Christmas Day

This year, instead of heading out to my family's house, my brother and his family decided to drive out to our house. My sister and her family took my mom to China for Christmas this year so we won't be able to see them. They got together earlier this month, but we were not able to make it as Christian was frantically finishing his paper while helping Emily finish her science fair project.

We decided to be a bit more adventurous for our Christmas dinner this year. My brother and I wanted to try to roast some meat in the ground. We have lots of space and wood for it out here, so a couple of weeks before Christmas, I started looking into how to make our fire pit. Christian suggested that we just do it in our existing fire pit. I had to clean it up as we have not used it in quite a while and the stupid gophers have been excavating their tunnels into my fire pit. It is a big mess. It took several days of back breaking labor to clear out the excess dirt, and trying to expand the hole to line with bricks. It seemed pretty deep but when I lined it with bricks, it looked like it was too shallow again. Plus, the bottom was uneven, so I could not fit the side bricks in at one side so I had to pull out all the bricks to level it but I wasn't going to attempt to make it any deeper as the ground was as hard as cement the farther down you went. We will have to build up if we need more space.

Christmas morning, while Marian was packing up, Christian went out to split firewood and get the fire going. We figured it would take at least a couple of hours of burning to get enough coals in the pit.

My brother and I decided to have a Puerto Rican Christmas meal. We were going to shove a Pernil style pork into the ground to roast. The pork he bought came in a two pack, so he decide to make it all. I think there were 13 pound of it in all! We wrapped them separately to cook though because we didn't want it to take any longer. We already estimated that it would take about 6 hours to roast it.

Norman and his family arrived shortly after Marian departed. We had a quick lunch and Christian and Norman set about getting the roast ready to go in the ground.

The fire was super hot. Christian singed a lot of the hair on his arms and stuff maintaining the fire. Actually, the heat of the fire actually split our fire ring that we've had since the Fig Street house. I think we over did the coals as we could barely get the meat in the pit; it was so full of coals. We ended up stacking one extra layer of bricks on top of the ring of the pit to make room.

Meanwhile, the girls got to play together with their cousins. They had an ugly sweater cookie decorating contest from a cookie decorating set that Christian got from our white elephant gift exchange the other night.

All the parents voted and Emily and Collin won. Caitlyn and Lauren's cookies were too cute still.

We had the kids open their last presents from their uncle and aunt. Aunt Wendy also sent along some gift cards to the girls before she left.

Emily got nice new soccer shin guards that actually fit her properly and Caitlyn got some cute panda slippers she had her eye on. Caitlyn pretty much got everything that she wanted for Christmas this year. She was pretty ecstatic. Not that she wanted a ton of stuff. Most of it was pretty practical. Emily couldn't really think up much of anything except stuff for soccer.

My brother also made arroz con grandules. I made some sofrito black beans and a green salad. We made two kinds of Puerto Rican desserts, drinks and an appetizer to go with the meal. We went all out with our theme. It was really fun and tasty. We could barely get a taste of everything. It was so good. Needless to say, we had a bunch of leftovers as well. 

We wanted to take a walk before dessert but my sister-in-law had to go home to rest as she still had work in the morning so we plunged ahead and brought out the desserts even though we were pretty full already.

After all the cooking and cleaning for the past few days and making treats and things to bring to neighbors and friends, I was pretty wiped out by the time Christmas was over. Hopefully the rest of the break will be a bit quieter around here.

Christmas Eve and Morning

The girls waited impatiently for Marian to arrive on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, by now, Emily was also sick. After she arrived, they helped her unload her car and gave her car a wash that they promised her from another Christmas a year or two ago. She also put them to work helping her wrap presents. Basically, she had Emily wrap Caitlyn's and vice versa.

We feasted that night on prime rib, courtesy of Marian, of course. As usual, we all had too much and decide to take a walk around the neighborhood. We attempted to watch a movie, but Marian fell asleep. We sent the kids to bed afterwards but they were pretty tired. I turned in early myself. Christian stayed up a bit to study and since Marian had a nap during the movie, stayed up to fill the stockings and chat with Christian.

On Christmas morning, we got to open presents.

Emily got a lot of clothes and a number of slippers. Christian got the girls these electronic kits. Emily didn't quite know what the heck they were.

Caitlyn recognized what most of things in her electronics kit was. She also got a bunch of computer pieces she will need for her Raspberry Pi next year when she has to return her Chromebook back to school. She got a lot of shoes and other bits and pieces as well. She's been growing so much during the last half of this year, she is outgrowing a lot of her stuff in the past few months. She is nearly as tall as I am now.

We still had quite a hall this Christmas, mostly thanks to Marian. 

We had our usual Belgian Waffle breakfast before Marian packed up to move on.

December

We set up the Christmas Tree right after Thanksgiving to take the girls' annual Christmas picture and get a head start on this year's Christmas card.

We had our ward Christmas party at the beginning of the month.

We didn't get to do much else. Christian worked with Emily to help her get her science fair project done while finishing up his second session of classes. It was pretty hectic.

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The JV team for North is doing fairly well so far in their pre-season. They have won most of their games. The games they didn't win, they tied with their competitor. 

We went to a couple of their home games to see Emily play.

North vs Ramona

North vs San Jacinto

Emily normally plays defense. Halfway through the Ramona game, he switched her to play forward. For the San Jacinto game, her coach put her in as a forward for the entire game. During practice and previous games, she normally plays defense so that is what she is used to so she gets a bit discombobulated when he switches her.

Unfortunately, practice and games take a lot of Emily's time and she has not made much improvement in her grades so I don't know how long she will get to play. She really enjoys it and the opportunity to do something with her friends but it doesn't seem to be enough to put much of a flame under her to improve her grades. We only see an occasional flicker and it isn't enough.

