Final "Go See It"

Today we had our final "Go See It" for Cub Scouts. Gage and the rest of our den will be graduating into the Wolf den on May 19. For our final "Go See It" we visited the fire station. It was very interesting and I believe we all learned a lot.

The den checks out the inside of the fire truck. Emma should be able to advance right on with the rest of the den, as she has attended almost all of the activities as well. (Other than Gage, she has attended more activities than the rest of the group!)

The kids even got to get up inside the fire truck and check it out!!

Fireman Dale shows the den all of the equipment that he carries with him in his pockets and what it's used for.

Here, fireman Dale is showing the kids how they are supposed to be down to the ground and crawl through the house to stay below the smoke. He also hooked himself up to the oxygen tank so the kids could hear what it sounded like, and to show them how important it is not to be scared of the fireman because he's dressed up in all that gear, and sounds a little scary talking through the oxygen mask!

Gage and his den at the Fire Station.

Well, of course Emma needs to be included in the group! Like I said before, she's done everything that's required to advance into the Wolf den as well!

I also learned something new today. First, I will tell you about the other night. Somehow Emma accidentally set her alarm clock in her bedroom. She has a nifty alarm clock that initially goes off with a blinking light to wake you up, which is supposed to be a better way to wake up than the buzzing alarm; however, if you don't wake up, the flashing gets more intense, and then the buzzer will go off as well. Anyway, I was downstairs in the basement blogging, as I am right now and when I finished, I went upstairs and heard this strange noise. At first, I thought it was water running in the bathroom, but when I opened the bathroom door, nothing was making noise in there. I then opened Emma's door and was startled by the intense flashing of her clock, and the buzzing alarm. What disturbed me most is that Emma was sleeping like a rock! I thought to myself, "Man, that's not good! What if that were the smoke detector?" Anyway, tonight at the fire station, I learned that they now have new smoke alarms you can get that you can actually record your own voice telling them they need to wake up and get out of the house because there is a fire (or whatever you want that message to say). Studies show that kids wake up easier to the sound of their parents' voices, rather than alarm clocks. One of the other parents told a story of how they had tried setting an alarm to get their son to wake up in the morning for school, and he would sleep right through it. They then made a CD of them telling him it was time to wake up and get ready for school, which goes off instead of the buzzing alarm, and he apparently wakes right up and gets out of bed!!! I am definitely going to be looking for those smoke detectors and hopefully they won't be too awfully expensive, as I would like to replace all of our existing detectors with the new voice alarm. What a good invention!!!

It was an interesting "Go See It". We learned that the firemen come to work at 7 a.m. and get off of work at 7 a.m. the next morning. The fire station we visited is fairly new and they actually have a small house-like area built onto the station. They each have their own bedrooms to sleep in. They also have their own cupboards and refrigerator, as well as their own recliner chair (they even have the recliner chairs numbered!). Apparently they were supplied with a little 13-inch television which wasn't much fun to watch, so they all pitched in ($20 each) and purchased a great big screened television! The kids were pretty impressed by that! It is a nice place, which is good because they should have a nice place to be if they have to be away from home for 24 hours straight each time they go to work.

The weather was much nicer here today without as much wind. The kids spent a lot of time outside today. Gage made his way over to our next-door neighbors and sat out front with them and helped them clean out their flower bed. He told them that he thought we should get this kind of work done on our place in Tuttle, because he was sure our neighbors there were irritated by the fact that we don't mow very often there. HA! HA! I don't think our neighbors in Tuttle care in the least, it's our neighbors here who wished we were more diligent about digging up our dandelions! :-) He had a nice conversation with them and I think they enjoyed it as much as he did!