New Year's Eve

We planned to get together with my brother and his kids to go hiking in the Santa Monica mountain area on New Year's Eve. My sister and her oldest had even decided to join us. Although, Christian and I were still sore, we were still going to suck it up and attempt to go. The hike wasn't supposed to be too difficult. We had planned to spend the night at my brother's place and get together with my mom the next afternoon to all make steamed buns (bao) together. My brother had all of us watch Pixar's new short "Bao" and we got the recipe that the director shared from her mother and we thought it would be fun to try it out.

However, early in the morning, we got a phone call that woke us all up. My father had passed away. After his recent hospital stay, they confirmed that he had brain damage from when he choked and stopped breathing. They could not confirm how extensive the damage was. But since he had spiraled into dementia and now had some brain damage on top of that, the prognosis was not good. We all got together that weekend to go see him and possibly say goodbye. His eyes fluttered open here and there briefly but never seemed to wake up. He seemed to be in some intermittent discomfort. He was breathing on his own but they still put an oxygen tube in to help him. He had some phlegm in his throat that they would occasionally have to suction out.

After several more days with no change, we had decided that it was time to "pull the plug," so to speak. There was no hope for any real quality of life left. He was basically a vegetable. It seemed cruel to leave him trapped in his body with no real hope of recovery. Without any change in his condition, the hospital would have to put his oxygen through his trachea and put a feeding tube through a hole in his stomach since they could not leave all the tubes down his throat that he has had for some time now. It would cause other problems to leave them for too long. We did not want them to put any more holes in him to prolong his suffering. We had them remove all his tubes. They gave him some morphine to keep him comfortable. He still continued to hang on, only he seemed to lie more comfortably without all the tubes down his throat. They still offered him oxygen through a mask to help him to stay comfortable. Several more days passed with no change. My mom and sister had to then make arrangements to move him back to the nursing home that he had been staying in as they could not let him stay in the ICU. He was still going pretty strong although he never regained any more consciousness than having his eyes flutter open briefly.

The evening before he passed, the nurse noted that his breathing began to get shallow. He passed peacefully shortly after 5:am.

We decided to continue with our plans to head to my brother's house but decided to nix our hiking plans in lieu of spending time with my mother. When we arrived, we decided to just move up our plans to make the steamed dumplings with my mom for lunch as it was too cold and misty to even take her to the park.

It was nice to spend the time together with the whole family. I am relieved that we had not decided to leave town. We had tossed around the idea, but we had no idea how much time my dad had left and the weather was not very ideal to go anywhere.

We ended up heading to my sister's house that evening and we had an impromptu family dinner and rang in the new year together that evening. We were exhausted. We didn't get to bed until late and did not sleep very well.

We woke up quite late the next morning and had brunch. We tossed around the idea of taking my mom to the park still but we could not agree to a destination and was afraid a lot of facilities might be closed due to the government shutdown. At some point, we just gave up and decided we needed to head home. We stopped by to see my mom before heading out.

El Cajon Mountain Redo

After things settled down after all the holiday celebrations, we headed down to San Diego to try El Cajon Mountain again. We tried it several years ago, but we all got heat exhaustion and have always wanted to go back to finish the two pitch climb we started.

Christian's sister's family decided to join us, so we left early in the morning and met up with them at their house. We had a quick breakfast of champions...donuts. Then went to pick up our niece from school. She had practice early in the morning. All that kind of set us back about another hour. So when we finally arrived at our destination, it was already a little after 9:am.

The hike up the mountain is grueling. It is definitely a strenuous hike. The first time, it took us two hours to make this hike in the heat. This time, it took us three hours to get to the base of our climb because we are totally out of shape. The weather, however, was about as good as it gets.

We didn't get too many pictures as the group was spread apart over the trail and frankly, I was trailing the whole time and it was all I could do to keep up. And because of the rocks and brush, it was difficult to see the next group on all the switchbacks.

We had lunch at the base of our climb. Being overly tired and hungry, we probably dawdled a bit too long. Christian led the first pitch up Bright Eyes (5.6). He used double ropes. Emily was going to go up next on one, and I was supposed to go up behind her on the other. Because rope management can be difficult and we had not done this in a long time, I didn't really go up until Emily was finished. Emily had pulled up an additional rope behind her for Caitlyn to climb. We actually brought four different ropes since we had so many people. We figured that when our family got to the top, we would set up a top rope for Aron's family to work on the first pitch while we worked on the second pitch that we didn't get to do last time.

