Union Township Fire Station Tour and Our Day Today!

This morning we went and toured a local fire station that is located under a water tower. One of the mom's in our 4-H group set up the tour for our group. Very cool and very educational! It is about 30 minutes from here, but it was so worth the drive to see and tour it! Our tour guide was amazing and the tour took 2 hours, but no one seemed to get bored or wanted to leave. The two little boys had never done a fire station tour (that they remember) and they were both in awe of the HUGE trucks. I took a picture of Luke standing next to the truck tire, it was a good 6" (maybe even a foot) taller than he is!














































Another cool thing was that he completely dressed out Emily in all of the fire gear...all 70 lbs of it! It was so funny when he was looking for a volunteer, he kept saying he wanted someone about his size (he was MAYBE 5' 3" with shoes on) so Emily was completely NOT paying attention to him and he says....with BLONDE hair and wearing a PURPLE jacket, she was shocked that he had picked her. Yeah, the same size as him, in his DREAMS....Emily is 5' 8". I couldn't believe EVERYTHING that a firefighter has to put on to go into a burning building. I have such respect and awe for firefighters, to put yourself in harms way to save others. It takes a very special person!

















































Here is a link http://www.union-township.oh.us/fire/stations.html#51 not that it is that great of a picture. The building/water tower is 140 ft tall and 78 ft in diameter. The first 4 floors are the fire station (1 and 2), living quarters/offices (3) and a public tv station (4)...those are the levels with windows, above that sits the 2 million gallons of water! It was a little freaky to realize that 2 million gallons of water (at 8 lb a gallon) was overtop of us the entire time. I think the funniest thing he told us what that when they finished the building, there wasn't enough water pressure on the 4th floor for the toilets to flush! So we learned water towers AREN'T for water pressure, they are for water quantity!

The van wouldn't start after we made a quick stop at Office Max on the way home. Had to wait for a friend to come and jump the battery for me. Luckily it was in the lowers 20s so we didn't get too cold waiting the 45 minutes for her to get there. We ran into the $ Store to get snacks to munch on while we waited and the kids entertained themselves by drawing pictures, I was surprised they did as well as they did! We replaced the battery about 4 years ago, but I guess with it being a V-8 it drains/draws a lot of juice...I have no idea, I just hope it is only the battery and not the alternator or something else.

This afternoon, Hannah has a job interview, she has to go back tomorrow for another interview and to do some personality test. She actually got the interview from a customer when she was working at the mall at Santa Express, the asst. manager of the place was in line with his kids and really liked Hannah and her personality so he asked her to come and interview with his manager. Jacob has a basketball game tonight, Jay and Brett took him. Emily is at dance. It is snowing and the roads are getting icy! I hate that! I slide halfway down the hill on Butterworth, praying that there was nothing coming and thanking that Lord that if it was my time to go that it was only me in the van and not the kids.

Chili is on the stove and we will be having 3-ways and coneys for dinner once the troops have all returned home!