smoke alarm misadventure

I had to blog about this because it's so funny/annoying. About midnight our smoke alarms all through the house start blaring. We raced around the house trying to figure out what it was. The poor boys were in their beds curled up in fetal positions with their hands over their ears. Charlee was sleeping right through it until I opened her door. Anyway, we couldn't figure out why they wouldn't turn off, so we finally had to call the fire dept. They told us to wait outside for them to arrive. We got the kids and waited in the car. When they came, Jason went inside with them. The boys thought it was totally cool that there was a fire truck (with their lights on and everything) and firemen at our house.

Well, after what seemed like hours (it was probably only about 30 min) the firemen came out and I asked what was wrong. They said that it is common in our base housing for dust to get into the smoke alarms and set them off. So they had blown the dust out. They left and we put the kids back to bed and not 2 minutes later the alarms were back on again. It was so nerve wracking!! We called the fire dept again and they said that it was now a housing maintenance problem. So we waited with the kids in the car again (the house was just too dang loud) and the guy took forever getting here. Here is the really funny part. (sorry if this is distasteful to some, but I think it's hilarious) James said, "Mom, I think I set the fire alarm off this time cuz when I went to the bathroom I accidentally farted." He was so serious! He was like, "I'm really sorry, it was an accident." After laughing really hard, I assured him that it was not his fault that the fire alarms were going off, it was just probably still dust. I'm not sure he believed me, I think he was convinced that this was his doing.

Jason went in again when the housing guy showed up while I stayed with the kids. They watched Cars on our laptop and I tried (unsuccessfully) to snooze. By this time it was almost 2 in the morning. So Jason came out and said the guy had replaced our smoke alarm and we could all go back to bed. Needless to say, we are all a little tired and grumpy. Poor Jason had to get up early and go on alert.