Christmas

We kicked up our Christmas celebrations on Sunday the 22nd with Marian. We had to change it up a bit this year. Marian came by just for the day. We usually do presents on Christmas morning since she usually stays over on Christmas Eve. This year, we opened presents on the day she could come. It threw everybody a little off-kilter.

I guess the girls were on Marian's "nice" list this year as they got real presents! Of course we all did. It was kind of a blur of gifts and wrapping being tossed everywhere. I couldn't keep up.

Marian did not quite approve of the early opening of gifts, but it's part of our celebration with her and wanted to open gifts together. We did manage to have our traditional rib roast dinner but missed out on our traditional belgian waffle breakfast. Guess you'll have to come bright and early one morning to get it Marian.

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The next few days would be a blur of cooking and traveling back and forth for the rest of our Christmas celebrations. We went down to San Diego to visit with Christian's family on the 23rd.

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On the 24th, we went to celebrate with my side of the family. Because of the change in schedule this year and everybody being so busy, we decided to have a joint celebration at my sister's house with her in-laws. She told us there would be about 30 people there total, which seemed like a lot. But I swear it was closer to 50. It was so crazy. And there was so much good food, I thought we would burst. Our little group went out for a walk part way through the celebration to walk off some of the food and get some air. They called us to come back at some point because more people arrived with more food!

I have mixed thoughts about doing it this way again next time. It was so crazy...but on the other hand, there was so much good food...hmm...that's a hard one for certain.

Joshua Tree

As soon as everyone was out of school, we met up with Christian's sister's family and headed out to Joshua Tree for a day of climbing. We went out to the Indian Cove Campground area. Our first climbs were on the Billboard Buttress. Christian set up some ropes and an anchor that would allow two different parties to climb at the same time.

Everyone just climbed whatever they wanted. I think some of the climbs were not even exactly climbs, at least at first.

I think everyone got to have some fun, but it was a little chaotic for me trying to take pictures of everyone and missing others. After a while, we tried to knuckle down and do some actual climbs.

I know for sure that Emily did We Dive at Dawn (5.8). That looked pretty hard in a couple of areas.  She only went up to where we set up the anchor. It is supposed to continue up a little way more up to a fixed anchor but we could not find it.

I just did an easy one called Squat Rockets (5.4) which was pretty fun.

Erin did that one too.

We couldn't get Caitlyn to try any of these. Instead she attempted this super insanely hard one called Gait of Power (5.10a). She couldn't make it up but she did put in a concerted effort.

While some people were still climbing here, we moved on around the corner to The Bilbo Buttress. Our nephew wanted to climb El Chivo (5.8). He has been taking a rock climbing class at the University of Utah and has been getting some more experience. He is also starting to collect his own gear.

Austin took the lead on this sport climb and did really well. Erin attempted it too but could not get past the first crux. I'm sure I would not have been able to either but I did not try as there was just too much going on anyway. 

By this time, everyone who wanted to climb on Billboard Buttress had already given it a try. I went back over there to belay Christian so that he can clean up the anchor and take down the rope. Unfortunately, since we could not find the fixed anchor, we had no where to rappel from. We looked for a down-climb as well but could not find one either. In the end, Christian had me lower him off this very sketchy flake and then had a hard time trying to flip the rope off of it as we could not pull it through. 

Meanwhile, Emily and Mason climbed El Chivo.

I did not get to see any of it but luckily, Caitlyn took pictures for us. When we moved over to where everyone else was, we had our lunch and Christian got a turn on El Chivo and cleaned the route as well.

Afterwards, we went off in a different direction to find some more climbs. Unfortunately, all the climbs that we wanted to do and could recognize, had campers at the bottom of all the climbs. We tried finding others, but could not figure out what was what.

In the end, everyone was starting to get tired and it was starting to get late so we went to the Morbid Mound area instead. We did not climb as much as we wanted to and did not want to waste what little time we had searching fruitlessly.

We picked a really easy one next called Brimstone Stairway (5.1). It was a fun short climb up a prominent looking "stairway." We wanted to make Mike do some climbing as he had not tried anything in a while.

When everyone who wanted to climb, did, we moved farther down the mound to some slightly more challenging climbs. Christian went up Ambulance Driver (5.1) and set up an anchor which was also at the top of a climb called Be Wary (5.2). Erin went up Ambulance Driver.

