Saturday night fright

I don’t think our babysitter will ever want to come back to our house. This past Saturday we had Clair watch our boys, and I had remarked that she would have it easy as the older two had already fell asleep for the night. As we walked outside to get in our vehicle, we hear an incessant buzzing. We finally realize that we can hear the smoke detector going off in the neighbor’s house. That presents a dilemma as he is in the nursing home, so the house sits empty. We do not see or smell smoke, so we didn’t think that it was an emergency. We got on the internet trying to find a phone number for the neighbor’s brother. However he must only have a cell phone number and not a land line because it pulled up his address but no phone number. Unsure what to do, and reluctant to leave two sleeping kids home with the sitter in case there really is a fire and they would have to evacuate, we try calling the town cop. Only there is no answer and the recording says to call the sheriff department. Bruce calls the sheriff department and explains the situation to them. We then go outside to wait for someone to show up, and soon we see a former neighbor walking down the street from his parent’s house. He explains that he is on the fire department and heard the call from the sheriff to respond. Once he appears, we are trying doors to see if we can get in and determine where the smoke detector may be only to find the doors are locked. As the guys are trying to figure out their next move, another fireman showed up in his personal truck. Quickly they explain the situation and they start looking for a way to enter the house when they realize that the noise is coming from the porch. They find a garbage bag and pinpoint that the noise is coming from there. They put on some gloves, dig thru the trash and find the defective smoke detector. Crisis averted!

We head to Versailles for a house party at one of our friends, and saw how black the sky was. I remarked that it looked like it was raining pretty heavy over to the northwest. We drove thru some rain, and about a mile from the house we realize that the radio was turned way down. We turn it up in order to hear a storm warning saying that a tornado was spotted in Piqua and the path was going to hit Newport, Ft Loramie and Minster. Uh-oh. Bruce and I talked about going home, or at least calling home, but decided that we didn’t want to scare the sitter. After we were at the house for about 10-15 minutes, Bruce gets a call from the sitter that said her Dad was going to pick her and the boys up and take them back to her house. We then talked about going home, but didn’t think that an actual tornado would hit and we would be driving home in the midst of the storm so we just stayed put. When we got home later that evening, the kids were home and sleeping. What a scary Saturday night for the sitter!

The boys were excited the next morning that they got to play on a Wii and they said that played other games in the basement too. No scary moments for them, only fun times!