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Christian did really great in his second session of school. He got an A in both classes. He got full points again in one of the classes but the teacher in the other class knocked a couple of points off on his final assignment for something she wanted but did not specify in her requirements. He was pretty ticked. 

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Caitlyn's history teacher had her TA's make a wish list for Christmas. She didn't give the kids any guidelines, so they all picked mostly little things. Instead choosing one of the things on their list, she pretty much got them almost everything on their list and a bunch of extra stocking stuffers to boot. Caitlyn was pretty excited.

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Christian and I went to a adults only dinner party and white elephant gift exchange on the kids last day of school. We told the kids that they were on their own for dinner that night and wanted to see if they would cook for themselves and what they would do, but they were lazy. They ended up just reheating some leftovers. It was either that or they would just make themselves some ramen noodles, so the leftovers were probably a better option anyway.

When we got home, we were shocked that they put themselves to bed. We got home about an hour later than we had expected anyway. Caitlyn had been sick for over a week and apparently and Emily was exhausted from practice.

November

We celebrated Christian's birthday near the beginning of the month. With school, homework, soccer practice and packing for our Joshua Tree trip, it was a small affair.

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Caitlyn got to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain on Saturday with a couple of her best friends. Apparently Caitlyn and her friend Aubry have made themselves unofficial teachers assistants for their history teacher. They get their work done early and help her out or sometimes they will spend their time helping her before school. Her friend Raven is actually an official TA for the class during a different period. Anyway, to thank them for all they do for her, she invited them to go to Magic Mountain. Some groups at school were getting a bus to go that day, but the tickets had to be purchased. The teacher offered to purchase the tickets for them if they wanted to join in on the field trip.

She had such a good time. Her and her best friend Aubry are a good match because they are a bit more timid about which rides they wanted to go on. Raven is a bit more adventurous and has been to the park before so she rode a couple of rides without them. They were a bit disappointed because a few of the rides they wanted to go on was closed but counted themselves lucky at least that they didn't get rained on. There was a distinct possibility of that earlier in the week. They even got the history teacher to ride on one of the tamer rides with them.

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Our pomegranates have finally finished up and I used the last batch to make some pomegranate jelly which is so good!

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary with a tasty feast, courtesy of Marian. We had an early dinner by ourselves since Christian had class that night. Caitlyn ate with her sister when Emily got home from practice.

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We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family at my brother's house. Christian and Emily was supposed to spend the week trying to get most of the work done for Emily's science fair project at the lab. Halfway into the week, however, when they went in, they found that someone had drained all 75 gallons of liquid nitrogen, which they needed to work on her project. They would not get more in until Monday, so the rest of the week and weekend was a bust. They will have to modify the project a bit now since there will be no way to get all the work done.

Emily, ever the procrastinator, didn't find out what their science project was supposed to be until the last moment and then had to quickly come up with something in two days. She didn't know what to do and Christian won't have time to do a whole lot on it with her this year, so in the end, he was going to have her work on the samples that he had planned to do for Dr. Gallie anyway. He just had to build some kind of small project around it.

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Emily had her first soccer game at the end of the month. They had a tie so they were relatively satisfied with their performance. The coach felt that they should have been able to win though since the other team just went on brute strength and luck and not a whole lot of technique.

Joshua Tree

Christian's sister Erin and her family got a membership to the local climbing gym near them and has been wanting Christian to take them climbing. On Veteran's Day weekend, we finally agreed to go out to Joshua Tree. They also wanted to go camping. Christian was in charge of where to go and everything related to climbing. His sister was in charge of all the food.

They met us up at our house and we headed out to Joshua Tree at 5:30 in the morning. We took advantage of the early hour to choose a more popular climb. Originally, we were going to take them to The Eye at Cyclops Rock, but it was a very chilly morning and some people arrived just before we did. We decided to try White Lightning (5.7) instead.

As Christian lead up the route, he realized that no one else would probably be able to make it up. It is a fairly straightforward crack up 120 feet, but there are two slightly overhanging sections of the rock that you have to get over. We had our eye on a slightly easier climb to the left of White Lightning for the other family to try. Emily followed up the route without too much trouble so Erin decided to give it a go. Meanwhile, a couple of other climbers had come and claimed the easier route to our left. Erin couldn't get over the first crux. I went up next. I had some problems as well on the first crux but was able to pull up through it and make it to the top. No one else wanted to try it though. Erin was a bit disappointed and we were getting worried about getting overnight parking as the park was starting to fill up, so we rappelled down and headed over to the Overnight Boy Scout camping area and head out for easier climbs. It was already fairly crowded but we managed to get a couple of spaces.

It took them a while to gather all their stuff together. They had a lot of things that didn't fit in their backpacks. Plus, we were lending our niece Caitlyn's backpack, so they still had to pack that. Caitlyn was going to give one of my old backpacks a try. It's a really nice pack but too small to fit everything I need to bring now with the kids and all the extra climbing gear Christian has to haul around.

We finally headed out to Bear Island. We figure that we had to start them off a lot easier and chose a good starter climb on the way out to where we wanted to camp.

The route Christian picked out for them was Shardik (5.3). It is a very easy introductory climb. WE have done this climb before. It is rated at 5.3 but we had thought it should have been more appropriately rated at 5.2. Erin and her whole family was able to give this one a try and everybody made it up. A few of them where a bit surprised at the height though. It's only 55 feet but we are mostly used to the heights. This was new for them since they only climb in the gym.

I think they all enjoyed this climb. It didn't require very much in the way of difficult techniques but they got a feel for the rock and being up high. We had our lunch out here.

