Daddy-Daughter Luau

This past weekend was the Activity Day Girls Daddy-Daughter Luau. Christian took both the girls this time since Caitlyn turned 8 shortly after the last dance. Caitlyn would not stand for a picture with her Dad though. They were taking a picture with a parrot and although she denied it, I'm pretty sure she didn't want to get any where near it as she could not safely view it while it was tucked away in a cage.

Emily took one with her Dad and then came back to take one with the parrot!

I had to represent our Primary so I went with them to go help out. They had a lot of people helping though. I got people checked in and did a few odds and ends but they didn't seem to need me in the end so I went to help the girls after they had lunch for their dance number. 

Since the girls have been taking Polynesian dance lessons with a couple of other girls in our ward, their teacher (who is also in our ward) was called on to help out with the activities. The girls were to perform two numbers and then help teach one of them to the other girls and their fathers.

It was kind of last minute request, so they performed a couple of their old numbers and got to get some more use of their costumes from last year. They did a great job and the girls had a lot of fun.

Valentine's and President's Day Weekend

The girls had a four day weekend recently. Normally, we would try to take the opportunity to head out of town, but we were not prepared for it and had other obligations to keep us in town.

Friday was Valentine's day. I thought it a cruel joke that the school district was playing on the parents by having them stay home all day! But since the girls were home with us, we decided to make a day of it and take off for our monthly Joshua Tree trip.

Amazingly, Joshua Tree was not quite as busy as usual. I haven't seen the park this empty since the heat of summer. Thankfully, not everyone gets Friday off as a holiday. I guess it isn't quite the romantic place most people are looking for on Valentine's either so we lucked out.

We went back to the Atlantis Wall that we were working on on our last trip but ended up leaving from when it got too crowded.

I couldn't even get a picture of it last time because it was so crowded. Actually, I could have gotten it if I took it the minute we arrived, but the first set of people arrived within 5 or 10 minutes after with more to follow.

Emily (aka Wallerina)

Only one other couple came to climb the wall that day. They did a couple of routes and then moved on.  We had not planned to stay here the entire time, but as we had the wall to ourselves, we figured that we would just take advantage of it and do as many of the routes that we could.

Caitlyn

Although, Caitlyn has come a long way in overcoming her seemingly selective fear of heights, she still have her moments and it is a work in progress. She climbed most of "Solar Technology" but stopped within 10 feet of the anchor and would not go on. It's frustrating some times. She did complete one full route though on a rather easy route unfortunately named "unwiped butt." "Solar Technology" is decidedly more difficult and higher to boot so I guess it is reasonable.

Christian spent a lot of his time an energy setting up the top ropes for us, belaying and climbing a 5.8 route called "wet pigeon." I wanted to climb it but was not able to get up the first 12 feet of the route no matter how hard I tried. 

We did find a pretty fun climb called "self abuse" towards the end of the day. Christian, Emily and I went up it although, I got a bit banged up going up and down this one.

I guess I should have made some effort to take a picture with Christian since it was Valentine's Day, but we were too busy climbing and helping the kids so I guess the only shot I have is one Emily took of me climbing. You can see Christian's head peaking up at the top of the climb as he was belaying me from the top!

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On Saturday morning, I made an effort to go to the Stake Women's Conference as I promised a friend that I would drive.

When we returned in the afternoon, I found that Christian got the girls to finish their chores in a timely manner (as opposed to how they normally drag out all day) so we took off to investigate a new wall we found at the Box Springs Mtns. We passed by it several times on our various hikes and had been wanting to investigate further. It appears to be unpublished so we did not have an idea of the difficulty of the climbs. We found at least four anchors set up. Most were pretty difficult but there appeared to be one or two that might be approachable. It is a beautiful area and I expect that we will definitely be back.

Only Christian, Emily and I climbed. Caitlyn wasn't ready to tackle another wall just yet and we left her to her own devices. We did see some deer in the distance running around at the base of the hill. I didn't have a camera that could capture them with me. That is the first time that I've seen them there. You can hear wild burros in the distance sometimes, but I haven't been able to spot one of those either.

In the evening, we joined a Chinese New Year celebration to celebrate the Lantern Festival in Eastvale. They had chinese food, music, dances and a dragon dance. The Lantern Festival marks the last day of the New Year celebration. 

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Sunday was church as usual for us. Christian has meetings all morning. I had to teach sharing time and then Christian ran around teaching with the missionaries and helping one of the new foreign converts learn to drive, so we were pretty exhausted by the end of the day. 

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On Monday, we invited some friends to climb with us and headed back into the Box Springs Mtns. As they have just started, we took them back to the Knob Wall where we used to practice a lot during the summer between trips.

We saw a bunch of hawks flying above. Unfortunately, Emily and her friend also saw a snake out and about. We are not sure what kind it was. Luckily, no one got bitten and we were about done for the day anyway and decided to pack up and head back out.

Chinese New Year

Last weekend, we got together with my family for our annual "reunion dinner" since the new year is almost upon us. Traditionally, we are to meet around the hearth on new year's eve, but as everyone has their own jobs and families and live apart from each other, we tend to get together on the weekend just before the new year. We get together and have a traditional winter solstice soup. It's one of my favorites. I used to wait all year for it. Now that I can make it on my own as well, we tend to have it 2 or 3 times a year because I just can't wait that long to have it again.

Since the new year officially began on Friday, we went back to visit my family again this past weekend. As usual, we made dumplings all day while we ate. The girls love getting to just eat all day for some reason. Probably because they are never allowed to do it normally. You eat your food during meals or you go hungry until the next one! Of course, they get a snack when they get home from school and everything but it's not like keeping your stomach full all day! We loved it when we were young as well but we can't quite appreciate it as much when you get older. Don't get me wrong, we still eat all day too but mostly because we can't help it with all the tasty celebration food all around us and new ones coming out all the time. But for once, I was looking forward to actually fasting a bit the next day.

Plus, it is a lot of work...especially as we take on more and more responsibilities and need to help my mom out more as she is slowing down a bit. But we feel that it is important for us to keep these traditions going with our family and to learn all the aspects of it as one day we will be left to keep this up on our own.

Of course the girls also like getting to dress in their chinese clothes and getting red envelopes! Who doesn't like getting some lucky money? Hopefully, we can instill the love,importance and knowledge of these traditions to our girls so that they can keep it up with their families as well.