One Exciting Morning

Yesterday, as we were getting ready for our day, our smoke alarm went off. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence in our house. I was upstairs, and I ran down the stairs to see who had burned something. No one was anywhere near the kitchen. We ran through the house looking and smelling for smoke or fire, and we couldn't find anything. I went outside to see if I noticed anything from the outside of the house. There was one spot on the roof without snow, but there was really nothing to see. The fire alarm would take a break about every 5 minutes. It would stop for less than 30 seconds and then start right up again. It was more than my little family could take. Max took refuge under the table, hoping that would make it stop. Allen grabbed our biggest pair of headphones and put them on his head. Makenzie tried to outscream our fire alarm. I tried to figure what to do, and still get my kids ready for school on time.

I called my husband, and he said that it is probably too cold in our house, and the batteries couldn't handle it. I told him that was stupid (keep in mind I had been listening to a screeching fire alarm for at least 15 minutes.) He calmly tried to scientifically explain to me why it wasn't stupid, which I really wasn't in the mood for. I wanted him to make it stop! I huffily got off the phone with him, and I called my mom. She recommended calling the fire department to see if they had any suggestions. That sounded more pro-active than waiting for our batteries to feel warm, so I called them. They asked about the last time we replaced the batteries. I felt pretty good about myself when I told them we changed the batteries at the end of daylight savings time and they complimented me. Score one for the emergency preparedness scouting program, and for my parents who picked up our 9 volt batteries in bulk!! After asking several questions, they suggested we have some firemen come out and check everything out.

I had the kids watch for them, because I knew we would never hear the knock, or the doorbell over the high pitched smoke alarm. They came in their bright red fire truck. The kids were very excited. They followed the firemen around like little puppy dogs as they checked out our house. Allen said "Real live firemen! . . . In our house!!" They found the smoke alarm that was causing the problems (all of our smoke detectors are connected, so when one goes off, they all go off) and they determined that it was dusty. They recommended we vacuum out our smoke detectors when we replace the batteries. So, a little dust made our already hectic morning downright crazy. But, in spite of everything, I almost got the kids to school on time (we were 2 minutes late!).