Although it was rated the same as the stairway, it looked slightly more challenging. Austin, Emily and Caitlyn opted to go up Be Wary instead.

All these climbs were pretty short but seemed pretty fun. I wanted to try Be Wary, but it was starting to get dark and cold. Mike, Mason and Michaela didn't want to climb any more so we just packed up and called it a day.

Mike took everyone out for burgers afterwards at the Steak 'n Shake. From there, we parted ways and headed home.

December Overview

After all our problems with Christian's road tires on his new truck with the giant rims and the stress it causes us every time we try to go out to do something, we decided to get new tires and wheels.

It was definitely an unexpected added expense but it was just too risky to keep going off road with the stock tires. Now, every time we expect to go off road, we put on the trucks new shoes. If we are just driving around town, the stock tires stay on. We get better gas mileage with those tires anyway, but they are completely useless and risky off road.

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Emily is enjoying soccer season. She is on the JV team again since the Varsity coach recruited a bunch of his club players to come to their high school and join his team. That's fine though, since her friends are still with her and she doesn't really like that coach. She is, however, the team captain this year. There are some ups and downs with that responsibility though.

JV Girls Soccer - North vs Norco

JV Girls Soccer -North vs Moreno Valley

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We took Christian's truck out to test out his new tires in the Big Bear area.

The tires feel a lot better and it cuts out a lot of the stress wondering if the tires are going to survive. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the vehicle though. We stopped here and there to enjoy the snow and scenery.

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Christian got a day off that the kids didn't get, so we decided to give the tires a real test and took off in the morning to traverse the Cleghorn trail in the San Bernardino Mountains. The trail goes from the I-15 to Silverlake.

It was a really beautiful drive. I think the kids will really like it so I am sure we will come back some time soon.

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The first semester of the school year has come to an end. Emily and Caitlyn are doing pretty good. Emily is mostly keeping up with her grades and juggling soccer practice now, so we are pretty happy about that. Caitlyn ended her first RCC class and got an A. She's starting to see how doing those community college courses are easier and more productive than the stupid IB/AP classes...although, not enough to drop her idiotic AP US History class. The biggest problem with dropping it though, is that there is simply no space in the Honors US History class for her to move to. I figured that the online class would still be better than continuing on but she believed her teacher when she told the kids that the second semester would be easier. I won't hold my breath.

Christian survived his first semester of teaching. The kids aren't failing too badly, although a few of them will fail. He really worked hard and did what he could to pull them up. It is difficult to teach a bunch of kids who are forced to take a mandatory third year of science when they don't want to be there and don't want to learn. Most of the kids like him and his class but they have no interest in doing the work. I think he will pull back a little during the second semester and let the cards fall where they may. The kids have to take more responsibility for their learning. It's not just up to him to do all the work.

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Once school finally ended, we took some time to meet up with Christian's sister's family again to spend the day together climbing in Joshua Tree. I will record the details of that trip in a separate post as I have a crap ton of pictures I want to post with it.

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We've been talking casually to Caitlyn about what car she might want to get once Emily takes off to college. We had figured that we would get a slightly used economy car for her. Something reliable like a Honda Civic or a Toyota Camry...maybe even one of this new Korean cars. Kia has proven to be pretty reliable.

But we've been watching these 4x4 videos on YouTube lately to look for places to go, learn some tips and tricks, etc. Somehow we landed on this off-road recovery company in Utah that had just started doing YouTube videos earlier this year. We've learned a few things from them but mostly we just like watching them for some reason. Anyway, the guys does most of his recovery jobs with this old Jeep Cherokee (XJ). And after watching him pull vehicles two and three times its size out of difficult situations, Caitlyn has decided that that is the car she wants.

Now, normally we wouldn't consider a vehicle that old for her. Christian doesn't really want to get anyone else's used vehicle in the first place because nobody ever takes care of their cars and we don't want to inherit their problems.

