Anniversary

Yesterday was our 17th wedding anniversary.  17 years ago, we were married at the Citrus State Historical Park in Riverside.

Marian surprised us by coming by to pick up the kids for some fun. We just spent the morning working on chores around the house. Christian was doing some maintenance on my car. Christian apparently was in on it with Marian. He made an appointment at the temple for us for that evening. He tried to make it earlier but all the sessions were full...or in spanish.

Marian took the kids all over the place in search of junk food and fun. She always has such crazy plans but the kids love it. I just hope that they don't come back with a tummy ache!

They had ice cream at Wendy's, they did some shopping, stopped by Chuck-E-Cheese for some games and had dinner downtown.

Meanwhile, Christian and I cleaned up, got dressed and had dinner at Cafe Rio since everyone is always raving about it. We had a pulled pork salad and while the flavors were fabulous, the execution was pretty sloppy and rather haphazard. I think I will have to just make my own some time.

We stopped by a store nearby to look around but didn't end up getting anything. Then we headed to the Temple for our Endowment session. It was a Saturday night so there were lots of youth everywhere. We were there early so we had to wait in the waiting room for a while. Eventually, they let us check in but after waiting 15 minutes, we find out that they don't even have our reservation and the session is already full. So, they want us to sit around and wait another 20 minutes to see if other people who they did bother to write down appointments for would show up or not. We sat for a few minutes to contemplate the situation. We were not happy because this is not the first time that they have lost our reservations. There was some youth in the corner, pulling apart one of the silk plants and destroying the carpet with his feet. Another member lost hold of her recommend and accidentally flung it under a cabinet. The large gentlemen working at the temple told her that the cabinet was too big to move while attempting nothing to help her while a scrawny female temple worker actually tried to move it herself. Then someone else was trying to stick a piece of paper underneath it to try to retrieve it. It was like a circus. If we were not so irritated with having lost most of our day and spending about $30 on an overpriced meal and gas to get there, it would have been comical. Well, not really as we were supposed to be in the Temple.

We ended up going home to salvage the few hours we had left before Marian brought the kids home. There was a big incident on the freeway on our way home. It was pretty scary. Honestly, I just wanted to go home and hide in a hole. 

We did not plan to spend very much money celebrating our anniversary because we decided to extend the annual National Park pass as our anniversary gift again. We used it a lot this past year and had a lot of fun, so we wanted to continue with that another year. We already have plans in the works...

p.s. Thanks again Marian for taking the kids!

Day Off

Everybody had a day off for Veteran's Day, so we decided to take the girls for their monthly visit to the climbing gym using our guest passes.

We spent about 4 hours there. Although we spent a lot of time belaying each other and the kids, I was pretty darn tired after 4 hours at the gym.

I think that overall, we are all getting much stronger and can do things that we could never have done when we started. 

We couldn't even hardly get Caitlyn to climb at the gym the first time we went last Christmas. I think we forced her to make it to the top of one climb and she played around the rest of the time.

Now, although overall, Caitlyn is still not as enthusiastic as Emily about some climbs, she has become quite a little climber. She still has problems since she just doesn't have the reach as everybody else, and she is not quite as strong as Emily. There was one difficult route that she managed to complete at the gym that neither Emily nor I could do!

It was pretty amazing. The kids had a lot of fun but we finally left as we were pretty tired, our hands were thrashed and we were pretty hungry. 

Christian

This past weekend was Christian's birthday. We decided to camp out in Joshua Tree. We learned our lesson though, no more campgrounds in Joshua Tree. This time, we would go to the backcountry. We would have to hike out a ways but it would be worth it for some peace and quiet...or so we thought.

Anyway, it's been a while since we went out to do some real climbing and we have been itching to do so for a while now. We went out to an area called the Towers of Uncertainty. We climbed on a rock called the Crow's Nest.

It was a beautiful day out. It was a little chillier than we anticipated though, just because there was a breeze but overall, we got pretty lucky that it was the warmest day of the week. Our first climb was called Eating Crow. It was a fairly easy climb to warm up on so Christian lead and had the rest of us "sport" lead it up...that is, we did not top rope the climb as we usually might but clipped into Christian's gear as we climbed up.

