Winter Break

I am woefully behind on my posts. It has been difficult to work up the enthusiasm to write when there isn't anything much to write about.

Once again, we had to cancel our family trip. A lot of weather systems has been moving in and our original plan was to drive out to Utah. To visit the Arches National Park and other normally busy places while it is too cold and miserable for the majority of tourists to want to venture out in. Unfortunately, the weather system that we've had over us over the holidays would start moving off to the east in the direction we had planned to travel. We would end up following the rain to the east which would eventually turn to snow. It was just too far to travel to endure that kind of weather that would end up hampering most of our activities.

On top of that, since Emily started feeling sick on Christmas Eve, it turned into a full blown cold with a fever to boot. There was no telling how much worse it would get if we dragged her out to camp in those elements.

So we stayed home.

I decided to take the opportunity to work on the house. My project was to paint the eaves which badly needed some serious attention for the past five years or so now. Truthfully, the previous owners slapped on a thick layer of thick paint on painfully neglected eaves just to sell the house. It started falling apart and peeling after our first season here. Because of the many problems we had with the house in the beginning and then taking every opportunity to get away most weekends for the past three years or so, we have not made the time to work on it. The weekends we were here, we had other obligations or more pressing matters to catch up on.

I scraped and sanded the neglected wood as best I could before applying primer and paint, but honestly, half of the wood should probably be replaced. If I waited to do that, I knew that it was not going to happen any time soon, so I just did the best I could with what we had.

The kids helped out a little here and there with the painting and in the yard. Mostly, they ran off to play with the kids in the neighborhood. 

For the first couple of days, Christian stayed in and cooked and cleaned for us. It gave me a lot more time to work on my project. We had so much food, we did not have to cook for another day or two afterwards. 

After Christian's cooking frenzy, he spent most of his time researching and preparing for his big project over the break. He needed to change the timing belt on my Trooper. We have nearly 100,000 miles on the Trooper and since we were not going anywhere, he took the opportunity to take the car apart to put in the new timing belt while we didn't need the vehicle.

It still rained here and there so I did not get as much done as I would have liked before the break was over, but it was a good start. I was just worried that I would not be able to keep my momentum on the house up. After a day of scraping and sanding, I was pretty sore and there was always so much to clean up. Without Christian making the meals and having to go back to dropping of and picking up the kids from school, the window of time I had to work on the house was greatly reduced.

Christmas

Marian came over to spend Christmas Eve with us, as is are tradition. She got us a rib roast which Christian has been dry aging for the past 3 weeks. We spent much of the time preparing for our dinner feast.

Christmas morning brought lots of presents.

The biggest gift that Emily got this year was a new bedding set. She actually picked it out some months ago and I wrapped it up for her. She has been patiently waiting for Christmas so that she could actually see it again and use it.

Caitlyn's big gift was a pogo stick...which I thought was really random and weird.  Of course, we grew up with one, but I didn't even know that they still made them. She put it on her wish list, so that's what she ended up getting.

The girls actually bought real presents for each other this year. Caitlyn got Emily a kind of owl watch fob on a chain necklace. Emily got Caitlyn a himalayan salt lamp because she still likes to have a nightlight on in their room and Caitlyn loves rocks.

Caitlyn even bought her dad a giant tube of gourmet popcorn for Christmas. 

We got a lot of miscellaneous Columbia clothing from Marian for Christmas for our many adventures. Unfortunately, our adventure for Christmas break looks like it is going to be cancelled. We had planned to go to Utah, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Emily started feeling sick on the morning of Christmas Eve and it wasn't getting any better. There was a snow storm moving into Utah ahead of us. It was supposed to snow almost the whole time. Plus, it was expected to be super cold.

Christmas with the Wongs

We celebrated Christmas this year with my family before Christmas Eve. Normally, we celebrate on Christmas Day, but this year, my sister and her family will be on an early morning flight to Japan on Christmas.