It didn't quite work out as we had hoped. When Christian, Emily and I were at the anchor, we tried to organize the ropes and devices and it became this tangled rats nest and we were losing time fast. We only had so much daylight because of the season, so we figured that we needed to start heading down by 2:30 to have enough light to get back to the truck. When they told us that it was nearly 2:pm already, we had to give up the second pitch. Christian rappelled down and lowered Emily. I stayed up at the anchor to take pictures and Caitlyn, our niece Michaela and Aron climbed up and got lowered back down. Mike and our nephew, Brandon, wasn't that enthusiastic about the climb, so they didn't bother as we were definitely out of time but we wanted to make sure that after that strenuous hike, that everyone that wanted to climb, got to climb.

Aron belayed Christian back up to the anchor to clean up and I rappelled back down.

We were in a race with the lowering of the sun. Aron tried to help Christian coil up the ropes while Emily sorted and put away the gear. By the time Christian got back down, the bulk of our group started to head back down the trail. Christian and I finished cleaning up and putting away the gear before heading down. 

I had thought going up was difficult. Going down was worse. My legs felt like jelly and my joints felt like they were ready to give out. We did not even have time to stop to rest. We just had to keep going, but you had to be careful and go down in a controlled way or you were likely to get hurt.

The bulk of our group got back to the truck with the last of the twilight to get them across the slippery log we had to traverse to get over the mucky and stinky water in the gully. We were behind them a good 10 or 15 minutes. Caitlyn was worried that we would not be able to see and came back looking for out for us with her phone light. Fortunately, Aron figured out what she was trying to do and came back with her. I was so exhausted and it was pretty dark, I would not have been able to get back across without Caitlyn's light and Aron's help.

Mike took us all out for some hard earned Mexican food afterwards. Man, a giant carne asada burrito never tasted so good or hit the mark so well. We went back to their place to rest and chat before heading back home. We had planned to spend the night and leave in the afternoon, but I think there was some communication errors, so we just came back. I was sore for 4 or 5 days afterwards!

And after all that, we still didn't get to do the second pitch of Bright Eyes!

Christmas

We finally made it to Christmas! The Christmas tree and lights have been put up. The cards have been printed and sent. The treats have been baked and delivered. All the presents are under the tree. And school is finally over...for now.

It looks like everyone got pretty good grades this semester. Although the girls' grades won't be official until some time after their break. We know Christian, at least, got excellent grades.

Marian arrived on Christmas Eve for our annual Christmas get together. Christian slow roasted our prime rib roast, courtesy of Marian, half the day. The kids washed and vacuumed out Marian's car for her.

After our feast, Marian watched the kids practice their organ a bit to see what they've been working on. Then, we came back to watch a movie together and called it a night.

We opened presents on Christmas morning.

Presents were not quite what the kids thought they would be this year. They got put on Santa Marian's  "naughty" list. Apparently, over the summer, they made a deal with Marian to do 20 hours of service for her. She gave them a bunch of stuff they wanted for it. Well, when the deadline came, they hadn't done anything. Caitlyn made a slight attempt to do something and put in 3 hours. Emily just argued that the service was supposed to be at Marian's house...not ours.

So, Marian still packed her car and the tree with tons of gifts but there was a twist to them. The candy in their stocking was expired. The presents they opened were not really for them exactly. Some of them were actually for Christian or myself. Some of it was just household goods that we can all use like toilet paper and canned goods. There were even treats included that they would not be allowed to eat.

Emily was not very amused. Caitlyn mostly took it in stride as she figured they deserved it. Luckily, Marian had left some real gifts for them back in July so they did get a couple of real gifts from her.

They also got gifts from us.

They also got presents from Grandma Cheri. Grandpa had brought them down from Oregon earlier this month.

We got a bunch of treats and she made us all new slippers. They are really warm and comfy. So, they got a good share of presents still so don't cry for them. She is going to give them another chance to get their ours in before their birthdays or who knows what will happen then!

We had our annual Belgian waffles for breakfast. Plus Caitlyn's friend dropped off some cinnamon rolls for our family last night so we had a combination of that for our breakfast. 

