Fire Drill

There is a reason I sleep with PJs on. I'm deathly afraid of getting caught in my sckivies in the middle of an emergency, like say, a fire. I think it has everything to do with my dad being a volunteer fireman and growing up having fire drills all the time, or watching videos of how a fire spreads. When we'd watch a hollywood movie that included fire scenes, my dad would criticize it, pointing out that that is not how it really is. When I go to bed at night, I review in my mind what I will do in case of fire, how I will get my children out safely.
Imagine the adreneline rush when we were jolted from our sleep this a.m. by the shrill beeping of the smoke alarms. My worst fears were being realized. This was not a dream. This was not a drill. This was for real. My plan immediately went into action. I yelled at Cory and bolted to the twins room. There was no time to think about anything else. As I'm running out carrying Isaac and Ben, Cory is standing in our bedroom doorway with this look of confusion on his face. "What's that? What's going on?" he asked. The two older boys are sitting up in their beds asking the same thing. At about that time the smoke alarms stop their blaring and I looked at Cory like 'are you serious? You don't know what that is?' All I could say was, "Grab your boys and get the heck out of here!" We weren't smelling or seeing smoke, though, so we deposited myself and the boys on the doorstep and sent Cory back in to inspect. He didn't find anything, but I still wasn't sure. I wasn't going to send my most precious possessions back to their beds until I knew there was nothing going on, so we grabbed some blankets for our freezing boys and headed over to the neighbors while we waited for the fire dept.
I am happy to report that after a quick inspection with their infrared cameras and all was declared safe, we were able to go back to our own beds. The only thing we could come up with was the heater kicking up abunch of dust. (Yeah. Can you believe, not even a break from AC to heater.) Ammon and Sam were scared and ended up in bed with us. I think it only took me a couple of hours to go back to sleep.
Maybe someday I will be able to laugh about this. Or then again, maybe not. My adreneline is still pumping this morning. I'm just grateful to be sitting here at the computer this morning in my own home. We made sure we said a prayer before going back to bed, thanking Heavenly Father for keeping us safe. I hope we don't ever have to go through that again. I think Cory knows what the smoke alarms sound like now. I know what we will be doing for FHE next week.
Oh, and I am grateful I didn't get caught in my sckivies.