippi heat while Brian and I moved into an efficiency apartment for 7 months while our house was being rebuilt. In August, we decided to sneak Ginger in with us. In November, our family began to grow again when we brought a new Pointer into our lives. Besides all our belongings being reduced to ash and losing beloved pets, the one thing I will always remember is the generosity of our neighbors and people we didn't even know. The night of the fire, neighbors took Barney and Ginger to safety and took them to our vet the next morning. Our next door neighbor built us a temporary place to keep Ginger while we were trying to decide where we were going to live. Strangers stopped offering clothing, household utensils, etc. I will always remember all of my co-workers sending Wal-Mart gift cards, and our church pitching in to help us. You never know how good people truly are until a tragedy like this happens. I am going to include some pictures of the old house (burned) and some of the pictures of our beautiful new home. I hope you will be reminded of how truly blessed you are. The Old     The New