Through our children we made many friends and had many more experiences than can possibly be told in one blog entry, so I'm going to be very selective on what I actually include. Even though I haven't posted anything in it for over a year, I'll save the details for my Memories of Marilyn blog.
How we decided on this place, if written about at all, will be in my next posting. We paid top dollar for the place, at least $20,000 more than our real estate agent was recommending we pay and while they did fix a few things based on the inspection, in short order, we replaced the roof and just had to get the place painted, which we did yet again and again. Not only was it a hideous green but there was a painted patch that was even more hideous. In subsequent years we redid the bathrooms (one of them twice), the kitchen, and replaced all of the windows and sliding doors except for the ja-lousy windows in the front.
The new owners removed the olive tree just a week before these pictures were taken. We talked about it but our children liked climbing in it so much when they were young and then we were looking to move. They have kept our last painting job though.We also landscaped, replaced retaining walls and decks a couple of times, planted fruit trees (orange, apricot, and apple), and removed a spa. The only people using it were our children, as a swimming pool, and we instead joined a swim club.
We joined the New In Town Club, Fremont Parent Co-op Nursery, and later on the Fremont Freewheelers. Our daughters joined Brownies but either dropped out when they got to Girl Scouts or, in the case of our youngest, didn't proceed to Girl Scouts. By the time our youngest was doing Brownies, our son was doing Cub Scouts and then Boy Scouts, eventually getting his Eagle ranking. In the '90s, his troop won the fall Jamboree four times, which meant that they had to host the event the following year. Everyone was called in to help, including his sisters. Our youngest wanted to quit the Brownies and join the Boy Scouts because they got to do stuff.
While we got to do things and met people who did things because of our house in Fremont, most of my memories are actually away from the house itself. At least through our oldest child's high school, we had a tradition of Thanksgiving on the Road, taking our children out of school for the first three days and returning on Thanksgiving Day after a meal at a restaurant. We literally traveled all over California with at least one such Thanksgiving in Reno. It pleased us to no end that our oldest daughter wanted to know if she and her boyfriend, (They've since married.), could meet us for the traditional trip.
Christmas was a stay at home celebration though with just a very few of them away. The opening of presents and big meal was followed by our traditional walk, a tradition we started in Houston. While the children complained, they all have exceeded our modest attempts to get them away from their toys and work off a little of the food. Our oldest and her husband have hiked in Kings Canyon with some excessively long days. Our youngest and her husband hiked over a third of the way on the Pacific Crest Trail just last year before yet another personal tragedy pulled them off of it. Our son backpacked extensively with the scouts, Philmont, and even did it on his own in the Sierras.
Then there were the trips that Marilyn and I took. We celebrated our multiples of 10-year anniversaries downhill skiing at Badger Pass. Other anniversaries would find us cross-country skiing at Bear Valley. As a family and as just the two of us we car camped all over California. Calveras Big Trees was memorable because our son got between a mother bear and her two cubs. Fortunately she didn't notice. Camping at Mono Lake was memorable because we lost our brakes somewhere on the eastern downslope of Tioga Pass, that and the fact we moved our five person tent to another spot by putting a person on each corner and walking through the campgrounds.With living in one place for so long, looking back we managed to cumulatively do quite a bit. Once our children were grown, we went wild with trips; a trip to New Mexico featuring Santa Fe and Taos; a trip to Washington State with stays at Paradise Lodge and the lodge at Crater Lake on our way; a trip to Sequoia National Park with snow outside our lodge and temperatures approaching 100 at the End of the Road in Kings Canyon; a trip to Glacier National Park, where we stayed in three of the lodges, liking Many Glaciers the best; and, not to cop out but, many more.
We lived here during the Loma Prieta earthquake when it took me two and a half hours to get home from Sunnyvale. It took 30 minutes to get a dial tone. We watched the Bay Bridge and Expressways collapse. We saw three story buildings in the Marina District sandwich and burn. We lived here during the Oakland firestorm that burned over 1,800 homes. And we lived here during 9/11/2001. I was listening to the radio on my way to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned when I heard about it. I called Marilyn and had her turn on the TV. After my appointment, I joined her and we watched the tragedy unfold. It was soon thereafter that we started looking for a place in Pacifica.
Eating out in the SF Bay area is definitely different than where we grew up in Ohio. Unfortunately, Fremont didn't have all that many great eating places. Our two favorite just happened to be close together: China Chili and Sala Thai. We actually discovered Sala Thai by accident. There was some function at China Chili that meant we couldn't eat there so we drove around the corner and in the same mall-like area was Sala Thai.While our still most favored Thai restaurant would be the Royal Thai in San Rafael, it was good to have one closer to home.
Coming up next in my "Living" Memories Tour is a couple of temporary living spots. Since they were so shortly lived in, I'll just group them into one posting.
