To Do: Get new Fire Alarms

Is there anything more frightening than having the fire alarm go off at 2am, 4am, etc?

I think not.

Ok, so occasionally (I admit) my cooking sends off the smoke detector.  That's understandable.  Though the other day all I did was preheat the oven and off it went!  While it's frustrating to have to go get a ladder just to shut the darn thing up, I can deal with it.

But these middle of the night fire alarms--I'm done with them!

Again last night, the smoke detectors--which are those electric setup fancy schmancy crap that if one goes off they all go off (and to add to it, blasts "Fire, Fire")--went off at 1:58am.  That's approximately that my heart goes into heart attack mode.  At 2 am, I'm dead asleep.  But that sound makes my heart stop and I jump so fast out of the bed you wouldn't believe it.  And needless to say, Parker doesn't sleep through them either.  We've got it down now.  I make a dash for Parker and Matt pushes all the buttons trying to get the darn thing off.

The first time it happened, I truly thought the house was on fire.  Matt actually slept through that one.  How, I have not idea!  I've since been telling him that I guess he wasn't fibbing when he says he can't hear the baby monitor going off in the night.  It's funny what thoughts immediately go through your head.  Ok, so one of my first thoughts was "oh lordy, why do I have on the ugliest pajamas tonight?  What if this was all I was left with?"  Then I worry about pictures, what's in the safe, where is the closest fire department, maybe I should keep the phone on the nightstand, etc.

Every single time this happens (I can almost fill my hand counting)...it reminds me so much of my days back in college at 4-H House.

The house of 55 girls slept in 2 dormers.  Because it was campus housing, every time the fire alarms went off, the house had to be evacuated.  I can still visualize many, many nights when we went down the emergency stairs, in our pjs and slippers and maybe grabbing a cover off the bed.  Seems like then, it was usually a cold, snowy night!  Many nights did we stand on the sidewalk facing the house, just wondering when we could get back to catching zzzz's.  I never imagined though that those nights would one day be good memories :)

So needless to say, on today's to-do list, is to call the new housing rep and request that these faulty electrical smoke detectors be changed out to just those old fashioned battery operated ones.  I've got a husband who will remember to change the batteries when the clocks change!  Because let me tell you, the Ervins need all the ZZZZ's we can get!