Saturday morning we set out to have a great family morning. We went to the Cincinnati Museum Center, which is a place that our older boys absolutely love. When we got there, I got the two boys to agree to take me to see the Christmas train display (David had already taken them to see it, so I was the only one who hadn't seen it.) We were on our way down into the museum (which if you haven't been to our museum, most of the museum is underground), playing with steamboats along the way, when the fire alarm went off. It took a moment to figure out what it was. Everyone around us looked at each other, wondering if it was for real. We figured it was maybe a test, or someone pulled it. There were no workers around. So we found an emergency exit door near us. The people in front of us started out of it, realizing it was a set of stairs. We had a stroller. After a short moment of considering taking the car seat and leaving the stroller, we decided we weren't that far away from the top of the museum, so we just went out the way we came in (up the ramp to the entrance). I grabbed Jacob, David was pushing the stroller, and we told Matthew to go quickly. All the workers were smiling, but they were directing us out of the museum. I think as our escape went on, my anxiety heightened, that maybe it was really a real fire. But why was everyone smiling? When we got to the rotunda, we could smell something burning - so maybe it was real? Matthew seemed very worried. He almost took off, so concerned with getting out. He often turned around to make sure I was close behind, but he wasn't concerned with staying together. It was a good time to have a discussion about trying to stay together in a situation like that, where there's a lot of people. My phone was in the stroller, so I would not have been able to call David to reconnect. But we did wait for David and the stroller right outside the door. The workers at the museum ushered us outside, out by the fountain (if you are familiar with the set up). At that point we still didn't know what was going on - we just knew it was cold! We waited for a bit, trying to decide if we were going to stay or not. We were determined to have fun as a family, but couldn't come up with an alternative that didn't cost money. We were not prepared to do anything outside. David and I were just in jackets, so we were pretty cold. Within a few minutes, emergency vehicles started arriving. Because the museum is up on a hill, we could see many emergency vehicles coming from far away, from many different directions. Some went behind the museum. But some turned around before they came up the driveway. Only three trucks came up to the front of the museum, one was a huge ladder truck. We finally asked a worker what was going on. There was a kitchen fire in the food service area. The fire was out before the firefighters got there, but they had to clear the smoke. We ended up waiting over an hour, but we stayed until we were allowed it. You could definitely smell something when you went in to the rotunda. We decided to go ahead and eat lunch because at that point it was around 11:30. Then we could just play in the Children's Museum and not have to stop to eat later. We ended up still having a nice time, it was just slightly shorter than we had planned (but we had a chance to learn some lessons, too :) And we didn't go see the trains....oh well, next year!
Here's a picture from the Museum.
Well, our fire alarms didn't end there. Later that evening, for New Year's Eve, we lit a fire in our fire place. I guess some smoke had come in the house. It wasn't a lot. I don't think we even noticed it. David and Matthew were in the living room, Jacob was in his room playing, and I was in my room, feeding the baby. All of a sudden our fire alarm went off in our house. Jacob came running out of his room, so quickly. He ran out to the living room to find David or I. While he was admittedly absolutely scared, we were so proud of him that he acted quickly to get out. Bless his heart, all I could do was hug him. He was so scared. We've had our fix of fires lately. We've had lots of discussions about what to do if there is a fire. Matthew's mind is always thinking, so he often comes up with various situations and what we should do if we are in that situation. I think it's great that he does that, even if the scenarios are a little wacky. I've been meaning to have fire safety night, where we practice different escape routes. Maybe we should do that soon - maybe at the end of the week when the weather is a little warmer :)
So if you see Jacob in the next little bit, ask him about the fire alarm. He'll tell you what it sounded like. It's pretty cute.
