January

The month seemed to fly by. At the beginning of the month, we took a hike to the top of Sugarloaf Mtn. I'm not sure if it is an actual mountain but that's what everybody calls it because it is at the end of Sugarloaf Road. It may just be the western most part of the Box Springs range.

It is a short but fairly steep hike. We probably made it worse for ourselves by not taking the actual trail that starts from the neighborhood. Our trail looked more like a cross between a game trail and the ditch that the water runs off from! But it was a nice day out and we found some boulders to climb while we were out.

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The girls had their science fair this month. Emily did an experiment on cave stalactites. Caitlyn did a kitchen science experiment on chemical leaveners. Caitlyn actually got first place in her grade category.

There were tons of people there and more science boards than you can look through because they made it mandatory this year for grades 3 through 6. 

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We went to Joshua Tree again. We tried a new area called the Western Wall. We were the first to arrive and so we got our choice of routes but there were people right behind us and pretty soon, the whole wall was filled up.

We did two routes on the wall but it quickly became too crowded so we decided to move on. As we were leaving, hoards of more climbers were arriving so we were happy to be departing. I think that we will have to go early again if we want to try some of the other routes on the wall.

It was 1:pm by the time we got back to the truck and headed back over to cyclops rock to see if the rappel station was available. Luckily, it was free so we went up to reserve the spot while we had our lunch. 

Since it was late last time, we didn't get too many pictures or videos and Caitlyn didn't even get to try it so we wanted to make sure we got a chance to go back in the early afternoon to do it again. Christian and I both got to go on it once. Caitlyn was pretty scared to go off the edge (as it is a 150 foot drop) but once she did, she had a lot of fun and actually went down twice. Emily went down three times!

By the time we managed to pull the kids away from the rappel, it was getting late and we wanted to get in one more climb before leaving. Christian and Emily did a climb on the other side of Cyclops rock called "Penelope's Walk." It was pretty much dark by the time Emily got up so there was no more time for anything else.

We also took some friends to try their hand at rock climbing at the quarry. It still amazes me how far along Caitlyn has come since December. We were not getting any where with her for a while. She managed a few small climbs here and there but generally had panic attacks on the rock at some point and either had to come down or she just stood there not willing to move. She can now make a lot of those climbs effortlessly.