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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.