But after researching how much these new modern vehicles cost and seeing how much computer shit is on even the most basic models, we are thinking that maybe an old car that we can fix may not be such a bad idea after all. We are going to get pretty nervous about Christian's fancy new truck as it ages since it has electronics everywhere. So, out of curiosity, Christian starts looking into those old XJ's and finds out that he really actually likes them. They were the first of the SUV hybrids they ever made but they were made a lot tougher than they make them today. The engine and transmissions were renowned for its quality and durability. Plus, since they sold millions of them and they are mostly still out on the road, you can get parts for them just about anywhere. Whereas, parts for vehicles like my Trooper are getting increasingly difficult to find. And, they simply just don't make 4x4 vehicles like they used to. Most of the nice SUVs have been discontinued and what is left is ridiculously expensive or has other problems with them that we don't like.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Christian decided to see how much the XJs are going for around here and how difficult it was going to be to find a decent one for a good price. On our first look, we found some that had a crap ton of miles on them, some that were overly modified, some that did not look like it was in very good condition and/or were very expensive. There was one that seemed like it could be a good buy. It was conveniently located in the next town over but we were not yet ready to buy it. We just wanted to see what the possibilities were.

We spent Christmas with our families. I will cover that in a different post as well.

Meanwhile the thought of the XJ for sale kept weighing on our minds. Would we find anything as good as this next year? There has been a resurgence of demand for these old vehicles and the prices were only going up. On Christmas day, we checked the website on the cars again and found that they dropped the price a little on the car we wanted. Obviously, he wanted to unload it soon. The drop in price got it closer to what we wanted to pay and peaked our excitement about it even more. We made an appointment with him to see it the next day. We test drove it and really liked it. The suspension was shot but it seemed in pretty good condition otherwise. Christian haggled down the price a bit more to see what he would accept. The guy consented and before we knew it, we bought the XJ! It was all a bit crazy.

We were supposed to leave for our winter trip to Utah but there was another storm coming in and we had to get the Jeep registered. We tried to go in to the DMV to take care of that right away, but apparently we have to get these used vehicles smogged again when your transfer ownership even though the tags were up to date. It was a bit of a nuisance. Christian cleaned the under carriage and greasy engine bay and changed most of the fluids. As we were driving it around some more and making sure it was running well, we got a few engine codes that were pending. We fixed a few things. Obviously there was a vacuum leak but all it needed was a new gas cap and then we put in new spark plugs and stuff like that. Unfortunately, we cleared the codes to see if we fixed the problems but then could not get the computer to be smog ready. We probably should not have since the codes were not full blown trouble codes, just pending ones. We went out for long drives every night to try to clear the codes and appease the readiness monitors. We drove up to Big Bear to drive around in the snow one night. Another night Christian and I went out to Idyllwild to see what the conditions of the roads were. They had been closed for a long time due to the rains washing out the roads the previous year (or was it a couple of years ago now?).

We were a bit frustrated with all the time it was taking away from our vacation. We decided to take it out for some fun and put some more miles on it try to get the engine codes off the "pending" status.

We drove two vehicles out to Joshua Tree. We decided to try the Old Dale Mine road again. But this time we started out by the 62 from Gold Crown Road. Caitlyn drove her new XJ with Emily most of the way. When the road got interesting, Christian got out to take videos. Emily drove the F-150 and Caitlyn drove the XJ. The XJ handled great even with the tired suspension system on there. It maneuvered easily through most of the obstacles. We had a little more problem in the big truck as it is so big and wide.

As we were coming to the end of our trail, we were driving behind the girls and saw something hanging down from the vehicle. We had some problems getting the girls to stop. Apparently they were blasting their music and having a good 'ole time in there because they didn't hear us honking at them. We had to speed up to wave them over. It turns out the track bar was no longer bolted down and was hanging into the dirt.

Christian and Caitlyn took off back up the way we came to see if they can find the missing bolt. They went back and forth a couple of times. They ended up finding the bracket but not the bolt. Meanwhile there was another vehicle that went up the road over the area that we probably lost it and the chances of finding it became pretty remote. On top of that, we were losing daylight to even see. Christian and Caitlyn took off one more time in the truck to see what they could find. They were gone for some time. They could not find the bolt, but went back to the old abandoned mine and collected a bunch of old wires and nails to see what we could cobble together.

In the end, Christian got the track bar mostly secured with the stuff he gathered from the old abandoned mine and we were able to drive it home without further issues.

We were just short of the area where we stopped last time because of the flat tire on the F-150. We were just approaching from the other side this time.

In the end, we did clear two of the pending trouble codes but there remained one that would not clear but also never progressed into an actual visible trouble code (the check engine light never actually turned on). We later found out that some cars are notorious for being difficult to clear and the state allows us that one pending trouble code. After all we went through, we passed the SMOG check with no problems and turned in the last of our paperwork to the DMV.