It was starting to get late though, so we hurried up and packed up to continue our hike out to our camping area. We headed out towards West Outer Mongolia to the Asian Fever Buttress.

We finally got to our destination and decided to camp in the wash just before the sun set. Unfortunately, some other campers decided to camp right above us and we could hear their loud voices along with their music. On top of that, we discovered that the girls didn't air out our tent like they were supposed to after our last trip in Yosemite, so there was small amounts of mold all over our tent. We aired it out the best we could and settle in for the night after a brief dinner.

In the morning, we were only a short walk to our next climb, Me Love You Long Time (5.4). It is another moderately easy route up 200 feet with a small traverse near the top. Not all of Erin's family was too excited to try this climb. Christian took some time to set it up. It is not quite so straightforward to climb because of the traverse. And he had a difficult time deciding where and how to set up and anchor for everyone to top rope the climb. There is also a bit of fourth class scrambling to the top of the climb. Christian decided to just set up the climb at the top of the 5th class climbing area and skip the scrambling part altogether. 

I followed up Christian and he belayed his sister up before we decided how to set everything up. We finally got everything ready and taught Erin how to rappel back down to the bottom. After all that, the rest of Erin's family was a bit reluctant to do the climb. Emily and Caitlyn went up while they were trying to decide what to do.

Even Caitlyn was a little hesitant about it until we reminded her that she has already done this climb. In fact, she lead this climb already. She felt more at ease knowing this and had no problem scrambling up. In fact, she finished the climb on some difficult slab at the top instead of the nice safe crack we all went up.

Our niece felt re-assured about the climb not being too difficult after Caitlyn went up. She did really good. She's a natural, much like Emily. Our youngest nephew and their dad was not so easily convinced. Erin finally half cajoled and half bribed our nephew to go up. He had some difficulty half way but finally made it up three quarters of the route but didn't want to make the traverse and came back down before he could finish the route. Erin's husband opted not to climb this one at all.

Christian and I had to go back up to clean the anchor and the directionals we left in the rock for the traverse. Then we had to finish the route to the very top and head over to the rappel rings on the farther end of the buttress. 

We had to pack up and leave after that. Erin was supposed to work early the next morning. They wanted to stop by and get everybody burgers for dinner before leaving. The kids and Erin headed back out first. Mike stayed to see if he could help but Christian still had to sort and repack all his gear so Mike and I headed out next. 

Christian didn't get back out to the cars until the sun started to set again. We were a bit worried because we thought that he would be just behind us. It was a lot more crowded in the parking lot now since it is a free entrance fee day because of Veteran's Day. 

We stopped by McDonald's for dinner. It gave us weird flash back to the time we got stranded in the parking lot because our truck wouldn't start when Christian's fuel pump gave out on us. I don't have any pictures of us climbing as our kids were too busy playing with their cousins. Hopefully, I will get some pictures for Erin later.

October

Emily finally got in to get her sports physical after school. For how much of a pain in the butt it was to get an appointment, they didn't seem to check a whole lot. They had her answer a bunch of questions. Checked a few things like her height, weight, blood pressure, eye sight, etc. They said it was more complicated but it seemed like any nurse should have been able to take care of this for her. I'm just glad it's over with.

She is over 5'5" now though! Her growth seems to be slowing down but not stopping yet.

Christian had to go get his TB test as well. He also went in to get his CPR certification. His first session of school is over and he did really well. He didn't lose a single point on any of his assignments!

The first quarter of the year ended for the girls also. Caitlyn maintained her 4.0. She was not able to get into ASB. Instead, she went back to yearbook to become one of the editors. She is also an office TA this year. She opted for that instead of one of the lame electives they offer that she is willing to take. Her PE teacher has also made her a TA in her PE class along with a couple of her friends, so she gets in there early to change and then they help with setting up or handing out and cleaning loaner PE clothes. She also had to help hand out locks and teach the new kids on how to open them. You wouldn't believe the trouble kids have with those. In addition to all that, she had one of her friends has become the unofficial TA's for their history class. They go in in the mornings to help out or finish their work early to help in class. Because the same teacher had them last year as well and they have proven themselves to be responsible "A" students, she even has them doing grading for her seventh grade students.

Emily...needs a lot of work. She had assured us that she would keep up on her assignments this year. It was one of the conditions of her joining the soccer team. So far, it's not going too well. I think that she is actually doing worse. I think that if things don't seriously improve, she will not be joining the soccer team next year and we might have to take her out of the IB program as well. It's pretty frustrating.
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This month, we've been having many problems with Christian's pickup truck. First his battery died. The week after, he was doing classroom observations at Emily's school and his truck wouldn't start at the end of the day. After many months of working fine, the fuel pump was failing again. He couldn't get it started. We drove back later that night with a rubber mallet to bang on the tank while starting it. Apparently, that is the trick. You have to do it at the same time and it roared back to life. We don't know when it is going to go out again so we knew that we could not delay replacing the fuel pump any longer. Who knows when it would just not start back up at all?

On top of that, our refrigerator started making weird noises. Christian had to look into that for nearly two weeks before discovering that the relay was bad. We ordered a new one and it seems to be working fine now but it had put a lot of strain on the compressor during those two weeks. We were pretty worried that it would kill the whole refrigerator.

So, yeah...it's been another stressful and expensive month for repairs.
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Our pomegranates are ripe. Most of the time, we only eat a few of them and the rest go to the birds or rots in the yard quite honestly. It's a lot of work to get the seeds out and the kids don't usually help, so I am usually too lazy to harvest them all by myself.

