Alarm!!!

The house has an alarm system that we haven't activated since we moved in.  When we first moved in the alarm sounded, we found the code and turned it off and never thought about it again.  Randomly the alarm would sound, but it was never a big deal. 

Then it happened.... the alarm went off in the middle of the night, like 1 a.m..  First it totally mentally freaked me out... what is going on?!  Is someone breaking into the house? Until I remembered we don't have the alarm set up.... so it was fine, but the noise was insane and I hunted down the code and turned it off as fast as I could.  Then I crawled back into bed grateful for that to be over.  At this point Jeff had woken up and wondered why the alarm had been going off.  I dozed back off when about 15 min later the alarm started again!  Jeff got up to deal with it and got it to finally turn off.  Now this was beginning a trend.  Not a great sign for the night. 

The alarm continued to go off every 10 to 15 min and the kids woke up.  Talmage wanted us to call the police (because obviously the alarm was telling us that someone was breaking in).  After explaining that it was probably just a battery dying and it had nothing to do with the police that helped him go back to sleep (as best as he could).  Of course it didn't stop so we had to get violent.  Jeff took off the sirens from around the house (in the halls, and the girls room).  Then we cut some of the wires from the system to disable it.  We felt like we had finally beaten the alarm! 

Of course we were wrong.  The alarm system itself was still going off.  Instead of just cutting a wire or two it was time for the key pads to be dismantled!  The feeling of relief was fabulous!  By this time it's after 2 ;(.  We laid back to bed and decided that we had for sure won this time.  Until, ... 15 min later when again there is a siren.  Seriously... where was it coming from?  We went around listening and found the noise above the laundry room... a hidden alarm siren!  Jeff grabbed a hammer and made a hole in the ceiling to get to it.  It was finally dead!  I'm not sure who the winner was because now we have a hole in our ceiling.  Let's just say that the hammer was the totally logical answer at 2 a.m.!  So glad that finally ended!

 The panels ... removed!

 The sirens ... removed.

The hidden siren located....

and removed!