Pond Hunting

The Duck and I are buying a house. Well we've bought a house; and moved earlier this month. We've found the place we want to be and now comes the boring part. However I really wish I would have taken more pictures in the beginning.

The Wine Country market is just like many is an odd one. Many people did a lot of work themselves to try to sell their homes before foreclosure. Which left a lot of very odd work in a lot of very odd homes. Some of the "not for us" houses were the best adventures we've been on lately.

Which brings me to this little abandoned beauty. Simple yes, figured it wasn't for us due to the busy street location and crowded neighborhood... but we were there so we thought we'd look.

The previous owners had tried to do a  lot of work themselves, so there were half finished projects, and some very interesting damage. The backyard was cute and quaint. I sat down on the swing, looked at the back of the house and had only 1 question...
"Did you guys see any stairs inside?"

Sitting in the back yard there were 3 very large windows facing me, from a second level. We ensued a mad dash around the house looking for any interior signs of a second floor. Which led to a search outdoors.

Around the side of the house, we found a boarded up door, above a torn down porch... Well we just couldn't leave that alone. Duck and I proceeded to pry off the board, and go look around. We found a fully finished, studio apartment. Obviously done without permits, but I'm sure it made the previous tenants a nice little penny.

Our Pond Agent Linda was flabbergasted... she had been to that house 4 times, we were the only ones to discover their hideaway. So goes the pond search.

Climbing up, crawling over, rolling down

We're sort of country kids, but we grew up in a town. Our weekends were spent on the outskirts. We were blessed enough to have a beautiful place to play. "the Ranch" is a 500ish acre piece of property owned by my dad and about 50 of his closest relatives. It was once a working cattle ranch, with a home and small school house on it. Today those buildings have been destroyed by time, weather, and a wild fire in 2006. All that remains are some of the old fences, and nature.

The Ranch has been quite a set of adventures for us. Many involve falling in the creek, rolling down hills, and hiking for miles. Bringing newts, salamanders, lizards and any other poor creature we could catch back to camp as a pet. Most of them survived, I think.

We had one great weekend, Labor Day or one of those. Where the cousins, friends, family and others came up to camp. Which put a herd of tweens and teens together with nothing specific to do. So we played hide-and-seek, in knee-high grass, on a very steep hill. Did I mention it was dark?

Which led to 8 kids running all over hills, falling on their faces, and shrieking in the dark. Because you can't get tagged if you scare the tar out of your pursuer. It wasnt until one of the girls got "attacked by a bear" that we decided to stop. Ok well there's a slight chance she scratched her head on a tree-branch, but the "bear" made a much better campfire story.

The next day we were packign to leave. Duck, sitting on a tailgate, swinging her feet. Being the little sister, I haaad to stand in her way, so she was kicking me. I started pushing her feet, she started kicking harder. I grabbed her leg and pulled her off the truck, she took one friend with us, who took her sister down too.

The result:

I guess the instagater always ends up on the bottom.