Brittany's Joy: adventures in my hometown

Hi all! Hope you had a great Easter. Ours was pretty low-key this year as there were just four of us for dinner, but it was still packed full of love and memories, and we certainly will be referring back to this day for years: "Remember that Easter that grandpa went out on the scooter?!?". More on all that later ;)

A few weeks ago, we went up to my hometown for a little visit-with-some-work-thrown-in-for-Tim week. A whole week! It was glorious. Here are the sparknotes:

meadow hiking

a family hike in Bort Meadow

The Grass Valley meadow, one of our favorite stretches of the "hike". So beautiful!

the oak and redwood tree stretch. It was barely drizzling this particular day, which was so cool!

Tim and Daisy enjoying Bort Meadow

One of our favorite places to hike in my hometown is a recreation district near Bort Meadow. Pretty much all the trails in the East Bay are connected in some way or another, but this stretch contains sweeping grassy hills, towering redwoods, large open meadows, and when there's sufficient rainfall, waterfalls and streams. Our favorite part about it is that we rarely encounter people or other animals in this area, so we can let the pup run free and it won't bug anyone except the occasional cow. We took this trail a couple times during our trip.

Jetskiing

I am a huge dork.

The first weekend day we had, Tim and I took the family's 1995 SeaDoo to the Alameda slough and played around in the bay for a little while. It was a beautiful day with just a little bit of wind, so it was perfect. We squeezed into some wetsuits (also from 1995 haha) and played our little hearts out in the waves.

plumbing adventures!

The short version: we had a huge group of high school friends and spouses over for a soak in the hottub and a little catching up, and while everyone was over we discovered a veritable waterfall of fresh water POURING out of the ceiling in our garage. Plumbing problems always happen when you have guests over, isn't that always the case? To add to it, my dad was in Canada for business and wouldn't get home for another two days, and for some reason it didn't occur to us to call a plumber while he was gone. So, we had two days-worth of no showers, trips to the grocery store JUST to use the bathroom (!), and even a sneaky trip or two into the next door For Sale House's backyard to wash dishes. Ack! So silly.

When my dad got home from Canada, he and I tried a few things and discovered the main sewer line was backed up, so we rented a plumbing snake and had the pipe clear in a few minutes. WHOO! We had to think creatively about how to get the 150lb snake contraption to the vent pipe on the roof, but eventually figured out a way to clear the drain with the snake on the ground, as long as we were really careful of the moving parts. Phew! Father-daughter team to the rescue!

We celebrated our victory with a jetski ride all the way around the island of Alameda, which was a really fun adventure.

wine and dine:

sorry for the giant white bars--this is stolen from instagram!

We were lucky enough to get some dinner with the immediate family at Kincaid's in Jack London Square, courtesy of Tim's company (Thanks, guys!) as a thank-you for hosting us for so long. Rather than foot a hotel bill, since we were staying with the parents the whole time, they footed a fancy dinner. WHOO! We sat at a table overlooking the slough and dined gloriously.

We just.cant.leave

Originally, we were supposed to leave town early on Thursday afternoon. Tim and I took Daisy out to the meadow to run her prior to the car ride, and in the process both came down with migraines. Incidentally, Daisy also rolled in horribly-smelling mountain lion poop while cavorting in the grass, which didn't help things. We came home and scrubbed her as best we could, took some pain meds, and tried to sleep away the migraine. I woke up long before Tim, and figured that I could help my mom around the house while we waited. We ended up painting the outside stair banister, because Tim didn't wake up until 5, and he was so groggy we decided to stay and leave the next day.
When the car was packed and the animals were loaded, the car wouldn't start.