Neither Blain Elementary nor West Perry School District Superintendent Michael O'Brien would comment for this story. That absence begins with Christina, the February birthday girl who'd be having that milestone celebration. "It is painful and difficult right now," he remembers preaching. They traded one-liners, and a father left his daughter laughing in her bed.“She said something, and I said something back,” Ted recounts. 'Playing With Smoke' 
 
 The night of March 8, 2011, became anything but routine. Their eight children were just settling in to sleep, and only one made it out. Or perhaps the fire was too fast and there was too much smoke. Even if some were already upstairs, they might have had time to escape. Perhaps, she then ran into the living room with the blanket smoldering and smoking. Janelle bolted for the front door and burst inside. The stranger's face registers shock at this. Tragic fire that killed 7 children in Pa. still haunts those who fought it 
 
 "Every time I drive by there, I think of those children, adds Zellers. Unable to enter her burning home, Janelle ran to a neighbor's to have them call 911. It was going on 11 p.m. She knew Teddy would still be at his first stop on his milk route, so Janelle took off in the van to get him. The teachers took it hard, the children, everyone. Amid all that quiet came questions, whispered inside her own mind, about whether she had done enough to get the children out of the fully engulfed house. In that devastating moment, a father knew in his heart that seven of his children were gone: Christina, 11, Isabelle, 9, Brady, 7, Hannah, 6, Heidi, 4, Miranda, 18 months, and Samantha, 9 months. When the Clouses' farmhouse caught fire, they could do nothing but watch it. Less clear is why more of the children didn't follow Leah out of the house. "When someone dies, time kind of stops," Janelle explains. On the night of the fire, both parents waited at the scene until each one of their children were brought out in body bags. "It was hard on our firefighters," says Lou Ann, who declined to give her last name, saying everyone in town knows her. "He's always happy and greets you with a smile, and it makes your day better when you see him," Janelle Clouse said. She also tries not to think about the day of the funeral, when they buried seven small, white caskets. It has more cows than ever, and calves are expected to join the herd. "You never know how long you're going to have with a loved one, and you better make the best of it, because there's no promise that tomorrow they're going to be there to hug and kiss and love on," Janelle Clouse said. But if the year since the fire has sometimes seemed like a lifetime to her parents, it really has been one for little Leah. "Soon I'll be telling people that we have 13 children," she says. For the most part, though, the Clouse household is a monument to safety. "I do have dreams of the children, dreams of stuff, of life that would've happened if they were here, and then you wake up and reality hits again," Janelle Clouse said. “I know it’s just a dream, but in my dream, everything is back to normal,” Janelle says. So, it always helps preoccupy your mind, I guess." The fact is, there's no one who can know what it's like. One time, looking at the pictures of her brother and sisters, Leah said, "These people died in the fire." The cause of the fire remains undetermined. Such questions continue to haunt, but at least all that deafening quiet is gone. “I don’t know if I’d want to be able to picture it exactly,” she says. One of the first instincts many people had upon hearing about the tragedy was an overwhelming compulsion to give something to the family that had lost so much. The two parents like to tease each other about this topic, which is far from settled. "Yes, Ted's good at making girls," Janelle Clouse said. Amish, Mennonite and "English," alike, banded together and built the Clouses' new home, which is located across from the original house's ruins. "And it's just kind of like, 'No, it's not, because it should've been eight girls and two boys.' They received thousands of cards and letters. Janelle knew something was wrong even before the little girl spoke. In turn, Leah has lost all memory of her departed brother and sisters, as well. In time, she came to accept her new blessings on their own terms, even if Gabriel is a spitting image of Brady. It matters not that her hands are now full with five young children, another one on the way. It happens when some well-meaning woman spots Janelle and her five children, then comments on what a big, beautiful family she has. Ted, the dairy farm novice, has settled into his full-time role on the family farm. There has never been a precise, definitive ruling. Her husband, Ted, was on his nightly milk truck run, making collections at other dairy farms within a 40-mile radius. She’s the one who knows the ins and outs of the family enterprise. Janelle wonders whether the birth will fall on one of the other children’s June birthdays. He has not run a route since, spending all his time now at the farm, where he's closer to home. So when fire swept the Clouse family farmhouse just outside of Blain, taking seven of the family's eight children, all of Perry County rallied like never before. At Blain Elementary, where three of the Clouse children taken in the fire attended, there is a memorial bench and seven planted trees, one for each of the young lives lost. They said the memories are always with them, and sometimes it's beyond their control. Those treasurers of time in a bottle, to be forever preserved. "People that don't know you, like in the store and stuff, say, 'Oh that's so cute, you have a boy and a girl,'" Janelle Clouse said.
– The loss was so enormous, the tragedy so unthinkable, it made national news five years ago in March 2011. A family of 10—eight children and their parents—were reduced to three in one cruel night in rural Pennsylvania when a fire of still unknown origins swept through their 100-year-old farmhouse and claimed seven of the children's lives, reported PennLive in 2012. There were so many fundraisers that sponsors had to wait in line for space at local picnic grounds and fire halls, reports PennLive now. But as mother Janelle Clouse put it, the fire that nearly destroyed them didn't, and life went on, literally, with the birth of her son Gabriel just four months later. Then came Yvonne, who is now 3, then Gordon, who is 2, and Jedidiah, who is 10 months. Now Janelle is expecting a boy in April, which will bring the number of living children, including Leah, the only to survive the fire, to six, reports the AP. The family, always busy with chores on their dairy farm, was going about the usual routine that fateful March night when Leah, who was 3 at the time, found her mother tending to the cows in the barn and, visibly frightened, said, "Miranda is playing with smoke." The thinness of her voice, the light breaking through the darkness, and the scent of smoke on the wind had Janelle racing for the house. Six of the children were found upstairs, some huddled under beds, while baby Samantha was in her crib in the living room, just out of reach of Janelle, who will never forget watching, helpless, the fire take almost everything with it. (The children all died of smoke inhalation.) Today the Clouses say they're thankful for the many in their community and beyond—from as far as Hawaii and Australia—who sent cards, letters, and money, reports WGAL. They've kept every last one in their sturdy new brick house built across the street.