This year, I have finally figured out a way to juice them! The first time I tried, I broke my brand new juicer because of the hard seeds. It was a total failure. You only want to sit and eat so many of them. Like the apples, there is only a short period of time when the fruit is ripe for the picking. They are all ripe nearly at once and then they are gone. Apparently, the simplest way to juice them without some $600 machine, is to just put the seeds in a ziplock bag and mash them. Couldn't be much simpler!

We've been experimenting with fermented natural sodas like ginger ale and stuff. We had the idea of trying to make a pomegranate version. It turned out so good! We are going to be pretty upset when the pomegranates run out. The store bought juice is not as good and fairly expensive. So, when I have time, I juice extra pomegranates and freeze it to stock pile for the winter. I don't think it will last us until next October, but it is better than nothing. We still have problems with the pomegranates splitting open on us, so the birds get a large share of the crop usually. Plus, it turns my hands yellow and dries it out after seeding them for too long. The kids have helped out a little but not enough to really get to it all. We are nearing the end of the crop as it is. We gave some to a few neighbors as it is better than leaving more out for the birds but I am still slowly working through all that we have left.
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We went to our friends' annual Halloween Party. Caitlyn has been planning her costume for a month. She wanted to be Princess Mononoke. Caitlyn was a bit disappointed that someone else had the same costume as hers (except it was a fancy pre-made store-bought one). Emily couldn't think of anything so she just wore one of my old standby outfits. She's supposed to be a gypsy but she didn't put any effort into getting more of the accessories together.

They had the party a couple of weeks early so that it didn't interfere with other trunk-or-treats and parties others were throwing.

On the day of Halloween, Caitlyn wanted to dress up for school but didn't want the other kids pawing at her fur so she just went as a witch. Emily didn't want to dress up for school and still had soccer practice afterwards. The weather finally started cooling down, so Caitlyn ended up staying in her warmer witch costume for the trunk-or-treat. Emily came home from practice with just enough time to throw on her gypsy outfit and head to church for the chili dinner.

Christian actually had a class that evening so he was gone before Emily even got home. Our schedules are so chaotic now.

After the chili dinner, the kids did a round of trunk-or-treating. We hit three houses on our way home of people we knew and called it a day since the kids had plenty of candy anyway!

Yosemite - Day 4

On our last morning, we got up early to pack up our gear and take down our tent. We wanted to move our car closer to the Yosemite Village where we will finish with dinner later that evening. We will then be able to hop in our car and head directly home at the end of our day. If we didn't move our car out there early enough, we would not be able to even get a parking space.

We signed up for another 6 hours of service, each. We then hopped on a shuttle to the Upper Pines area to clean along the Merced there. We fished out another 11 pounds of trash on our last day. More shoes, bottles, tarp and endless micro-trash.

Christian had to take a small break to finish up his homework that he had to submit later that day. We had to head back towards the central area of the valley so that he could use the cell towers to submit his work.

We went back to the Village area so that he had the cell service and ate our lunch there.

We finished up by going down some of the backroads and then cleaning at the Church Bowl picnic and climbing areas before heading back for our day's weigh in.

In the past four days, we each put in 20 hours of work. Together, we hauled in 66 pound of trash. Much of the trash we picked up, barely weighed anything. Things like the corners of granola bar wrappers when people pulled them open, stickers from fruit, cigarette butts,  and straws from juice boxes (along with their wrappers).

I think the total for the entire Facelift event was 6,790 pounds this year. They say that the amount of trash they have cleaned up has decreased every year since they started some 14 years ago, but I think a lot of it has to do with the special cleanup projects they end up doing, so a lot of the previous weight might have been cement and asphalt blocks. They think that a lot of the decreased amount of trash picked up is due to more awareness of the issue. I think that there is a little of that, but in general, there is still just way more carelessly discarded trash out in our natural areas than is acceptable.

We had a bit of time to kill before the raffle, especially since they stopped the weigh ins a little earlier on our last day so that they could clean up. We hiked over to the Lower Falls to see some of the climbing next to the falls. Emily wants to do this nice but long sustained crack up there.

It was towards the end of the day, but as usual, the place was still just crawling with people.

Afterwards, we headed back for the last raffle. We were relieved when Timmy O'Neill showed up to present the last raffle. Emily won a little Patagonia backpack. It's probably too small for her to use for much. She wants to enter as an adult next year since there are no real incentives to enter as a kid any more and much of what they have to offer are geared towards younger children. She noticed another older kid had entered as an adult and won a nice prize. Nobody said anything to them about it. You are supposed to enter as a child until you are seventeen. Before, if you entered as a child, you were pretty much guaranteed some kind of prize. Since that isn't the case any more, she would rather try for some of the climbing gear rather than a tiny backpack, sunglasses or t-shirt that won't fit her.

Caitlyn won a water bottle with VIP family passes for YARTS. Normal YARTS passes would be useless to us, but since the new concessionaire stopped the shuttles up to Tuolumne, it has made it impossible or expensive (same thing at this point) for us to go on our adventure hike through Tenaya Canyon; something we've been wanting to do for the past couple of years. Caitlyn has lots of nice water bottle but she was pretty excited about the passes because she knew what that would mean. Now we just need the time to be able to do it; something we don't have a whole lot of anymore.

We also caught some bags of chalk, so we have a lifetime supply of that! We don't use it often as it is. Neither Christian, nor I, won anything further.

I was happy to see that a couple of people that were not climbers, returned their prizes to be given to others because they would not use them any way.