Caitlyn had a bit of trouble at the crux, just because she is so small, but she did a great job on the whole climb.

Emily seemed to have even more trouble than Caitlyn and whined on several parts of the climb...we could not quite fathom why.

She eventually made it up as well although, our patience was quickly dwindling. We were worried because, one of the big plans for the trip was for Emily to lead the next route. We were not sure that she was up for it.

The route was called "Trench Connection" and went up an obvious trench in the rock. She was to use cams since they are the easiest and quickest to use. It's a moderately easy route up a 60' crack. A good choice for a beginner lead.

As luck would have it, as she started the route, a stream of tourists and other rock climbers came through and they all paused or stopped to comment on Emily's climbing and take pictures. Unfortunately, we have noticed that Emily climbs best when she has an audience, so she worked her way up with very little complaint. She did a really great job too. Christian followed after she made it up to evaluate her protection placements. There was one that was not put in well but all her other pieces passed muster. Christian gave her an A- overall.

The sun was starting to set by the time I climbed up and Caitlyn decided that she was good after pulling through the crux move on the other climb and opted to sit this one out. We did not push her as she did great and we were running out of time quickly.

We packed up and headed out so that we can go look for our campsite.

We went back to our truck and had dinner before heading out to find our campsite. We settled on a nice flat spot in a wash some ways away. By the time we got the tent set up and I went in to fix the inside of the tent. We heard a bunch of cars going back and forth on the road with people screaming out of their vehicles. Christian went back up to investigate while I continued to set up our sleeping bags and such. He was gone a while and there was still all sorts of noises from the road. Apparently, some boulderers came and parked next to us but thought that the sand was too soft and would get their car stuck so they decided to park in the middle of the road. It was dark by now and they claimed that they were going climbing. Christian suggested that they move up a little down the road where there was a better pullout but they were too lazy to walk so far. I guess they just wanted to sit at the bottom of a boulder, get drunk or high and wax poetic. They had no real interest in being out here and we were afraid of them out there making noise all night. We had enough experience with that in Joshua Tree already.

So in the end, Christian came back to get us and we repacked everything and headed out in the middle of the night. We got back home late and slept in. Christian started to get sick after a week of Emily being sick, coughing on everything and keeping everyone awake. We had a quiet evening at home, opened gifts and called it a day.

Halloween

The kids dressed up in their Halloween costumes as usual for school. Although, that's all Emily gets to do now in middle school. There are no parades or parties...thank goodness. They had a couple of little activities...like, guess how many candy corn are in a container. I didn't even make it out to Caitlyn's parade, it's just not as cute any more as they are older. And with all the restrictions on the parents these days, I avoid the campus like the plague.

Caitlyn wore her new witch costume from Marian. Emily wore her vampire costume again (another costume from Marian that she received some other year). Although, her costume was not quite complete as she could not find her vampire teeth or anything.

After school, they came home to get their work done as our ward trunk-or-treat was to be in the evening. Christian had to work late so we headed out by ourselves to the church at 6. Emily was lazy and kept on the same costume. Caitlyn wanted to be a rock climber for Halloween. Well, a rock climber that took a whipper. So she had her arm in a sling and a bandage on her head injury. I guess that will remind her to put on her helmet when climbing. I guess it looked pretty good because lots of people asked if she really got hurt since they know that we take them rock climbing for real anyway. 

For posterity, we stop at one house every year to do trick or treating at a real house. We just go to our neighbor's house as we know them and they go all out every year but very few kids ever wander down our street.

There was a chili cook off at church, so we had dinner there. After dinner, they had games set up around the cultural hall for the kids.

Christian met us there and just managed to get a bowl of chili and some cornbread before they cleared it all out. I should have saved more food for him but I was off taking the kids around. Emily doesn't care but Caitlyn still wants me with her.

Outside, there was a small section of cars set up for the actual trunk or treat. I think the showing was fairly small this year...maybe because the rest of the people were set up inside.

This year, the ward went all out and got a bounce house for the kids as well. I tried to get a picture of the kids coming down the slide but it was just too dark for my camera to focus and I gave up.

The kids had a lot of fun and got a lot of candy to boot. Honestly, we never get through most of the candy. After they were done, we went home and they got to watch A Nightmare Before Christmas with a friend. They had a really full day.