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We went to my brother's house for Christmas dinner to meet up with my family. Christian made us some fresh sausages and barbecued them on my brother's grill. I made dessert. My brother made us a Christmas goose. It was the first time we got to try goose. It was pretty expensive and I didn't think that it tasted that unique from duck. Also, I think my brother's oven was too hot so the goose ended up being a little tough. My mom made some sticky rice and my sister made some bbq pork and vegetables.

After dinner, the kids got some more gifts. We had dessert and took their annual Christmas pictures together. My sister's boys were so tall before. Now all the younger kids are starting to shoot up. It is funny to compare the previous years' pictures to the present.

December

The girls started off the month by going horseback riding in Norco with the young women from church.

The girls were excited to try horseback riding again. They had gone once before. Aunt Wendy had gotten them and their cousins, an afternoon of lessons a few years back.

The first time they went out, they just went around in circles in the exercise yard. This time they got to go down a simple trail. 

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Emily's soccer season started, so it has taken over most of her time. In fact, she had the Young Women leaders drop her off at the high school in Norco for a tournament game right after going horseback riding. She missed the morning game since we had already committed the girls to go horseback riding, but made it to the afternoon game.

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My dad is in the hospital again. Apparently, he chocked while eating his dinner one evening and lost consciousness from the lack of air.. They actually had to do CPR on him, but we don't know how long they took to get him breathing again. Because his heart stopped for some time, there is now brain damage. We can't tell how extensive it is, but it is pretty bad.

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A lot of our time has been spent at church Christmas parties. The girls had a Young Women in Excellence night, we had our ward Christmas party and then attended the Messiah Sing-In. 

Emily also got to play Joy To The World on the organ during the Postlude at church last weekend. That was pretty exciting...at least for us. She did really great but she was super nervous. She messed up a little at the beginning but was able to just start over and then she played three verses with different stops with no problem. 

Caitlyn is working on a song to play at the end of the month but has been struggling with a difficult part. Hopefully she will be able to get it together in time.

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Christian finally got his student teaching assignment for next year. He will be doing his first 8 weeks at a high school in Rialto. It's a bit far but hopefully it will work out okay. We hope he will be able to get his next 8 weeks in Riverside.

November

The month started out pretty shaky. The sinks in the bathrooms were clogged up with hair and stuff and the usual drano wasn't cutting it. The bathroom sinks are back to back, so they are both connected and when one sink clogs, they both get backed up. Christian took it apart to snake it and found that the pipes were just disintegrating.

When we first looked over our house to buy it, we made certain that the sinks and tubs were in good condition because the tub in the house we had rented was in terrible shape and never looked very clean even after just cleaning it. But when the previous owners of this house moved out, they made it a point of pride to clean the bathrooms before leaving. We wanted them to just leave it and leave the house. Well, she decided to clean it with some kind of acid as the kitchen sink, and the bathtub and sink in the main bathroom is now utterly ruined. The enamel is destroyed. So, we are again, dealing with sinks and tubs that don't look clean no matter how much you clean it. We were so pissed. There is nothing we can do except tear it apart and swap all of it out or paint over it...which is only temporary.

But now, to add salt to our wounds, we find that not only did the enamel get ruined, the pipes did too. We don't know how extensive the damage is. We are hoping that the worst is where it made immediate contact with the acid. Anyway, Christian ripped it all out, up to the wall. He had to grind out what was left, as part of the pipe crumbled and broke as we tried to remove it. Then we had to order a tap and die to fix the pipe or we would have to rip the walls apart to get in further to replace parts. Christian also had to order some special adhesive/gasket, to make sure it would not leak as we couldn't get the new pipe in far enough to be really confident in the joint. So, the kids were without a bathroom sink for over a week. They either had to use the kitchen sink or the sink in our bathroom, which was working again after Christian snaked the kids sink.

It was a pain in the butt, very stressful and was an unexpected expense but it is finally all back together and working fine.
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Christian had a birthday and we celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary, but we didn't do that much and I don't have any pictures to show for it, as Christian was sick again. He's been sick a lot, on and off since the beginning of October. Luckily, no one else in the house caught anything.
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Emily is back on her full schedule of soccer practice and games, although, the season has not actually begun. There are pre-season games and soccer tournaments still. So, they've been practicing a lot and trying to get back in shape. Much to our dismay, they even had a game and practiced during the Thanksgiving break.