We got together for dinner, so we had most of the day to prepare food. Christian still had to work and the kids had their last day of school right before Christmas (which was totally insane). Christian started some bread before heading off to work in the morning. We planned to serve some of our dry cured meat with crusty bread and herb infused olive oil. We also made some desserts and a side dish to bring over.

All the kids are getting so ridiculously big now. Both of Wendy's kids are currently in college. For a while, all the yearly Christmas pictures had her boys towering over all the other kids but the rest of the varmits are starting to shoot up.

The kids spend most of the time playing together. Luckily, they all pretty much get along. The adults spend most of the time finishing preparing food and chatting. At the end of the evening, we open presents and have dessert.

The girls got red envelopes from from my mom, art supplies from Uncle Norman and from Aunt Wendy, Caitlyn got a ukulele and a big warm jacket for Emily. Caitlyn had been trying to teach herself to play the ukulele from youtube videos with the little play ukulele that a coworker brought back for me from her honeymoon in Hawaii. It plays okay actually, but it doesn't keep it's tune for very long.

December Update

After I got back and got back into the daily rhythm of chauffeuring the kids back and forth from school, meals and laundry, half of December was almost over. I realized that I had barely started Christmas shopping, we haven't put up any lights or the tree nor had we worked on this year's Christmas card.

Christian started to feel better, at long last, shortly after I returned from my trip. He had an ultrasound scheduled while I was away, but we had yet to hear the results. He tried to make an appointment with his doctor but he wouldn't see him until some time in January. It was pretty frustrating. Although Christian was feeling better, we were still pretty worried about what was causing the problems.

I finally called and got him an appointment with a different doctor. The wait was long and excruciating, even with an appointment. We waited nearly two hours! If we were not so desperate for answers, we would have left. When we finally spoke to the doctor, everything was finally cleared up. Christian has gall stones. Apparently, one of the gall stones was obstructing his bile duct, which was causing all the pain. It had settled back down, which is why he had started feeling normal again. If this happens frequently, we will have to consider removing his gallbladder, but for now, we'd rather keep all his organs where they are supposed be.

While having gall stones is not good, it is certainly not as bad as we had feared at first and finding out, certainly helped us breath a little easier. At least now, we know what we are dealing with.

The wait for the doctor was horrendous, but we really liked her and quickly switched over to her as Christian's primary doctor.

With the weightier matters taken care of, we worked on and ordered last minute Christmas cards. I got the outdoor lights up but didn't manage to get the tree up this year. I just decorated the mantel so that it was still festive. I managed to get all the Christmas shopping done. Some of the packages arrived a bit close and one never arrived at all. The postman mis-delivered my package. It has not been uncommon for us to receive one of the neighbors mail or packages so you could only wonder how many of our own mail gets mis-delivered and ends up tossed away or stolen.

The rest of the month has gone by in a blur of school projects and deadlines. The nightmare of which, I don't even want to recall at this point.

Pacifica

As usual, my mom and I were up way before my sister. We packed up and had breakfast while we waited. It was a sunny day so we made pretty good time down to Pacifica. It's a good thing, since we were planning on meeting up with my uncle and aunt for dim sum. They don't drive and they couldn't get a ride, so we dropped by my sister's house and unloaded the car to make space and headed into San Francisco to pick them up.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, which is a shame since I rarely see my uncle and aunt. I love Chinese food in S.F. They have mostly Cantonese food with flavors that remind me of my childhood.

After lunch, we left my mom to catch up with her brother and his wife while we drove back to Pacifica. My sister wanted to show me some of the hikes along the shoreline. We knew that my mom would not be able to do too much of it. It was really beautiful.

We hiked until the sun started to go down and then headed back as we watched the sun set. We went back to the house to meet up with my sister's husband then picked up my nephew and my mom for dinner. We had more Chinese food in S.F.

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The next day, we took my mom out to see the coastline. We only walked over the first hill or so. Mostly we were distracted watching hundreds of cute little sandpipers. We could have been happy to just spend all day watching them.

