Well, That Was Interesting!

We're all fine!

However, a couple of nights ago we had a little scare!  Around 9:45 (at night, obviously) we were watching TV and heard one of the smoke detectors start to chirp.  We were thinking that it was just a low battery that would need to be replaced.  Heard it a couple more times, then it stopped.  Fast forward an hour, we're in bed, everything is locked up for the night, and ALL the smoke detectors started to go off!  Holy cow the noise!  Mark immediately went to search out the source and I got Cole out of bed and was standing outside Kara's room, ready to snatch her up if necessary.  Mark came up a few minutes later and couldn't find anything wrong, but he also couldn't turn them off.  So we ended up calling the Fire Department and they arrived within a few minutes.  

We quickly changed out of our pj's in case we had to evacuate, got Cole downstairs and into his coat and shoes, and finally carried Kara out of bed and had a blanket ready to wrap around her.  She slept through all of the noise!  For at least 25 minutes, with a smoke detector in her room!  Mercy, does she sleep hard or what?  Fire engine, fire chief's truck, and 4 men wearing all their gear and carrying their axes came through.  Turns out one of the detectors was faulty and tripped them all.  Two of them walked around with Mark and talked to him about a few things, and the other two stayed in the family room with the three of us.  Cole was awake enough to appreciate that they were here, but man, had that happened during the day we would have really enjoyed ourselves and probably asked a ton of questions.  So about 11:45 we got the kids back to bed (thankfully no problems with that) and we just sat on the couch and tried to relax.  All's well that end's well and at least we have an interesting story to tell!

Here is our Public Safety announcement.  We did learn that smoke detectors only last 5-8 years, and should have the year printed somewhere on them.  Ours were from 2001!  So while I was getting the kids back in bed, Mark was ordering six new ones from Amazon.  So something else good came of the experience.  Go check the date on your smoke detectors!