Emily is on the junior varsity team again and is happy to be playing with most of her friends. So far, she is still doing fairly well in keeping up her grades but the season is about to start and the end of the semester is just around the corner now, so we will see if she gets to finish off the season or not.
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We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family, as usual. We met up at my sister's house. My sister and her immediate family had gone to visit with her in-laws before our dinner though and didn't get back until quite late. Our dinner ended up to be pretty late, so we were a bit irritated. We ended and came home even later. The kids didn't get to crawl into bed until after 1:am.
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A couple of days later, we drove back out for a big Chinese banquet. My sister's family was throwing an eightieth birthday celebration for her father-in-law and they were also celebrating their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Our kids have never attended a big banquet before, so they were pretty excited to be try a traditional ten-course meal. The biggest problem was getting them to dress up for it. I only managed to get them to wear their church clothes. 

Again, the party started late. Some of the food was pretty good but a lot of it was mediocre at best. We were a bit disappointed. The worst part was, that they had music blasting in our ears almost the entire time. Not just any music, but karaoke music. Luckily, Christian brought ear plugs, which made it a little more bearable. By the end of the evening, even my head hurt from the constant noise (which they turned up louder and louder by the end of the evening). The party included significantly more than two hundred guests. As some of the people started to stream out at the end of the evening, we took the opportunity to escape as well. Of course it took us nearly half an hour to dodge and weave through the crowd and keep our group moving and left the party to the singing and dancing fools of their core group...an no, they were not the younger generations.

October

Emily went in for her annual sports physical at the beginning of the month. It was a lot less painful than last year. She has not grown since her last physical so we are pretty sure she has stopped growing. She seems to be holding steady at 5 feet 5 and 3/4 inches tall. Her weight, eyesight and hearing was good as well. She got a flu shot thrown in since it is that time of year. Caitlyn and I got ours as well, since we were there. Unfortunately, Christian was already home with flu like symptoms.
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The first quarter of school ended. Both of the girls are doing really good. They both managed to get all A's and one B. Hopefully, they can keep their momentum up. Emily is on a short leash this year with her soccer. If her grades drop or even misses assignments, she doesn't get to go. She has missed a few days of practice this month but she gets it fixed with the teacher now, whether it is her fault or theirs.
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On one of nicer days (weather wise), we walked out to the back hills to do a little climbing. The short hike back there showed that we were pretty out of shape, especially myself. Emily is working on getting back in shape with soccer and Caitlyn had to put some real effort into it with returning to PE.

I only climbed one route. Everyone else went up a couple of times before it got late. We were going to attempt to go to Joshua Tree on another weekend, but it didn't really work out as Caitlyn procrastinated and had too much work to do. Christian took Emily out to the Quarry for a bit to get a little more climbing in. 

I don't know if it is the weather or what, but Christian has been having a lot of trouble with one of his knees and I have been having problems with my back so we have not been able to do too much.

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Christian has spent a great deal of time this past month working on our vehicles. He changed the brakes on my vehicle (he had to do it several times due to some complications). He also changed the transmission fluid in my vehicle. We had not done it since we got the new transmission put in. Apparently, they cheated us on the transmission fluid as we didn't get nearly as much out as we had to put in.

He had to put in a new fuel injector in his truck. We've been having problems with the truck occasionally running rough and the fuel being to rich for a number of years now. Slowly, but surely, Christian has been able to narrow down the problem. He spent a good six months or so, building an electronic circuit to test his injectors. With his new electronic gadgets, he was able to identify the exact problem and swap out the faulty injector and it seems to be running nicer than it has in years.

It's all a never ending process though, as both of our vehicles are getting old and there is a lot of maintenance we need to keep up with.

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Emily went to Disneyland with her friends. One of her best friends took them all for their birthdays this year (including her own, I guess). She got to go out and spend the day at Disneyland with her closest friends and has not one single picture to show for it. I don't know why I expect more. I just don't understand that.

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We didn't do anything for Halloween this year. While Emily was at Disneyland, Caitlyn and I attended some Harvest Festival at church. She volunteered to help out with some of the games for the younger kids and then we stayed for the Chili cook-off and talent show. I brought an apple dessert from my canned summer apples. 

We skipped on our friends' Halloween party this year as Christian was sick with another flu and I just started having problems with my back and was in no mood to go stand around at a Halloween Party.

On Halloween night, we just stayed home. We got one group of kids trick-or-treating and that was it. I only prepare a small amount of candy these days since most of the time, no one comes by. Luckily, we had just enough to give a small handful to each of the trick-or-treaters. After the kids finished their homework, we watched a somewhat scary movie together and called it a night.