We grabbed lunch afterwards at some local taco stand and headed back to their house. They had several get togethers planned that evening. My mom and I hung out at their place. They left me a car, but we didn't feel up to venturing out. We entertained ourselves by watching weird movies and I worked on putting together a berry trifle for their potluck in the evening. It took me most of the time to work on their dessert anyway since their kitchen isn't very well stocked in supplies or equipment!

I ended up winning first prize for my dessert in their potluck that evening. I brought home some weird cake pan out of the deal.

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We packed up and left again the next morning. This time, we were headed all the way back home. The way home was pretty uneventful. We stopped by some roadside fruit stands near Visalia, that was about it. Christian picked me up at my mom's house that evening.

Lake Tahoe - Part 2

On the fourth day, we headed out to find Rabe Meadows. One of the rangers recommended it to us as being relatively easy for my mother. We thought we would give her an easy day after the hike we did to Vikingsholm.

It was a beautiful, but short hike. We did not know where else to explore, so my sister convinced us to go to one of the casinos. We were only in there for a short time. We played some cheap slots. I spent all of one dollar. I made the money back and a little more, but lost it all again. In total, the three of us spent something like $15. But we won back about $10 and we decided to cut our losses and take the money to buy some hot drinks.

My sister and I decided to brave the outdoor jacuzzi this time. We warmed up inside the indoor one before running out to the one on the outside. It was actually perfect as we could not stay inside the indoor one very long as we got too hot, but you could stay outside for quite a while. The most treacherous part was crossing over to the one outside as it was quite icy and slick.

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My sister had originally intended to come out to Tahoe to relax and do some computer work that she needed to catch up on but between our outings and then downloading her pictures and stuff, she hadn't gotten anything done. So, on day five, we left my sister back at the lodge and my mom and I went in search of a hike near the lodge. We found the Tahoe Rim Trail. It was spectacular. Best hike of the trip...well, the start of it. It started snowing on us and we did not bring the trekking poles. My mom got a bit nervous as to where the trail lead and how far it was and we ended up turning around and going back after a while.

We had some lunch and headed back out together to find Cave Rock. We found it but could not find a way to get to it. We drove back and forth looking for how to get to it, but was only able to take a picture of it from below.

Strangely, there was no snow and it was relatively clear from this side of the lake. We then headed over to a vista point called Logan Shoals.

We were pretty much running out of places in Southern Lake Tahoe to visit. In the end, we decided to cut the trip a bit shorter than we had originally planned and go explore my sister's new house and the area around there for an extra day.

While dinner was cooking in the Instant Pot, we headed into the gym to workout a bit as we were a bit restless still and most of our destinations earlier were driving ones. I think I over did it a bit because I was a bit sore afterwards. But we got my mom to go out even to the outdoor jacuzzi after our work out. We relaxed the rest of the evening and watched the sunset outside of our window on our last night in Tahoe.

We did start packing a bit and took a load down to the car just so that we would not have so much to do the next day.

Lake Tahoe - Part 1

The week after Thanksgiving, Christian dropped me off at my sister's house and we hit the road. It made me pretty nervous since Christian was still having pretty bad abdominal pains. It took us most of the day to get up to Stateline, which is where we were staying.

We made pretty good time, so we arrived a little early. We had fine weather all the way up. But by the time we got there, the weather started to change. It was cold and the wind kicked up. My sister and I went to go check in but since our room wasn't quite ready yet, we went back out to get my mom. It started to snow, just as we were heading back into the main building to wait for our room. Apparently, we made it just in time. There was no free WiFi at the lodge, but luckily Wendy purchased WiFi for the week to do some computer work. I was afraid that I would not be able to communicate back home as much as I would like. This is the first time I've ever been away from the kids this long. It has been a very long time since I have been away from Christian this long.

We hauled all our luggage up to our rooms (which was considerable for just the three of us). Our room was on the top level of an 8 story building. We settled in and made dinner. It snowed the entire night. We could hear the wind howling all around and above us...and it was loud! In the main living area, the sound was loudest above us or from the top vents. It was quieter in the bedrooms but I don't know if there was a loose window in our room or in the room next to us, but it was quite annoying. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep. I didn't sleep that well before the trip either, as I was worried about what to bring and if I forgot anything, or if I should be going at all!

