We are still under the "stay-at-home" order because of the CCP Coronavirus. School is basically over for the year. They will not be physically returning to school. They are starting their "distance learning" which is just online work on google classroom mostly. Unless they already have an A, it is in their best interest to still do the work because it can only bring their grades up. Caitlyn will most likely do the work regardless of whether she has an A already or not. Luckily, neither of them have anything lower than a B in any of their classes.
Christian has "office hours" for his kids or their parents to communicate with him on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. He has staff or department meetings on Tuesday and Wednesdays and he has to assign review work for his kids to do during the week.
We have been trying to get out on a trail or something on Thursdays to get some fresh air and regain some sanity to our week or we will go crazy. Not very many people are out where we normally go and when we go driving on the 4x4 trails, we don't hardly even get out of our vehicles.
The weather was still super nice out on the first week so we went to chase down some snowy trail up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is very frustrating as most of the trails we find are closed off for one reason or another. We waste a lot of time and gas driving around to see what trails are still accessible to us.
Christian's truck just drives through the snow like it isn't even there. The Jeep struggles a bit when it gets deep and powdery. Emily and I were following Christian up this snowy trail and we got stuck. She backed up to try to get a bit more momentum going but we fish-tailed and ended up diagonally in the deep snow. Christian came back to check on us. We had not aired down the tires yet so he did that and backed up quite a bit and was able to get enough momentum to just drive through the spot we had trouble at.
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We sucked it up and spent a day filing our taxes for the year even though they have postponed the due date since we should be getting a tax return for last year. That's always a nightmare of an experience.
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Since the whole family is home all the time, it seems that I spend the majority of my day cooking and cleaning. Three square meals a day, seven days a week. Christian decided the girls need to help out and continue learning how to cook and so now, the girls each cook dinner once a week. Christian normally cooks our Sunday night dinner actually, so that's three dinners every week that I get to take a break from! It gets hard to think of what to make all the time, so this gives me a break so I don't get burnt out.
Emily mostly chooses something I normally make for them that she likes so that she can make it for herself when she is out on her own. She is the most capable in the kitchen as she has had the most practice.
Caitlyn has had the least experience in the kitchen, yet she finds her own recipes off the internet to experiment with. Sometimes it is really good and sometimes it is a bit more than she has bargained for but it's all tasty. It's kind of fun having different things.
Caitlyn also made us some kimchi! This is actually her second batch. It's really good and nice to have on hand to make other dishes. She originally made it so that she can make us some bimbimbap.
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When Christian isn't doing school work, then he's in the garage working on one of the vehicles. He is catching up on a lot of maintenance that needed to be done. All of our vehicles have never run so well! But with four vehicles, three being pretty old, there is a lot of work that needs to be done, especially on the Jeep since it was previously owned by several people and Christian has found problems with all the work they've done on it. They have either not kept up with the maintenance or they "fixed" it but did a poor job of it. They either damaged something in the process or didn't torque down anything and it works itself loose.
He has basically flushed all of our radiators and brake lines. The Ranger is pretty much done. It hasn't run this well in years. It is essentially ready for Emily to take. There may be a few parts here and there that we may still replace for her but it will be trivial compared to the work they have already put into it. Emily has worked with Christian through most of it. She has learned so much about the vehicle itself and how to do most of the maintenance work to keep it going. She is very capable and mechanically inclined, so she has picked up on everything pretty well.
She has also started to learn how to drive a manual transmission (since that is what is on the Ranger). She has been very discouraged. It has been quite difficult for her. Christian was taking her out on the streets since she is able to drive around very well now but she will stall out the vehicle at a stop and panic since other cars are waiting for her. Plus, when you are driving a stick-shift, the vehicle tends to slide back when you are on an incline. I've been taking her to the church parking lot to practice stop-and-go maneuvers. Plus there is a small hill that she can practice on and she has improved quite a bit. We will just go for 15 minutes here and there and she is getting more comfortable with it. At the beginning of the month, she thought it was hopeless. It is coming a lot more naturally for her now. Every now and then, she still gets frustrated, but with a little more practice, hopefully, she won't even have to think about it.
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Christian has been pretty frustrated working in the garage. There is very little room in there and a bit disorganized, so he's been trying to get that cleaned up as well. He had to put in a 220-volt outlet for his welder. He found that some of the existing outlets were not wired right. We have found similar problems inside the house throughout the years. The polarity is switched. Some are not grounded. It's just a mess.