September

Not much of note happened through September.

The kids got to play some prelude music on the organ one Sunday. That was pretty cool. Emily was scheduled to give a talk that day as well, so she thought it was pretty unfair to have to be up there so much that day. But the kids did well and we thought that it was pretty neat.
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Emily is doing much better in school this year so after she got her first progress report, we let her go back to soccer practice. They had already had tryouts, so it was a little late, but since she played last year already, they were not so concerned with her late start. However, because of last year's performance, she is pretty much skating on thin ice with us though, so if her grades start to drop or if she even misses an assignment, she won't get to go to practice or play at all. We'll see how it goes. She usually does pretty well at the beginning of the term and peters off at some point but she is still going pretty strong so everyone is happy.
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Caitlyn and her friend had a brief inclination to join cross country but after we took them on a hike over the summer, we got them to drop that notion as they would have to run over similar trails in the heat of the summer for practice. She has no interest in any other sports, although Emily and her friends tried to get her to join soccer.

Instead she has joined a couple of clubs on campus. She is giving ASU (Asian Student Union) and Art Club a try. She showed some interest in joining Key Club but they meet on the same days as ASU and has only made a slight effort in attending any of their meeting so nothing has materialized on that front.
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I had my birthday this past month. My sister and mom came over to take me out to lunch. Christian joined us as well. We ended up at this little gastro pub downtown for some Pork Belly Burgers. Actually, my sister and I tried the Pork Belly Burgers and my mom and Christian decided to try a portobello sandwich, so we all shared and got to try both. Christian is going to try to make the Pork Belly sandwiches at home and see how that turns out. It was pretty tasty.

Unfortunately, that was it for our plans as Christian and I had to be at church that afternoon for Primary practice for the Primary Program. It was to be the last practice before the program and they provided pizza for dinner afterwards. The girls had leftovers at home for their dinner.

Christian did get me a really neat and fancy wheat grinder for my birthday though. It grinds wheat effortlessly in minutes. Previously, we were doing it all by hand and it took hours. You can imagine that we only did it in fits and starts as it was kind of a pain in the butt to use.

August

Emily finally returned from her trip with Grandpa Caldwell. She was a bit dismayed at how hot it is still here. We had her show us her pictures and catalogue them, work on her journal so that she would not forget, but we all know how well that worked out.

The girls were invited over to their friends' house for some end of the summer fun. They had made these big slides in their backyard. The kids missed the previous party since we were out visiting my mom and helping her move. The best consolation for missing it was that we got to make Doong or Zongzi (粽子). The kids love them and I'm pretty sure my mom won't be making them anymore. It is too much work for her now. She handed over some of her supplies to Christian. Neither of my siblings' families are very big fans of them. 

But I digress, it was not a good time of the month for Caitlyn, so only Emily got to play on the slides. Caitlyn came with me to say hello and drop Emily off. I snapped off a few pictures before leaving.

Emily's friend didn't want to play on the slides as she doesn't like to mess up her hair or get dirty or some other nonsense like that. Emily was on her own for a while and made the best of it by entertaining her younger brothers. The oldest sister had the same problem as Caitlyn and just stuck around a bit to help out. Emily's other friends came later and she got to have more fun.

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We had the girls volunteer at this international summer camp for Chinese students visiting from China. They changed locations at the last minute and it also ended up conflicting with the kids registration and orientation schedules so they ended up only going for two days. They are supposed to get service credit for helping. They need it for their high school requirements. The girls mostly enjoyed it. It was an interesting experience for them but the camp doesn't seem like it is put together very well.

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Emily and Caitlyn had to go in to register for their classes, pick up their books and schedules since school will start next week.

This will be Caitlyn's first year in high school...so a big change for her. She also attended the orientation at the end of the week to get her familiarized with the school. Plus they get class t-shirts from school, so she definitely wanted to get that.

This has been the shortest summer ever. It's so unfair that the kids got cheated out of two weeks of their summer. Plus, except for Emily, we didn't get to do hardly anything this summer. When you add the record breaking heat we've been having, it's been a pretty miserable summer. I wish I could say that at least Caitlyn had a productive summer, but she didn't finish her history project and didn't even begin her other projects so I'm not sure what she's been doing all summer.

