Birthday

I had a birthday this past weekend...I won't say which birthday it is. We decided to spend the day out in Big Bear together on Saturday. Overall, it had it's ups and downs.

First the downs:

• I am another year older.
• Caitlyn threw up on the way to Big Bear.
• People were trying to run us off the road constantly.
• We got lost trying to find a spot we read about because we got some bad directions and had no map and wasted a couple of hours driving around.
• We almost ran out of gas while driving around.
• The place we originally planned to go was really crowded.
• When we finally got to where we decided to go, it was cold and windy.
• One of the things Christian got me was something that I was planning to give to him too.
• A certain someone won't acknowledge birthdays any more since we helped her sister throw a surprise birthday party for her.

On the upside:

• I am in better health than I have been for many a year now.
• My visiting teacher came by with yummy donut holes.
• My sister surprised me by sending me some beautiful roses.
• I got to spend the day with my family.
• We saw some beautiful views.
• I got some nice presents (music, book, movie and a more portable monopod)...and what can I say but great minds must think alike!
• We found a another nice climbing rock that was not crawling with people.
• We got a free map of the area from the ranger station.
• We had a nice dinner at A&W on our way home.
• We made it home without any incidents.
• Christian made me a tasty birthday dinner on Sunday.

After we found that our original destination was totally crawling with people, we went with plan B which was not too far away. Tanglewood slab is a 5.3 pitch which was great for the kids and I to do some top rope climbing on. The hardest part was just a little too much for Caitlyn but perfect for Emily and myself. It's a bit easy for Christian so he usually climbs without a rope and sets up the top rope for the rest of us and tries to coax Caitlyn up the more difficult spots. Apparently there is another good spot a little above and beyond this spot that we can try some time in the future.

The highlight for the trip for the kids was when we had to pass through a mud puddle (or two) on our way to and from Tanglewood. Okay, it might have been one of the highlights of their lives from how they tell it.

We might have relished in it a little and the mud was a bit deeper than we initially thought. I must admit that it was pretty fun too but man, cleaning it up was (is) not a picnic. The mud just penetrated everything. Even the engine bay was completely caked in mud. We gave it an initial wash on Monday but it will take some time to get all the mud off of everything. Plus it sucked up all the wax that was on my car so after we give it another cleaning, we will have to spend some hours polishing and waxing the car to return it to it's previous condition.

It was crazy and fun but maybe something we would have to think twice about ever doing again!

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節)

Thursday was the Harvest Moon. Time for the Mid-Autumn Festival. But instead of going to the crowded festival at the Heritage House this year, we decided to climb up Box Spring Mtn. and watch the moon rise.

We packed a portable dinner and headed up when Christian got back from work. We hiked up a little past the ranger station and found a place to settle down to have our dinner.

During dinner, we read them the Chinese folk tale of Chang'e, the moon goddess. We couldn't get a hold of any moon cake out here. I think that we might have to try to make our own next year.

It was a very smoggy and hazy evening, so the sky was not very clear and didn't make for any fabulous pictures. It was a little chilly up there though. The temperature is definitely changing and it was a little windy up there so we left shortly after the moon came up. We didn't pack sweaters thinking that it doesn't even get that cool in the evenings. Luckily, Christian did pack our headlights and we used them to get back down the mountain. Of course, when we got down, we got to watch the moon rise up over the mountain all over again!

The Nobulator and other matters

The kids are back in school and we are starting to get back into the rhythm of things. Last week, they had back to school night (even though they have been back for 3 weeks). And although it is never very useful per se or productive, we always go so that we can be present in the minds of their teachers. It is important for them to know who we are when trying to communicate with them if something comes up.

They also had picture day. I normally do order pictures because that's what my parents did for us when I was young. It's nice to have that chronological order of pictures through the years. But I have thousands of pictures of my kids. Both Christian and I have fairly nice cameras. We have great software to work on pictures with so I don't know why I force myself to go through the drama that is "picture day" at school. It's expensive and I am almost always disappointed with how the pictures come out. The girls are usually in an awkward pose and have a smirk or grimace on their face that doesn't look pleasant and is certainly not natural. After the pictures that came back to me last year, I finally called it quits and stopped purchasing those darn Lifetouch pictures.

We grew up before the time of digital pictures and it was still a special thing to have these nice portraits of the kids as they go to school but I already have what seems to be a lifetime of pictures of my kids at 8 and 10 years old. My hard drive is full of pictures. I just had to let old habits die and let go of the tradition of school pictures. It just isn't worth it for us.

On the bright side, the autumn weather is finally starting to show and we are starting to get a break from the heat in the evenings so we've been taking advantage of that fact after dinner and started to go back out in the hills behind our neighborhood for walks and to go climbing again. Two weeks without climbing and Christian was starting to go stir crazy.

We found a new climbing rock out there called the "Nobulator." It's pretty awesome. It is not very high (maybe about 40 feet) but it has lots of neat nobs and things to climb on, plus a nice straight face to practice rappelling from. We just had fun the first couple of times we went up and didn't work on anything too technical just to get comfortable with the rock. But just as we were about to start working on really learning something on the rock, we found out that at the base of the rock where the girls and I have been climbing back up on, is the home of a 3 or 4 year old rattler. We have run into it twice now as it comes out to warm itsel in the last rays of the sun before it goes down. I almost ran into it the first time as we started to head back home one evening. Emily almost ran into it the second time while we were still climbing around. Christian went down and found it's home at the base of the rock down there. We were lucky and paid enough attention that we didn't actually get bitten.

The downside of the weather turning is that we have a lot less daylight in which to play out there in the evenings and still have enough light to be able to watch where we are going so that we do not inadvertently step on a snake while we are returning home for the evening.

The upside is that it isn't too hot to go out and we have seen some spectacular sunsets on our walks and climbs. As it gets darker earlier every evening, we will obviously have to make a new plan for our outtings. Meanwhile, we should probably find a new rock to climb until it is too cold for us to worry about the snake being out at the same time that we are!

Labor Day in the Devil's Punchbowl

On Labor Day, we decided to go check out the Devil's Punchbowl...which was kind of nuts since it has been so hot lately! But we wanted to go somewhere and get out of the house for a bit.

It's a beautiful spot. It was fairly pleasant when we first arrived since it was still relatively early. It wasn't too crowded but there were still more people than we would have expected (or wanted). I guess the heat was not enough to deter a lot of people. 

We hiked around a bit then decided to see what the rock was like and see if we could find a shady spot to climb around on but it is all sandstone...not really great to climb on. We stopped to have lunch before returning to the trails to continue our hike.

But by the time we were back on the trails, water was becoming short and the temperature had risen quite a bit and we still had to make it back to the parking lot. Of course, all the drinking fountains were broken so we went into the visitor center to rehydrate ourselves and spoke with the woman working there for a while. They had a bunch of displays for the kids. Most of the crowds left shortly before so it was pleasantly quiet in there as well. 

In the end, we figured we only explored a tiny part of the park and decided it was worth while to try to go back some time when the weather was a bit more comfortable.