With a title like that, you may be wondering where this post is going.  Well, let me set the stage….

This weekend, we are throwing a Happy #2 Birthday party / glorified play date for the boys.  I asked Joel to make cookies for the occasion.   Did you know that changing one ingredient (butter to margarine) can cause weird affects in cookies?  Thus, the cookies spilled over into the oven and eventually ended up in the garbage can (Joel’s decision, not mine).

My smart idea was to set the oven to “Clean” mode and head upstairs to go to bed.  Normally, when we “clean” the oven, there is a burnt smell that permeates the house.  So, as I got ready for bed, I thought nothing of the smell of smoke wafting up to our bedroom.  But as I climbed into bed, the smell grew stronger.  I was about to turn to Joel and say, “maybe we should go check out the oven before the smoke detector goes off” when, you guessed it, ALL the smoke detectors, of which there are 5 upstairs and two downstairs, started to scream with a fury.

Joel and I leaped from the bed and struggled to get into our robes quick enough.  He ran down the stairs and I headed straight for the boys’ room.  Unbelievably, the smoke detectors seemed to shriek louder.  The boys slept on, blissfully unaware of the chaos going on.  I grabbed Nicky first and then walked to Dexter’s crib.  “Dexter, Dexter – get up.”  No movement.  I grabbed  his arm.  No movement.  Seriously.  I lifted him with one arm, by one arm and clasped both boys to my chest.  I hurried down the stairs and out the front door.  Joel shouts to me “Katie, go to the garage – there is no fire” and then he proceeded to dismantle the smoke detector downstairs.  The beeping ended.

Malin appeared and wondered what was going on.  In a sleep filled haze, she had thought that she had set off the smoke detector in her room.  That’s when Joel informed her that our system is networked and when one smoke detector goes off, they all do.  Funny, I didn’t know that either.

We put the boys to bed and spent 30 minutes attempting to air out the house.  The next morning I looked in the oven because there was no way that much smoke was normal.  Oops – I had left the silicon oven rack protector’s that Joel had bought me to prevent me from burning myself, in the oven when I set it to clean.  They were charred to a crisp.

My parting thought to Joel on this adventure was, hey, at least we know the batteries are still good in all the smoke detectors.