Emily's Big Summer Trip

So this post is about a month overdue. I encouraged, threaten and cajoled, but could not get Emily to give me some pictures from her trip and write about it in her journal. She started writing it, but couldn't be bothered to finish it. She picked out her favorite pictures but never sent them to me. So, here we are, part way into the school year and I have not made my post.

I finally gave up on her and put what I could together from a couple of pictures she originally took with her iPod and sent to me while on the trip when she had WiFi, a few pictures that Christian's sister texted to him while they were there, and a couple of pictures that I got from Christian's dad afterwards. She hasn't even returned the camera she borrowed from Christian to take all those pictures that we didn't get on her trip or my SD card that she borrowed for the camera.

Christian's dad came very early Sunday morning, July 22nd to pick her up. They headed out on the road and met up with Erin's family in St. George, Utah for lunch. I know that they stopped in Tooele where Grandpa Caldwell was born and they apparently visited the cemetery where his dad (Christian's Grandfather and Emily's Great Grandfather) is buried. Emily apparently took a fall in the parking lot or something and never ended up recording any of it for us. I never could quite get a full story of what happened so I am presuming that she was doing something stupid with her cousins at the time.

They stayed with friends of Erin's family while out there. In the morning, they headed out to Idaho. Emily's cousin Mason is going to school at BYU Idaho currently. They planned to pick him up along with his girlfriend (fiancee?). Emily and the younger cousins were supposed to get a tour of the campus. Christian tried to set it up for her a week ago but never heard back from them. They finally contacted him after they already took the tour. Apparently, they were having commencement ceremony's that day and they got a very abbreviated tour of campus. They gave them from free swag and sent them on their way....all of which was nice, I guess...but less than helpful.

That evening, after Mason and his girlfriend got off work, they all headed out to the cabin in Yellowstone where they would be staying for the next couple of nights.
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On their first day in Yellowstone, they went hiking around to see a bunch of geysers and hot springs, including Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic.

On the second day in Yellowstone, they went to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which includes  Yellowstone Falls.

They got to do some swimming somewhere near there.

The next day, the party split up with Erin's family heading back to Utah and then home, Mason and his girlfriend were going to go visit her parents and Terry and Emily heading out to Montana to visit with Terry's brother (Christian's Uncle Tony).

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Tony has a cattle ranch in Montana. He raises Red Angus breeding stock. He puts up his own hay still. Emily got a small glimpse of what life on a ranch is like. Terry went out of his way to take her around to a few places in Montana to keep her entertained.

On their first full day there, he took her to the World Museum of Mining in Butte. It rained after that, so they headed back to the ranch.

The next day was Sunday, so Terry and Emily ventured into town to attend Sacrament Meeting but did not attend the full block of meetings. They stayed home that day to hang out and visit with the family. Uncle Tony took them back into town for dinner.

On Monday, they went to another museum in Helena. On Tuesday they went to Georgetown Lake. Apparently, Emily got to do some more swimming.

They also stopped by in Phillipsburg to go to The Sweet Palace and loaded up on a bunch of candy.

They made their way home after that. They spent the night in Nevada before continuing on their journey home.

As far as I know, the best part of her trip to Yellowstone was of course, seeing new and beautiful places but also, hanging out with her cousins.

And the best part of her stay in Montana, was Uncle Tony's basement, where she got to stay. She said that it was so cool and quiet, she never wanted to leave.

July

July seemed to be an excruciatingly long month. The heat was unbearable most of the time.

Between the heat and dealing with our neighbors noisy dogs, we didn't get much rest. They had a couple of huskies, which was fine for the most part, except that they did't take very good care of them. Then they decided to breed them and they had 3 to 5 puppies...I'm not even sure exactly how many. The puppies mostly stayed inside of the house. They kept separating the dogs and they would whine and howl until they were let back in. The worst was when they were weaning the puppies and the mother would make noise for hours and hours until they came home again (sometimes late into the night). Once, it even broke the backdoor window trying to get in to her puppies. They lived in deplorable conditions. Most of the time they would lie in their own filth with little or no shade in temperatures over 100 degrees, sometimes with no water or food. The dogs looked mangy and half starved. They shed most of their fur...which was lying in clumps all over their yard.

