Excitement

 We had a bit of excitement on Tuesday night (actually early Wednesday morning, a little after 2 a.m.).  I woke to a very annoying beeping sound.  PC said he had heard a noise earlier that had woken him, but he wasn't sure what the beeping sound was.  It definitely wasn't a fire alarm, but I thought maybe it was the CO detector in the basement.  As I got up to go check it out, though, I realized it was coming from the kitchen.  My first thought was that someone had accidentally set a timer on the microwave.  When I got to the kitchen, however, I quickly realized it was the stove.  It read "ERR" and just kept beeping. I tried to stop it, but no matter what I did, it would not stop.  Then I realized that all the appliances were reading "12:00."  We had electricity now, but I thought something was weird.  Then we heard this really loud popping sound.  PC and I both thought it was coming from the garage.  He thought the springs were breaking loose, and my first thought was someone was trying to break into the house.  The next thing I see are these flashes of light coming from the backyard.  They were coming from the side of the house where we have no windows, so I couldn't get a good look, but it looked like the neighbors were doing fireworks!  I couldn't figure out what was going on.  Finally, I got a good look out the boys bedroom window.  This is what I saw:

 I immediately called 911 and told them that my neighbor's house was on fire.  (I wish I could have gotten a better picture, or at least to show how it was sparking like crazy fireworks.)  In my 2 a.m., not fully awake state, I still thought it was a break-in. I thought someone was using fireworks to set up against their house to get in.  I know it makes no sense whatsoever, but oh well.  It was an electric fire and all our neighbors were outside and aware of it.  The dad was spraying it, trying to keep it from spreading.  The firetrucks arrived really quickly (one of the many blessing of having a fire station really close by!) and they soon had it in hand.  Unfortunately, with three firetrucks in our front yard with their lights going on, we didn't get much sleep until they left.  They were there until after 5:00 am.  The boys had it the worst because their windows were facing it so well.  The girls, however, slept through the entire thing. They had no idea that anything had happened.

The next day, we talked with the neighbors.  They lost a lot, especially due to smoke damage and will be staying in a hotel for the next few weeks while their home is restored.  We were just really glad that no one was hurt and it wasn't worse than it was.