Not That Festive

Christmas came a couple days early to my house. This is because I picked up some overtime and worked Christmas Eve. I worked at station 42 which has an engine and truck company and a BC.

No. We were not this festive.

The morning was low key. We were on mandated holiday mode (yes, the fire chief actually put out an email saying that the crews were not to be doing projects or inspections or training....we were to be relaxing and enjoying the holiday). We ran a few calls and made a last minute trip to the grocery store. Thankfully the truck went and braved the crowds.

Early in the afternoon we started cooking. We were having a ton of food. Turkey and roast, potatoes (we peeled an entire 10 lb bag) and almost anything else you can think of for a holiday dinner. At 1500 hours family members started to show up. They would be trickling in over the next two hours. My wife and kids showed up just in time to see us tearing out of the station on a call.

We had 8 kids under the age of 7 running around the station. Luckily our station has a circular hallway and the kids were able to chase each other around and around. They also got to crawl all around, over and through the engine and the truck. My kids even got a ride with lights and sirens around the station (out the apparatus bay and then to the back of the station). That may not seem like much but to little kids it was awesome!

After dinner and cleaning up we grabbed some presents that had been bought by the regular crew there at the station. They had "adopted" a couple of low income families that didn't have much to give their kids for Christmas. We headed out and made a couple of deliveries hopefully brightening Christmas for a few kids and their parents.

To top it all off we slept through most of the night.

It was a good day to be a firefighter.


Merry (belated) Christmas.