Morning brought us much clearer weather and beautiful views from our window.

My mom and I did not sleep did not sleep well and ended up rising pretty early. Apparently, my sister slept like a baby and we had to wait some time for her to get up.

On our first outing, we decided to hike up to Eagle Falls. We actually had several short hikes picked out, but we were not sure how much my mother could take.

The hike was a little harder than we had anticipated, but my mom did a great job. She was a little fearful and it took a bit of coaxing, but she eventually got up.

My sister our I would occasionally, run up ahead to make sure there was not anything too heinous ahead for her.

Once we got to the bridge across the falls, we decided to call it a day. The trail continued up some more steeper trail and we figured that we should not push my mother too hard on her first day. Still, it wasn't bad for a 78 year old woman! Actually, another deciding factor was that my mom needed to use the restroom!

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Day two, brought us another sleepless night of howling winds. I thought I was going to go crazy at this point. I was so close to dragging a blanket off the bed and looking for some corner of the hallway outside to sleep in. It was maddening. If you close the bedroom door, you hear less of the air tunnel noises that is in the kitchen, but the window or whatever banging every so many minutes made it impossible to sleep. I ended up dragging a blanket out into the living room. In the end, the constant air tunnel noise, although loud, was at least consistent!

Today, we tried a couple of other hikes, but found them inaccessible. The snow was too deep and no one had gone that way, so we could not tell where the trail lead. We ended up walking around the marinas in Southern Lake Tahoe. First, was the Ski Run Marina.

Then, we went a bit further back and found the Timber Cove Marina.

There were not too many people about, so we made some snow angels and a snowman. After lunch, we went into town to do some shopping for some more groceries. I went to look for earplugs as I needed sleep pretty badly. We wanted to try to change rooms but they never got back to us. 

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On day three, we headed back towards Emerald Bay. We hiked above Emerald Bay on our first day, but we wanted to find a way down. After a couple of false starts, we finally found a trail down to Vikingsholm Castle which is at the edge of the Bay. I was a little worried because the trail marker indicated that it was a strenuous trail. It didn't look that bad, but we didn't know what we would run into and what my mom could take.

It was a pretty nice trail. The castle was nice, but closed for the season. 

It was a longer trail than we had taken my mom on thus far, but it was easier as it was a well established trail and we did not have to trudge through snow and rocks. My mom made it, but she was pretty wiped out by the time we were done.

We did some more shopping in town before heading back to the lodge. After the long hike, we finally got my mom to agree to go to the hot tub with us in the evening to relax her aching muscles.

Thanksgiving and other matters

Since we came back a day early from Yosemite, we should have been well rested and had plenty of time to work on cooking before heading over to my family's house.

Instead, Christian and I found ourselves back in the emergency room at about 3:am Thurday morning. Christian had intense abdominal pains. It was a little over a month ago that we were there for a kidney stone. We were starting to wonder if they diagnosed him correctly, since we never was able to recover an actual stone.

After an examination, blood tests and an EKG, he got some pain medication and we were sent on our way. They did not know the cause of his pain, but ruled out something more dire. He got some PEPCID for possible gastritis and a referral for an ultrasound as it was too early to get one still at the time.

Christian's pain was at a more manageable level, but was still having a hard time of it, especially if he attempted to eat.

He got some rest on and off after we got home while I worked on our Thanksgiving contributions. We were wondering if he should actually stay home, but in the end, he decided to go and hope for the best.

There was a ton of food, but unfortunately, Christian was not able to do more than sample a dish or two. It was torture for him, since he still had an appetite. He just was unable to eat without suffering greatly for it.