After the raffle, we went directly to get in line for dinner. The concessionaire puts on a dinner for the volunteers at the end of the event. Usually, after several days of eating camp food, we are drooling for some real food. Since we ate at the meatfest the night before, we enjoyed the food, but we were not quite as desperate for it as before. Overall, the food provided at the camp was a whole lot tastier than the catered stuff...desperation aside. But having to choose between staying for dinner or braving the chaotic traffic out of the valley, we opted to wait in line for the free dinner. Even though we were near the front of the line, we still waited for an hour before getting to eat. It didn't help that lots of people were cutting in line to be with their friends, but mostly because it would mean less of a line for them.

Anyway, that was the end of our Yosemite adventures. There was a lot more frustration, pain and disappointment than last year. We accomplished more, but enjoyed ourselves less. Maybe we just expected too much since we didn't get to go anywhere all summer, I don't know. Did pandering to all the people who pretended to want to help create more awareness and improve their attitudes? I doubt it since at the end of the event, after picking up every bit of trash we could set our eyes on, all we noticed were discarded raffle tickets and other things people clearly got from the event and left discarded on the ground. It was pretty sad and made us pretty angry.

Yosemite - Day 3

We were a bit tired and fed up at not being able to get in to any of the events we wanted to join through Facelift. We decided to take a bit of a break and do a little climbing. We went to the Swan Slab area. The kids wanted to do the second route above Oak Tree Flake (5.6).

Emily led the route up Oak Tree Flake. We have not climbed very much lately, so Emily whined a bit about her gear placements. Then the rope got caught in a crack on the beginning of the flake which resulted in having some significant drag on the rope because she didn't put a sling on one of her pieces. She started to really get frustrated and was thrashing about trying to free the rope from the crack. It was awful. Christian had to stop her and get her to calm down before she hurt herself. She finally got the rope out and finished the climb without any other incident.

Caitlyn could walk fine in her hiking boots with the mole skin on but when she tried to put on her climbing shoes, the result was not so good. She was tired and frustrated and wouldn't communicate with us as to the problem or what she needed. Christian and Emily were up at the top waiting for her and I was waiting to take pictures but she wouldn't move. I was getting hot and frustrated. The place was getting pretty crowded with other climbers on either side of us and a constant stream of tourists streaming past, taking pictures and yelling. Emily started to go up the second route while she was waiting (Bay Tree Crack, 5.6). After getting up a little ways though, she thought she heard a rustling in one of the cracks above her and freaked out. She came back down and I followed up Oak Tree Flake to clean her placements.

When I got to the top, Christian went back down to check on Caitlyn. She had finally decided to take her mole skin off and put a couple of bandaids on instead (which I had suggested to her earlier but she ignored me). He had Emily go back down as well so that she could watch our gear while he went to check on the possible snake in the crack above us. Caitlyn finally made it up but there were some tears as it was still painful on her feet. Christian sent her back down to change her shoes while we worked on the next route.

Christian made his way to where Emily left off and got a big dead tree branch from the Bay Tree to probe the crack. He didn't find anything there and made his way up the rest of the route. Emily came back up to where I was belaying Christian but wouldn't stay to climb the second route. I followed up and cleaned Christian's gear. Christian did find some snakeskin near the top though. We went to find the walk off but ended up down climbing some sketchy rocks. Of course, none of the kids took any pictures for us. When we came back around, we were a bit shocked at how much more crowded it was than before. It was like arriving at Disneyland all of a sudden. We quickly packed up our gear to head back over to check in for Facelift duties. We took longer than we had intended. Or I should say, the kids made us take a lot longer than we had intended for these little climbs.

After checking in for Facelift for the day, we headed out to the Happy Isles area to do some work. We took the shuttle to eliminate any unnecessary hiking. My blister would get a little better each night we rested and would be ready to burst after an entire day of hiking back and forth through some rough terrain. I did hurt it a bit on the down climb from Bay Tree Crack but luckily it still had not popped yet.

We only put in 3 hours of work each on this day but still came back with 7 pounds of trash. One of the coordinators gave us each a nice Deuter Drypack since he knew we would use it and did such good work. We also got invited to a big dinner that evening back at our campground. It was to be a big "Meatfest." The kids were super excited. We only pack the easiest things to eat and go most of the time on these trips. We don't spend a lot of time preparing our food. Our dinner for the evening was just going to be some canned soup, so we were more than happy to put it aside to join the party. Normally, we might have been to awkward or shy to join something like this, but since we got invited personally by some of the coordinators and it was going to be just next to our campground, we sucked it up and decided to join them.

But first, the raffle for the evening. Neither of the kids won anything. In fact, Timmy was not even running the raffle tonight. The kids were pretty disappointed. I actually won a Prana Yoga package. It had a yoga mat, notebook, water bottle, lip balm, chalk bag and trucker hat in a nice canvas bag. I gave Christian the hat.

We went directly back to camp for the Meatfest. It was pretty awesome. We had lamb kabobs and burgers, soup, salad, watermelon and chips. Someone was actually out there deep frying fresh garlic fries. We ate until we were about to burst. Caitlyn filled up on too much salad and didn't get to the burger! We keep making fun of her because it is supposed to be a meat-fest and she had salad. She did have some of the lamb, but still...

It was kind of weird. We were having dinner with some of Yosemite's greatest climbing legends. One of which was bivying above the rock fall (on both days) and came back down alive the next day to tell about it. Some of them got together to have a little jam session.

Photos by yosguns and mouse from merced

Christian took the kids back to get ready for bed after they had their fill and things started to wind down some. He came back and we stayed for quite a bit longer just taking everything in. It was nice there, despite the crowd and more noise than we usually like out here, but it wasn't too bad because it was made up of most of the old timers. The core of the Yosemite climbing community. All the new hipster climbers were out at the Octoberfest in town.

