Check Your Smoke Alarms

Hello Family,
I hope you are all well. It is unseasonably warm here in the Detroit area. Again we reached over 60 degrees - but the weatherman said to hold onto our socks because a cold front is coming through. Personally I am glad that the mercury will be dropping. My classroom is a sauna when it isn't cold outside. Even moreso (again I don't think moreso is really a word but I'll use it anyway) I want it to snow so that it "feels" and "looks" like Christmas. I'm leading worship on Sunday at my church and we will be doing our first Christmas Hymn of the season: O Come All Ye Faithful. I LOVE the chorus: Come Let Us Adore Him. Really, we could sing that song all year long - isn't' that what life is all about anyway? Adoring God!!

Okay - so you are probably wondering why the title of this post is Check Your Smoke Alarms. This morning my colleague Scott received a call from his wife saying that he needed to come home quickly because they had a house fire. Apparently, around 7am his wife, Melissa, was awoken by the smoke alarm (they check theirs routinely). She sprung out of bed - grabbed her 4 and 2 year olds and then bolted out of the house. She then called 911, went back into the house and started putting out the fire in their family room with the fire extinguisher. The entire 1st response team showed up - fire - police - ambulance. Everyone was okay - but their family room is now covered in soot and a plastic residue. The fire investigator determined that they had overloaded a surge protector with their fish tank and Christmas lights. The plastic surge protector caught on fire and so did the Christmas tree (I don't know if it was real or artificial). Anyhow - it was a great reminder to me to check my smoke alarms. When I went to check my alarm upstairs I realized that I had taken the battery out of it this summer because early one morning this past July, I was in the shower - NAKED - when I heard the smoke alarm go off in my house. I bolted upstairs (what a sight to behold) to check it out and there wasn't a fire - the alarm just had gone haywire. Needless-to-say I went to Costco today and bought new batteries tonight and will install them before I go to bed tonight.

Dad is in Japan on a business trip this week - so mom is holding down the fort in Atlanta! She just finished all of her decorating - I am sure it is BEAUTIFUL!!

Post Challenge: I would love to hear about your favorite Christmas Gift from years past!!

Happy days to you.
Tracy