I had planned to go on a trip with my sister and mom to Lake Tahoe shortly after Thanksgiving. The timing could not be worse. I was afraid to leave, not knowing what was wrong with Christian and not being available to take him back to the doctor, if needed. In the end, he insisted that I should still go. I spent the better part of the next couple of days stocking little things for the house to be sure they had food (since we had been gone for our camping trip) and packing.

Yosemite

The kids have a week off for Thanksgiving break, so we planned to spend the first half of their vacation in Yosemite and return just before Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, the weather was not looking too good for our trip. The weather kept shifting and we kept shifting our departure date based on the forecasts.

We finally, got sick of being swayed by the uncertainty of the weather and decided to just go. There was supposed to be rain earlier in the day, turning into snow by evening (5 to 8 inches supposedly). We did not get any precipitation until after we arrived in the valley and set up our tent.

We moved all our food and camping equipment into our new temporary home away from home, prepared our dinner and went to go see what Evening Ranger Programs were available. They used to post all the information at the ranger kiosk, but apparently, the new concessionaire does not provide that service (among many others) to the park service any more.

Apparently, the rangers were not even putting on any programs. I don't know if most of them left for the holidays or what. A naturalist working for the new concessionaire just showed different little National Park videos each night...all of which are also posted on YouTube. Don't get me wrong, they are still good videos...it was just disappointing.

It pretty much rained all night. We were sitting in our tent wondering when the rain would stop so that we can get out and have breakfast. Although we did not necessarily have to heat our breakfast or anything, if it continued to rain, it would be miserable to stand out there in the rain eating our food. We could not eat in the tent since we are in bear country. Luckily, the rain tapered off around 9:am.

We could not do anything that we really had planned for the day because everything was all wet and slippery. It was too warm for snow.

In the end, the kids decided to go up the Mist Trail, up to Vernal Falls. Caitlyn wanted to show her sister, since Emily opted not to join us on our hike to Half Dome. Emily wanted to see it since she had never been there. The trail was still fairly crowded despite the previous weather.

Considering that it just rained, I didn't think that the waterfall was very big. We hiked up past the crowds a bit beyond the top of the falls to find a quiet place to have a late lunch and then decided to go back down to do some aid climbing back at the Le Conte Boulder.

Actually, it was just Emily and Christian. Caitlyn and I took pictures.

She did the Kor Practice Aid Ladder! She was able to do it all on her own except for one bolt. She has grown a lot since we have been here but was still unable to reach all the bolts and ended up using a stick clip to get past it, but she made it to the top.

Christian went up quickly after her as he's done it before.

It was starting to get cold and dark by the time they finished but there was still a little bit of daylight left, so Christian had Emily try The Hooker again. She seemed to have a harder time on this one that the massively overhanging Kor Practice one!

There was still one bolt on here that she could not quite reach again and had to use the stick clip once again. I think last time she did this one, Christian just left a hanging quickdraw for her.

That was pretty much the end of our day. We returned to camp for a quick dinner and more Ranger films.

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Day 3 was mostly clear but cold. We took the opportunity to do some climbing, although, I would not go so far as to say that the rock was exactly dry.

We went to the Glacier Point Apron area, thinking that the sun would hit there first and dry the rock. We were wrong, we never quite got any sun. We could see it out by the falls and other areas across from us, but we never could catch any sun rays.

First, we all climbed up on The Goblet, Right. 

Then we climbed a difficult slab variation in the center.

Caitlyn made it look easy but there were some pretty difficult parts for the rest of us.

Christian and Emily also climbed The Goblet, Left.

The views were fantastic, but after a while, it started to get pretty chilly, especially since the sun never reached us to warm us up at any point. 

Because the weather forecast for the evening was supposed to be more rain/snow continuing into the morning, we thought that it would be pretty pointless to stay another night. Even if the storm stopped in the morning, everything would be all wet once again, and we would not be able to climb anything. We had done most of the touristy things we wanted to do in the valley and didn't want to stay another night and have to pack up a bunch of wet gear in the morning so, we decided to end the trip a day early and head home.