Yosemite - Day 2

Day two in Yosemite was Friday, September 29th. We planned to take it a little easier today. Christian put some mole skin on Caitlyn's feet and she put on different hiking shoes. We had only planned to work half the day, then take off to attend a program being given by Jeremy Collins who is a climber/artist. He was giving an Art Walk which is supposed to start at the El Cap Bridge.

We did not know what it was going to be like heading to the bridge since some of the roads were closed due to the rock fall and traffic in general was a total disaster throughout the park. Supposedly, the shuttle route over there only runs in the summer...at least, that is what the signs showed.

Since we had so much luck finding trash in or near the water, we headed towards the Merced. We got a bit side tracked in one area that might have been a day use area at some point. They had some projects to restore the area, so they were in the process of planting a bunch of new plants there but they didn't seem to bother cleaning up the area before doing so. We dug up so much trash in this one little area, it was unbelievable. We finally did make it out to the river, but just a small part of it as we were nearly out of time.

We only put in 4 hours each on this day but we still pulled out a whopping 18 pounds of tourist debris. After our weigh in for the day, we headed out towards the El Cap Bridge. We didn't have much time to waste as we worked a bit more than we had intended. We also found that the El Cap bridge was a LOT farther away than we figured. We hiked a brisk pace but was not even close when the start time for the walk came and went. To add insult to injury, as we walked along the road towards the El Cap area, we were passed by a shuttle...a shuttle that was supposedly not running anymore. We were pretty put out by it all, to say the least. 

In the end, we had a choice, continue on to the bridge where we most likely missed the start of the walk already, only to have to turn around again and head back where there may or may not be a shuttle to take us back, or cut our losses and just head back so that we can be sure to make it back before the next raffle. In the end, we all opted to head back. We were hot, tired, disappointed and by this time, I had a good blister developing on my foot as well. Plus, we were inundated with gnats everywhere we turned almost the entire time.

We did eventually find out that the shuttles were going to run until October now...little good that did for us.

We finally got back to Yosemite Village to await the the raffle.

We usually have a lot of fun at the raffles. Timmy O'Neill always presents it and he is just hilarious most of the time. But the other kids at the event are super annoying. They are loud, pushy and demanding. You are supposed to be present to win anything in the raffle but the kids will say that the person they called is their friend and will accept a prize for them. Half of them, were not even really friends, they just made it up or met them in daycare...which brings me to our next complaint. While we are slaving away, working hard to do what we volunteered to do, these kids were brought in by their parents and left at daycare most of the time and didn't pick up so much as a single scrap of garbage; yet they were still all signed up as volunteers and given raffle tickets. Some parent even signed up their baby and won something when the kid could not even walk yet. The worst insult had to be the person that signed up their dog. Yes, dog. And yes, the dog won a prize. Plus, there are always dozens of tourists who see the booths and come by to see what is going on and find out they can get free swag by signing up. Many of them don't even make an attempt to help. They sign up just before the end of the day and stick around for the raffle, while drinking with their free water bottles and pocketing their free passes. A few make a half assed attempt to bring some things in.

So we were more than a little disappointed at how things were going. Emily did win a Yosemite Conservancy hat, which she actually really needed. She claims her old ones don't fit anymore. Caitlyn didn't win anything because they threw handfuls of free stuff into the crowd and didn't have enough for all the kids in the end. Most of which didn't help and a few even whined about what they won until they traded them for something else. She did catch a nice chalk bag which would have been pretty cool, had she not already had two of them and had to sit through the other kids screaming in her ear and elbowing her to get more stuff they really should have not been qualified for. Let's not forget the baby and dog.

Christian won a small women's hoodie from Kuhl. Lucky me! I did not win anything...well, officially. Some people won climbing gear (since this is an event put on by the Yosemite Climbing Association), that you know they wouldn't even know what to do with. I guess they will put it on e-bay or it will end up in their garage for a while and eventually end up in the landfill.

We did not even bother trying to go to the evenings program as it is such a crush every night.

Yosemite - Day 1

After returning from the dentist office with the girls, we quickly packed and had dinner, then got a quick shower and a few hours of sleep before rousing everyone to pile into the car to head out to Yosemite. The girls will by ditching school for the next couple of days but they were supposed to have talked to all their teachers to get their assignments done before leaving and making up any additional work as soon as they returned. The service hours will also more than fulfill the service hours that Emily is required to put in for the year in order to graduate.

Christian drove most of the way, as usual. I gave him a small break to catch a nap before the last leg of our journey. We got into the valley early in the morning to check in with our camp host and set up camp. We requested to stay in Yellow Pines this time. We try to request different camp sites every time we come, just to see what it is like at each place. This one is the campground reserved for volunteers.

Once settled, we had a quick breakfast and made the hike into the center of the valley to check in for our Facelift duties. Upon signing up, we received new Yosemite Facelift Kleen Kanteens and free park passes in honor of National Public Lands Day for our service.

For our first day, we were sent towards Mirror Lake and along the trails and creek leading to it.  We put in 7 hours each on our first day and hauled back 30 pounds of trash! That was our record high. We found a lot of shoes people lost in the creek. Of course, there was the usual water bottles and endless micro trash but Christian even hauled in part of a tire. We  ended up catching a shuttle back from near the Ahwahnee Hotel because Caitlyn got blisters from all our walking and the trash was getting unbearably heavy.

Our camp is a ways off, so we had humped our dinner along with our lunch around all day so that we would not have to go back and forth. After weighing in our trash, we decided to get the girls a commemorative Facelift t-shirt as a kind of reward for not having cavities. Unfortunately, the new t-shirts were kind of big with deep v-necks that were totally inappropriate for the kids. Emily decided on last year's t-shirt. Even that did not quite fit Caitlyn, so she was considering some vintage ones. She was considering between 3 of them but was not overly enthusiastic about any one, so the guy sweetened the deal for her by letting her have two for the price of one! She then happily chose two of the three in question and felt much better about not being able to get one of the newer ones she liked better. 

