Terorists? Toxic Spill? Gas Leak? No, it's just Santa.

This is our second Christmas Season in our house down by the lake. Today at the mailboxes, I met a nice man named Paul who is retired and moved here a couple of months ago with his wife. I told him the story of how last year around this time, Rachel and I were sitting on the couch watching a movie. Jake was with Bio-Dad that weekend. We heard sirens, which is a pretty rare around here. Then we heard them again. And again. We went outside, and with the acoustics of the hill and houses, we couldn't pin point where they were coming from. They got louder and louder and sounded like they were coming from all around us. I ran and turned on the scanner (we got a scanner for fire season - it's a little freaky when you see smoke and can't tell how close it is). Nothing on the scanner. But it sounded like they were going street to street, the way they would if there was an evacuation or something.

It turns out it is something they do every year. A big long light parade of emergency vehicles with Santa on top of the fire truck. I heard them tonight and tried to motivate my family, but it's cold out and they were in jammies already. But I hopped in the car and went looking for them. And I snapped a couple of pictures.





Here's a picture of me and Sparky.












It's pretty cool. My camera doesn't do very well at night. But it's really pretty. Lots of lights and Christmas music blaring, and the sirens going off. I got home and the parade was going down Stonegate behind my house. So Rachel and Jake got to see it too from our deck.

And hopefully I saved Paul and his wife from a minor freakout tonight.