Surprise Guests

Monday afternoon, I received a call from Colorado. Since I’d just picked up Lily, I let it go to voicemail. I briefly thought, “who would be calling from Colorado? I have an aunt and uncle there…” I didn’t actually think it would be them, but lo and behold, it was! They were wrapping up a trip and would be driving through on their way back to Colorado. I invited them to stop in, and stay the night if they wanted.

The joy of having a dedicated guestroom, we always have room for more! The girls and I were so excited for Mike and Dot’s arrival. We spent some time showing them around, catching up, and when Loran got home, we all headed out for dinner and a quick tour of the area.

Lily picked her favorite restaurant, “Pasketti and Neatballs” and off we went for a festive Italian meal and a little park time before the rain set in. As we toured the nearby area, lightening lit up the sky in the distance. We were predicted to receive quite a bit of rain overnight. After the girls went to bed, Mike pestered Chelsey’s cat and we stayed up chatting awhile longer as the rains set in.

Why the updates on the weather? Because once we went to bed, that weather made things interesting. It rained, there was lightning and rumbles of thunder. The power blinked on and off a few times, and when you have house guests, you suddenly realize how noisy your house is when the power flickers. Every little gadget seems to beep or sing a little tune when it is powered on. The girls woke up when the power was off and both started crying because of the dark.

Then after some flickers and a brief outage, around 2am, the power went out for good. Not a big deal, except that our smoke detectors suddenly realized without power, their batteries were also low. Sure, the chirp every minute or so is bad enough, but apparently, our detectors like to talk to us. They chirp, then announce, “low battery”. Thanks. I don’t know why these things can’t be hushed for six hour stints since they always like to chirp in the middle of the night. In our old houses, I’ve been known to rip one down and toss it outside until morning. But when it’s actually wired to the ceiling, that seems like a lot of extra work.

Loran and I stumbled around, got the alarm panel to stop beeping, another nice feature to let us know the power is out…thanks. Then we had the tall ladder out to change the smoke detector battery. Poor Loran is up on the ladder trying to get a battery into the detector in the dark, as I try to use my phone as a flashlight, and because it’s wired in, he can’t bring it down to a comfortable level. Once the battery was in, it started talking to us and told him to push the test button. So he did. And it set the whole system off! Every detector starts alarming and yelling, “FIRE, FIRE!” He managed to get the whole thing quieted and out of chaos came peace.

Interestingly enough, our children do not wake up when things are beeping, alarms are sounding and FIRE! is being called out. That’s nice to know. Mike and Dot didn’t seem to be in a hurry to evacuate the possibly burning premise either.

The power was not yet on when it was time to get Ella up. She got ready by flashlight and candlelight. Lily got up with her in all of the excitement. Mike and Dot were up shortly after. As we were getting Ella’s shoes and backpack on, the lights came on. There was much rejoicing, mostly because that also meant the coffee could start flowing!

Mike and Dot left before Lily went off to school. After school Lily was immediately asking for “Dots.” “Where’s Dots?” All in all, a fun and memorable night with our houseguests. So, we have a guest room, we also have working smoke detectors, and our house is very noisy if the power goes out. You’ve been warned.