We then finally settled in on some park benches in Yosemite Village to get some much needed rest. While we were resting, there was another big rock fall in the same area as the day before. This time much bigger. The dust from the filled the air above us like a fog rolling in. We did not know what happened exactly until people started talking about it.

Photos by Tom Evans

There were a lot of rumors of what happened, but in the end, there were no fatalities this time. The previous day, a climber and his wife were scouting around the base when the rock broke off from El Capitan. He shielded his wife and died. She was air lifted to a hospital for treatment. There were still a couple of groups on the wall above where the rock fall occurred, but no one below. There was a group of volunteers who had just passed the area moments before.

This time, the rock fall was 3 times bigger but most people were giving the area a wide birth. But because the rock fall was so big, a good sized rock flew out onto the road and fell through a tourists' sunroof as they were driving out of the valley. The driver was hit in the head and taken in for treatment. No one else was seriously hurt that we were aware of.

After all the trash for the day had been weighed and tallied, they cleaned up and brought out all the gear donated by sponsors for the day's raffle. The kids won more t-shirts! Caitlyn got a DMM t-shirt while Emily got a Patagonia one. Neither Christian, nor I, won anything from the raffle this time.

We had some dinner and tried to go to the evening program to hear some of the presentations from climbers whom they had assembled for the day but the line was so long and they place was already filled to the rim. We decided to cut our losses and head back to camp. Christian ended up carrying Caitlyn back on his shoulders because her blisters were causing her a lot of pain.

September

Most of September was taken up with just trying to juggle our new school schedule. Christian is exhausting himself trying to juggle work and school. Throw in trying to apply for financial aid, get our finances in order so that we can manage when his work is done, scouts and Sunday school, plus he has to work in a certain number of hours of classroom observation at different schools; it hasn't been so fun.

Caitlyn is trying to join ASB this year but there are a lot of kids wanting the same thing. Emily tried out for soccer this year. She has a bunch of friends on the soccer team and they spent most of last year trying to get her to join too. She made it on the JV team with them, so she's pretty excited since the only soccer she has even played was in PE. The only thing we've been having trouble with is trying to get her a sports physical so that she can play.
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Christian's dad came up to take me out to lunch for my birthday. Other than that, my birthday was pretty uneventful. We didn't have a lot of time or money to do much.

Christian managed to find some time to put in a new faucet for me. The cheap plastic handle broke on the one that came with the house but we hadn't had the time to fix it for a while.
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We did manage to get the family all to the dentist though. I am happy to say that neither kids had any cavities! Caitlyn has never had one and was pretty excited to keep her record clean. This is the first time Emily didn't have anything so she was pretty excited as well. We were just relieved.
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Other than that, we are about to head out to Yosemite for this year's Facelift event. The kids are ditching school for the next couple of days so that they can go. While we were at the dentist, we heard about a big rock fall from El Capitan. There was one fatality.

August

We went to go visit my mother over the weekend. While we were out there, we found one of our tires were getting kind of low. We found handfuls of nails in two of our tires. We put the spare on the tire that was going down and had to hope and pray that the other one would be fine until we got back.

To make matters worse, the tires are getting kind of old and some of the tread was thin in parts so they would not patch up the tires, we had to get a whole new set of tires. We had hoped that we would have at least another year or two with those tires before being forced to swap them out.

We took the car in to Sears to get our tires and get the car aligned. That's where we normally take it. I found a decent price for tires online for them but when we took the car in to get it done, I had to haggle with them over the price as they don't have the same sales as they do online. They tried to match it for me but the price must have changed overnight because they could not find the price that I went in for. In the end, they said that they would honor the price if I had a screenshot of the sale price. Fortunately, I still had the screen up on my computer from the night before. But I had to drive back home to get it and go back out to place my order for them as they did not have them in stock.

It was quite a hassle and pretty frustrating, but I ended up getting the tires that I wanted (or at least the closest ones that I could afford) for the price that I was willing to pay. The shipment got in too late for me to get it in that next day so I ended up making an appointment to get them put in the next day after that. I had to keep an eye on the tire and it was stressful since I no longer had a spare and had another tire with several nails in it already. I kept wondering how long it would last.

The girls and I finally went in to get the work done. We made a day of it and wandered through the mall for a while. We brought a lunch as well since we knew it was going to take a while. It was suppose to take a couple of hours, but when a couple of hours was up, it was still not done. We were tired of the mall so we took a walk across the shopping center to get the girls an ice cream shake with one of their summer reading coupons from the library. I was going to just steal a couple of sips from each of them but ended up getting my own because it was so hot and the girls were being very patient.

After another hour and a half, we returned once again to the auto center, only to find that although they finally got our tires changed out, they still had not done the alignment. In fact, they had taken the computer offline for maintenance during this time. We were hot, tired, irritable and sick to our stomach from too much sugar from the shakes by the time they finally got all the work done. It took four and a half hours. The lady felt so bad for us that she ended up giving me a small discount on the alignment and refunded some of the money to me. It wasn't much but it made me feel a tiny bit better. I still don't think that I will go back there for tires again. It is never a very good experience. I think we swore never to go back there after the last time we had work done because of something or other that we were not happy with.
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The girls went with the other youth from our stake to their annual beach trip. They had a lot of fun but it always irritates me. They never leave on time and then they come back later and later every year. The first time Emily went, they came back at 9. The next year they came back around 9:30. This year, Caitlyn was able to go as well and they didn't get back until 10:pm. I'm sure no one else cares but us, which is partly what irritates us. Why does no one else care that their kids are out that late? Why does no one else even make their kids go to bed at a decent hour? They've come back after their bed time on Temple trips when they have school the next day as well. We aren't allowed to get irritated with them. I mean, what's our deal, right? They are off with responsible adults doing good things.