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The next week, we took our mental health break out on Rattlesnake Canyon. This time, we took the Trooper out on our adventure. Most of the trail was relatively easy but there were a few challenging spots. My Trooper is fairly capable off-road but it does not have very good clearance. It has always been a problem. A few turns in the road were sharp and we would have had problems in Christian's longer truck. A couple spots were a bit narrow. We crossed some shallow water spots which were not a problem. Some of the crossings were a bit muddy but nothing too bad. The most troubling areas were the rocky areas that we don't have the clearance for. We had to gingerly maneuver the Trooper around them. We scraped the shield on the undercarriage a bit and Caitlyn put a dent in one of my rocker arms to match the one that she put on Christian's truck!
We passed some free-range cattle. Overall it was a pretty nice trail and the Jeep would have breezed through without a thought. It is definitely not one we should bring the truck on.
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The stores that are allowed to remain open during this so-called pandemic seems to have settled down a bit. There are not so many lines to get in any more...especially if you know when to go. Many items are still hard to come by including toilet paper and other paper goods, bleach and other disinfectants, bottled water, disposable masks and gloves, yeast, flour and pasta. We aren't allowed to go anywhere without masks on.
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Christian's dad came up to visit. He was having some problems with his Trooper and wanted Christian to take a look at it for him. After checking a few things, Christian found that his ball joints were shot. They went off to the auto store for some parts and came back to get started. Christian smoked a brisket for us overnight. Since Terry's birthday is only a couple of days away, we had planned to have a small birthday celebration for him while he was here. I worked on the rest of lunch while they were gone so that we could have lunch after they got back.
After taking some of the wheel hub assembly apart, Christian also found that the bearings were bad. Caitlyn and I took Terry back to the auto store while Christian and Emily continued to take the Trooper apart.
The vehicle was somewhat of a mess. Everything was absolutely caked in years of grease and dirt. Caitlyn cleaned and treated the tires. Emily cleaned a lot of the parts. Terry had to go take a few naps in between as he still doesn't have the greatest stamina after his procedure. We had to go out on one more run to look for some screws that were stripped by whoever worked on the vehicle before. The tie rod ends also needed to be replaced but Christian knew that he just would not have enough time to work on everything. Also the steering stabilizer that was replaced didn't even fit the vehicle so it was essentially useless. Some of the pieces, as we found in Caitlyn's XJ, was not torqued down.
Anyway, long story short, we bit off more than we could chew with this project. It was in worse shape than we had anticipated. We would not be able to finish in one day. Terry had to spend the night but he didn't bring his medicine or anything else so he had to leave first thing in the morning to get his medication. When the sun went down, the rest of us went in to wind down with a movie while Christian continued to work outside. After grandpa and the girls went to bed, I went back out to sit with Christian for a while while he worked.
I called it an evening some time after 11:pm. Christian continued through the night. He was finally able to finish putting the vehicle back together around 5:am and took it for a test drive. He didn't get to sleep until 5:30 am. He only managed to get a couple of hours sleep before Christian's dad got up to leave.
Before leaving, Christian went on another drive with Terry to see if he could feel the difference. Apparently, it did wonders for his steering and for the smoothness of the ride but it did not completely fix the problem he was having when he came up. Christian has some idea of what it might be but there is just too much to tackle on one visit. They will have to continue on another time.
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After Christian's dad left, Christian couldn't go back to sleep, so we had a quick breakfast and went on our sanity break for the week. We took another drive up near the San Bernardino Mountains. This trail goes over to the Seven Oaks Dam. The weather has taken a turn for the worst by now and we are going to have over 100 degree temperatures by this weekend. Christian had found out what was wrong with Caitlyn's air conditioning and was able to fix it so we thought we would take the XJ out to test it out on this warm day. Of course, almost all of the snow on the mountain is gone now except for a light powdering at the very tops.
The area by the dam was pretty fun. We got to drive up and down some of the sandy hills. We all took turns in the Jeep. It handled pretty well on everything we tried. With lockers, bigger tires and stronger axles, the vehicle would be unstoppable. As it is, it has some limitations, but it can do most things we would want to do.
We got to use the a/c on our way back for lunch and a nap. It works great!
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We went from snow earlier this month to over 100 degree temperatures...just waiting for the next earthquake now...