November Update

The kids got their grades for the first quarter of the school year. Emily started off super strong at the beginning of the year, but her grades waned quite a bit in her two weakest subjects by the end of the grading period. History and English takes too much reading and writing for her to keep her grades up without putting a substantial amount of effort into doing what she does not like to do. It's a bit frustrating for her to do A-level work in most of her assignments and tests, only to get a much lower grade in the end because she just flat out refuses to do several assignments or turn them in late. I was really hoping she would crack down and take her grades more seriously now that she is in High School, but so far, it does not seem to be the case. She is still doing really well in her other classes, so at least there's that.

Caitlyn did pretty good in her first quarter of Jr. High but struggled a bit in her accelerated math class. She seemed to understand everything for the most part, but did poorly in tests. In the end, she cracked down and did everything she could to raise her grades and by the end of the grading period, she had straight A's in every class. Plus, every A was pretty strong in all her classes. I was a little worried she was falling into some of Emily's bad habits using her Chromebook. And she does waste some time occasionally doing things that she shouldn't be doing until she finishes her work, but for the most part, she appears to be doing her work, and it certainly reflects that in her grades.

Her teachers did warn us that Caitlyn would have quite a bit more homework than Emily had in structuring their new "Honors" track at school. That certainly seems to be true since Caitlyn seems to finish her homework later than even Emily in High School...but that may be just because Emily refuses to do certain assignments.
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Christian had a birthday. We gave part of his present early as it was something he really needed and we bought it a bit early because of a sale and wanted to make sure that it worked.

For the rest of it, we waited as long as we could but realized that we would be too busy to properly celebrate on his actual birthday. His birthday this year landed on a Wednesday, so after work, he would get to come home for dinner and then have to leave again for his new calling in Scouts.

So we ended up celebrating his birthday the day before. I made him a Brazilian meal with crepe cake made from Doce de Leite (a caramelized condensed milk product) he got from a visiting scientist from Brazil that had worked in his lab. I got to use my new crepe pan that I got from my birthday! It worked out pretty good, but I didn't quite have enough time to chill and set it before we served it, so it was a little hard to cut and serve the pieces.

We opened the rest of his presents after dinner. It's so much better not to have him have to rush off after everything to go to Scouts.

On his actual birthday, we had enough leftover dinner and dessert from the day before. The crepe cake and finally set and was a lot easier to handle. We saved a few little token presents for Christian to open on his actual birthday. The kids made him a really neat exploding box. Unfortunately, I didn't take any more pictures. 

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We had our 19th wedding anniversary. We had a special dinner at home. Christian got us a lamb shoulder, so I braised that and made a Boston Cream Crepe Cake for dessert. Can you tell that I'm still on a crepe kick? 

This year also marked our 27th year together. Happy Anniversary Christian!

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Christian has been spending most available moments working on or researching problems on my Trooper. We've replaced the radiator and got new CV boots (inner and outer). Next will be the timing belt and rear springs. As my car gets older, it seems that everything seems to need replacement all at the same time!

El Cajon Quarry

Last weekend, we went to the El Cajon Quarry to do some aid climbing practice. The weather finally cooperated (for the most part), so we took advantage and headed down to San Diego. We were practicing on the Bolt Ladder. It is a two pitch aid climb up 100'.

Emily actually went up the bolt ladder, at least to the top of the first pitch. She's had some pretty good practice so far and she did great.

I just jumared to the top of the first pitch to belay Christian up the second pitch. Jumaring is still difficult for me, but we are starting to figure it out.

It was still pretty warm out there. There was not a lot of shade but we made due with what we could find. The girls hid in the shade of a bush to work on puzzles or read while they waited for us.

After Christian finished the route, Caitlyn and Emily jumared up to the top of the first pitch while Christian practiced setting up the portaledge.

Caitlyn seems to be a jumaring monkey. She just races up the line like it is nothing, while I struggle most of my way up!

After everybody was up, we pretty much had to pack up and head out so that we could see our way back down the trail while having enough light to see if there are any snakes curled up in our path!