We know no one else cares, because we teach a lot of these families kids at church on Sunday. If they don't miss church on Sunday entirely because they stayed up too late playing video games or watching movies, they come in like zombies or hopped up on sugar to keep them going. None of them are well rested and ready to learn, much less attentive and reverent.

But hey, they just want to be happy and we are just cramping their style.
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We had another fire up in the Box Springs Mtns behind our house. It was a lot closer this time since it was actually directly behind our house. We heard sirens blaring by and smelled a little smoke, but by the time we ran over to the back door and looked outside, the fire was already racing halfway up the mountain. We watched for quite a while. It was quite spectacular how the fire fighters worked on the fire. They had several helicopters dropping water and a bigger plane dropping fire retardant. At one point, the plane took this spectacularly deep dive in order to control the fire from spreading too much on the left that by the time they pulled up, it looked like it was going to crash into our house if it didn't pull up fast enough. Christian got a video of the whole thing but it doesn't look nearly as heart pounding as it did in person. The fire didn't get any structures thankfully but they had some brief evacuations of the houses on the other side of the hill in Moreno Valley. They got the fire under control that evening but it took two more days for the fire to be put out entirely.

The firefighters would hike up the steep hill everyday, in the sweltering heat, in all their heavy gear, with shovels and axes to beat down any smoldering embers.
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Marian took a day off work and came out to visit us before the girls had to go back to school. She tried coming earlier this summer but was pretty swamped at work getting ready for an audit. She took us out to lunch and took the girls out to buy a couple of things for school.

She also brought a whole trunk full of gifts and had this whole convoluted game made up for it. They were all in boxes or bags and she made us wrap them all for her. She told the girls that they were gifts for some charity thing she was doing. It was as big as Christmas. In fact, half the gifts were for Christmas and we aren't allowed to open them until then. There was even ones for Emily's birthday, next March! She called it her purple elephant game. Think white elephant except with twists.

Some of the stuff was weird and some of it was just embarrassing. There was a little bit of stealing gifts back and forth but mostly everybody ended up with what they got with few exceptions. Emily was going to go out of her mind not getting to open all her wrapped gifts. Marian had to take extra precautions so that she would know if Emily decided to cheat and take a peak before Christmas. After we finally cleaned up the mess and found places to squirrel all the unopened gifts away, she settled down somewhat and stopped agonizing over it.

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Our friends, the Deans, threw a party the last weekend before school started. We had not seen them all summer as they were out of town this July 4th. This party was a big water water fight with pizza and popsicles. We, admittedly, were not that enthusiastic about attending a party out of doors as it was pretty hot. We got a couple of thunder storms this month that came in and gave us a little water but not enough.

Emily had a small squirt gun but Caitlyn didn't have anything so she decided to take a little bit of her mad money to buy a squirt gun for the occasion. We found nothing left at the first store we went to so it was not very encouraging since it is the end of summer. However, we found a nice Nerf water blaster at the next store on clearance, so she only had to spend five bucks! I don't think her sister was too thrilled about it though since hers just as much and was a fraction of the size.

One of the adults at the party was a terror throughout the whole party to the young and old alike. In fact, he even attacked the Elders that came by for dinner. We won't mention names but his name rhymes with 'bet.' I tried to get the kids to organize and gang up on him, but they were too divided to make any difference.

They also put a couple of slides and plastic tarp together to make a makeshift water slide. So of the little kids were a menace on it though. They wouldn't clear out of the way so that the next person would go and when they finally moved out, they would race back up, cut in line or push the big kids out of the way so that they could get on. All the older kids were pretty patient and respectful though.

In the end, Emily was able to round up some very small children to gang up on our water bully. It was pretty funny. I didn't get to see it but he told me about it. I was so proud. It would have been more exciting though if they were able to get everyone to join in. I kept trying to encourage them and waited with my camera ready, but it never happened. At some point, I gave up because I was afraid for the safety of my camera with all the water going every which way. Holding an expensive camera gave me very little immunity to the water wars. I got a few from a distance but was not able to get as much as I would have liked.

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It had been merely hot this month, as is normal for August weather around here. Some times it is worse than other times but we ended up with a week here and there that made it bearable. But as soon as school started, it became stifling hot again. It was just horrible. It never cooled down in the evenings and we had to have our air conditioning on for half the day.

Not only did Emily and Caitlyn go back to school, but Christian did as well. Christian is going back to school to get a teacher's credential and hopefully his masters degree as well. He had been getting all the stuff he needed together and we were cutting it pretty close but he went in for a meeting with his counselor to finish going through all his requirements when we found out that he would be able to start that very evening. In the end, even though he had been working on getting admitted for months, it seemed to happen very quickly.

I had just picked up the girls from their first day of school and swung by to pick up Christian from work to go to his meeting. By the time the meeting was done, he had to drop us off at home, scarf down and quick dinner and head back to school for his first class!
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At the end of the month, we had yet another fire near our house. The fourth one this summer. This time, it was on Sugarloaf Mtn. which is between the kids elementary school and the middle school. Caitlyn was on a field trip at UCR at the time so she wasn't even there but Emily said that they had to eat lunch in the classrooms because of all the ash falling down. When I picked up the kids from school, it was pretty scary out there. The wind was blowing, a new storm seemed to be brewing and there was all kinds of dust and ashes thrown up in the air. It looked a little apocalyptic!