Crappy day with a happy ending.(LONG)

Ok.. I haven't yet blogged about our recent plumbing issues. This time they don't involve the bathroom sink.

A couple weeks ago I noticed a LOT of water in the basement, and had to pull up the foam pads I had on the floor down there because there was so much water underneath it. However, I didn't think too much of it, because it had been raining like nuts and our basement leaks some water usually..
Then, last monday, I went downstairs in the morning and noticed it was bone dry, despite the fact that it poured the night before.. "Great!", i thought.. Then, later that afternoon, I took a bath and went back down there to retrieve some clothes, and the floor was COVERED in water. To my untrained eye, it looked as though my hot water tank was leaking as a result of running the bath.. So I called Jeff and he and his friend Nick came home and checked out the hot water tank, and also the main drainage line to the sewer, neither were leaking, and they insisted the water MUST be coming from outside.. And were ready to call it a day.. I INSISTED they try to at least fill the bathtub and drain it to see what happens.. Well.. we have a floor drain that goes to the sewer in the basement, what occured was the water came back up through there..
So, we had a problem, but thus far, it was just water and only if we drained the bathtub (so, not poop, and flushing the toilet or brushing our teeth didn't cause a flood). We didn't know exactly what to do, so Jeff said he'd "call a couple people" and continued to not do anything for a few days. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I did a bunch of wash and the washer also caused the basement to flood.. Still MOSTLY just water, but I was starting see some toilet paper chunks.. Not good..
So I tried to go for the least expensive option and called Home Depot about renting a sewer snake. Jeff decided he could do it Saturday night, so on Saturday I drove to Home Depot and rented the thing and when Jeff got home from work he tried his best to snake the thing out, but it did not help at all.. Jeff swore he'd call a plumber today..
I woke up today, and decided I had better check the status of the basement, even though we've been keeping the door shut so the cats didn't get in the mess (Jeff hadn't looked at it this morning).. Yeah.. There was definitely poop-looking stuff that had come up through the floor drain.. I called Jeff and told him he needed to call a plumber NOW and get someone here today.. He called me back in 5 minutes and told me Roto Rooter would be there in an hour.. Only problem was, I was supposed to leave for work in like 30 minutes.. He was able to come home from work to wait for Roto Rooter and I only ended up being like 5 minutes late to work..

The problem ended up being that when Jeff snaked it, was it would only go to from the drain to the "clean out pipe" which is UNDER OUR PORCH (and how would we know that?), so the snake was basically just going up under our porch.. So once rotorooter came and tried that, they figured out where the clean out pipe was.. Then they snaked that all the way to the main sewer.. and ended up having to clean a bunch of tree roots out of there too (but not so bad that we had to have the line redone).. They put some treatment in it to supposedly prevent the roots in the future too.. Overall, the Roto Rooter cost over $400, plus the $75 it cost us to rent the snake.. but I am just SO relieved it is fixed..

So after I got home from work and Jeff had the basement all cleaned up from the sewer line malfunction, we decided just to go for a drive since it was such a nice fall day.. I didn't really care where we went, but we decided to shoot down to Pumpkinville, even though they were only open for another hour by the time we got there.. it was a nice drive and we bought some yummy goodies.. (A bunch of fudge, maple candy, pumpkin donuts, maple bbq sauce and had apple cider while we were there). We didn't do many of the "activities" and didn't buy any pumpkins, cuz I'm planning on going back in a week or two with my friends from work..

So we decided to drive home through Ellicottville, we tried to stop to eat at EBC, but they were closed.. So we headed back up 219 with no real destination in mind.. While we were driving, we saw a sign for Griffis Sculpture park, so we decided to find that and check it out. Jeff had been there as a kid, but I had never gone.. It was starting to get dark and cold by the time we got there, so we didn't explore much, but it was a fun, unplanned little adventure. We want to go back sometime during the day and really check stuff out..

Then we headed back toward home and stopped at Zebb's to watch a bit of the Monday Night Football game and get some food. Now we're home just relaxing and tomorrow morning is my Dr's appt and I will be so happy to hear my baby's heartbeat! (Also, I have had a bit of a belly growth spurt and think i have felt some maybe movements, so I'm feeling a little more confident since the last time I posted!)