Ah a picture perfect family portrait right?

Not so fast, says 2022. It’s going to take some doing. We had planned to do a repeat of the Kindness Wars portrait from last year on their front steps. But then this happened. A gas leak.

It all began last night on New Year’s Eve. My husband and I came home from an early night out of celebration and smelled gas. (We went to Disney Hall and saw Pink Martini live… highly recommend.) We walked around the street and could not place it. Figured someone was grilling on a BBQ and we were smelling propane. This morning our neighbors to our left, the first heroes of our story, came by to say they smelled gas the last couple of days and were thinking of calling the fire department. Turns out several other people said they smelled it too.

The next heroes in our story, the fire department, showed up and walked the area trying to pinpoint the smell. Turns out the smell was coming from around Max and Paige’s house across the street from us. The big scare came while I was calling Max, the fireman while knocking on their door, looked at me and said, “have you seen them this morning?”.

I was in touch by text with Max, but not Paige, and the thought of someone asleep in the house and the meaning of that question hit me. I quickly got a call back from Max, and they were thankfully together having brunch. They asked me to get the dog out of the house while they hurried home. I went with the firemen and grabbed Toula. They went in and confirmed the gas was not inside the house but leaking somewhere outside. Seems a pipe under the sidewalk in front of their house was the culprit. Recent roadwork and rain settling the earth underneath.

And now our 3rd set of heroes arrive from the Gas Company. Working that holiday overtime. (Make that money guys, you deserve it after digging a huge hole, a lot of it by hand, on New Year’s Day during a f-ing pandemic). Needless to say, the truck in front of the house was not going to allow for our photo, so off we went to the park.

Now here is what this post was actually supposed to be about today. In last year’s photo you will notice there is a different dog.

Kindess War post here

Reggie passed away not 3 months after that photo. Then sometime later last year, Toula came into their lives, and this week she turned 1-year-old. Time for a new family portrait with the furbaby. I thought it would be fitting to take a similar photo exactly a year later in the same spot, but nothing ever seems to go as planned these days. We are all thankful that the gas leak was caught early and zero tragedy occurred.