We tried talking to the neighbors but that was useless. We tried getting help from animal control, but they were not much help either. They finally started getting rid of them one by one but this situation dragged on for a couple of months. The mother husky was the only one left in the end and then it just disappeared one day. Not sure if they finally managed to kill it off or if they got rid of it. But it was replaced with a new dog by the end of the month. What joy is ours.
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We spent Fourth of July with our friends the Dean's who has their annual firework viewing party downtown. They live on a hill in view of Mt. Rubidioux. It's always good to visit with old friends. The Christensen's put on an excellent bbq for it as usual. Christian took the opportunity of being around so many teens to interview some of them for a project for his adolescence psychology class this term.
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We spent a couple of weekends here and there helping my mom move. We had to sort through a lot of stuff to help her get rid of all necessary things that she's collected over the years. She's moving into my sister's house and she's going to rent out her house to help pay for my dad's care. It's going to be a long process.
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Emily finished her summer school to make up for the World Lit class she didn't do so well in this past year. She did pretty well in it and has picked up her gpa a bit. We still think their summer school is a bit of a cheat just to get kids not to fail or flunk out entirely. Still, Emily said that some kids flunked it a second time at the end.
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The girls continue their organ lessons and even got to take a small "field trip" to the stake center to check out the bigger organ there.

Their lessons are coming along nicely. They continue their piano practice along with practicing at the organ a couple times a week for a short period of time.

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Marian came over to visit with the girls. She does an annual Christmas in July kind of thing with us. She took them out to the movies and then we met up and she took us out for more sushi. The girls just love it.

She got them a ton of back to school supplies: backpacks, clothes, school supplies and a bunch of snacks. It was pretty insane.

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We didn't have much else going on. I worked on putting up our summer apples. The girls played occasionally with the neighborhood kids. Emily left for her trip to BYU Idaho, Yellowstone and Montana with her grandfather. More on that in my next post.

Caitlyn and Christian just did homework. We wanted to do a small weekend camping trip but in the end, decided that it was just too hot to do much of anything. The other places we considered going to was on fire so we stayed holed up in our house most of the time. The summer started off fairly well but in the end, it seemed to be the hottest summer in history. Even with us at home watering the plants all the time, a lot of them suffered and got damaged from the constant high temperatures. All our grapes shriveled up and turned into raisins before they could even fully develop. The guavas all dropped their fruit and many of the developing lemons did as well. Even our oak tree has damaged dried up leaves all over the tree.
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Christian and I did manage to take Caitlyn out bowling one night before Emily got back. She had never tried it before and Christian and I had not been bowling since some time in college. We played three games. The first one, Caitlyn and I did a lot of alley balls. Christian either did really well or just as badly as we were doing for a while. We started to get a hang of it during the second game. By the third, Caitlyn seemed to get too tired and gave up. I think Christian won the first two games and I won the last one but the overall score was also higher than theirs. We all managed to get a strike in there somewhere and a few spares to boot. Christian even got two strikes in a row but couldn't quite manage a third.

We had a pretty good time and was glad that we could get out of the house for a short while to take Caitlyn out for a little fun.

June

The kids are finally out of school, but there isn't that much of a change since Emily had to start summer school the following Monday. Not much time off. She has 6 hours of World Lit every day for   the next four weeks to make up her grade in that class. She is not loving it. But she is doing better, so that's good. I just don't see how they can genuinely get the same education in two weeks, even going to class for 6 hours a day as in a semester of high school. They don't even have any homework!
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While Marian was over visiting for Caitlyn's promotion, we asked what the girls wanted to do for their dad for Father's Day. Christian had class that evening so we had a bit of time to run some errands if they wanted to. They decided to do a bunch of chores around the house for him. Marian made out a big list for them. They started that evening and every time their dad left to go study or class, they would work their little hoofies off doing chores around the house. They dusted, ironed a couple of his shirts, cleaned the windows, washed his car, swept the driveway, did some gardening, etc. And since it was a weekend, they did all of it on top of their normal chores of cleaning their bathroom and the floors. It was something to behold.

Of course, even though Christian left early and came back late, he couldn't help but notice some of the things around the house. Emily even made him dinner after church on Sunday.

It helped that Marian also gave them the incentive of taking them back out for sushi again if they actually accomplished everything on the list. I don't think that she actually thought that they would complete it. To be honest, knowing my kids, I didn't think they would either! We were pleasantly shocked.
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Caitlyn met up with her best friend Aubrey to swim shortly after school ended. Emily joined them at the pool.

It was really nice at the pool. It was not as crowded as usual. Unfortunately, Aubrey couldn't stay for the whole thing as her parents had other plans for them.

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Caitlyn and Aubrey then planned to go to Castle Park the next week. They tried to get their friends to join them but it didn't work out. They got in free with the good grades award program. Castle Park tried to say that they didn't have the incentive any longer but Aubrey is a really outgoing and outspoken kid and wouldn't take any of that. She had them call the manager over and showed them the program on their own website before they would let them in. So sad that they would try to cheat a couple of kids out of their hard earned award.

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The week after that, Caitlyn spent the week in a coding camp at UCR. We had high hopes for this program. We were really disappointed when we had to give up Emily's spot in the camp because of her summer school.

When we dropped her off for her first day, we were a little worried as they seemed a bit disorganized and unprepared. Then we found out that they did not teach the kids any actual coding using computer language but just used this MIT App Inventor that uses built in blocks of code to program. This is what I would have expected at some elementary school as an intro to programming. This is not what I expected from UCR. It was sad.

She still had a lot of fun I suppose. They were there for 8 hours a day for a whole week. They provided them with lunch at the dorms and at the Panda Express on campus so Caitlyn thought that was pretty neat. Plus they got to eat pretty well. They took some time to give the kids a tour of campus and they played a scavenger hunt around campus on different days. Being near the University means that Caitlyn has already had a half a dozen tours of campus already.

They did their "coding" on a desktop computer in one of the computer labs but they ran them on an android device...which means that they all got little Kindle Fires for camp which they got to take home. She's pretty happy about that. Plus she got to meet a new friend there.

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In addition, Caitlyn managed to pass off another level of Piano. She was going through Alfred's Basic Piano Prep Course Level C. She will start level D now. Caitlyn was ahead of Emily for a while, but a couple of months ago, Christian bribed Emily to put some effort into continuing her Piano. She has to play everyday for 3 months and she will get a cell phone out of the deal. She had been really dedicated to putting in her practice and is now ahead of Caitlyn again, if only by a little. But it's nice because she will do all her practice without us having to tell her or remind her (for the most part). She doesn't whine or complain about it at all (that was part of the deal as well).

The reason for the big piano push since they haven't put in very much effort to learn is because someone at church has offered to teach them to play the organ. Many of the people that actually know how to play the organ are getting older and will not be around forever. She wants to make sure that the future generations don't lose the ability and end up having to use pre-programmed organ music during service. Both girls are actually pretty excited to learn it.

Caitlyn's 8th Grade Promotion

The school year has finally come to an end. Caitlyn has finished middle school. She managed to maintain a 4.0 throughout. We are very proud of her.

As usual, her school had the promotion ceremony at the local high school. They just piggy back off of the high school's setup which had their graduation ceremony the evening before. The middle school uses the same setup the next morning. They were supposedly cracking down and making sure that parents followed more strict guidelines. There was even a police presence there. We got a note in the mail detailing the rules and several phone calls with the same message.

Still, when arriving at the school, lots of people were trying to bring in balloons, which were banned. They did make most of them bring them back to their cars or leave them outside of the stadium. However, there were still lots of people with umbrellas, which were also banned. No one bothered making them put them away. Someone still had a noise maker, although, much less than usual, I didn't see any of the police men working their way over tho their direction to do anything about it.

People still brought snacks and drinks, which were also supposedly banned and they never bothered to do any of the bag checks they claimed were going to happen.

The only saving grace was that it wasn't too hot and it was a relatively short ceremony. You can only stand them blaring music at you at unreasonable volumes so long. It was so loud, you had to shout in the ear of the person next to you to be heard like some rock concert.

Marian made ribbon leis for Caitlyn and all her friends so we had to round them up to give them their leis and take pictures. We managed to find everyone except her best friend who apparently took off early with her parents shortly after the ceremony finished.

It is always crazy at the end and difficult to find everyone so she ended up with only one group picture and individual pictures with the rest of her friends, except for the one that obviously left!

Marian took most of the day off to come. She still had to work a bit remotely from our house. She also took everyone out to lunch for sushi. Well, the kids got normal lunch specials and were able to try some sushi with their normal California rolls and teriyaki chicken. Surprisingly, they both liked it.

She brought a bunch of gifts as well for Caitlyn.

Caitlyn's history teacher that she assists bought her yearbook for her and gave her an Amazon gift card to boot. A lot of the teachers and some of the administrators are going to really miss Caitlyn and her friends.