Jumbled July

We started out the month returning to San Diego for Garth's funeral. It was small, short and sweet. Christian's parents each spoke with stories of Garth, as well as Erin. Austin and his fiancé Natalie sang a song. Terry sang one of Garth's favorite songs as well. Christian dedicated Garth's grave. We had to wear masks because there were a few people from Garth's group home there. There was only 6 chairs under a couple of canopies for "social distancing" so all the family just stood to one side to give the group home people room on the other side. In the end, all the speakers and singers had to take their masks off at some point anyway so it was all a bit of a bother.

We were happy to have driven down Terry's Trooper to return it to him though. That was a huge load off our back. It is running really nice though.

We hung out and ate at Erin's house afterwards. Christian's mom was heading back up to Oregon the next day and Erin and her kids were going to go up as well. Michaela was bringing a friend with her. We were originally going to go up at the same time but felt that it was too much. We went home to get some much needed rest and spend the next day packing. We left on Friday for the 14 hour drive up to Oregon.
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We made good time up to Oregon. We arrived in plenty of time for a quick dinner and to look around at their property. The girls were familiar with the house since they spent several weeks her last summer but Christian and I had not seen the house yet.

In the morning, Cheri made us breakfast and we sat around for a while waiting for everyone to get up. We decided to drive out to take a quick look at Terry's property there. Cheri led us there in her Jeep and then left us there to explore. Most of the land was very steep and covered in trees and poison oak so we did not explore much. We drove around looking for one of his Grandparent's old houses.

When we got back, mostly everyone was up and moving. Cheri and Erin took off to reserve a spot at the river. Austin and Natalie put some food together for the day and we were finally off.

The river was extremely crowded. It was the Fourth of July, so it was not pleasant. Music was blasting everywhere. Most of us were dropped off further up the river and we paddled our way down in various canoe/rafts. Christian and I did not speak up and ended up with the worst of the lot and it was difficult to maneuver. We stayed out in the water as much as possible to keep away from most of the crowds.

I got to try most of the toys except for the paddle boards. I was not brave enough to give that a try. Cheri brought this huge six man raft that they bought but never used and we took that further down the river. We did not know what to expect. Most of the river was pretty calm but there was some small rapids supposedly on the way. Truth be told, it was all mostly calm. Some of the other's jumped in and out of the water because it was so hot. Although it was not very exciting, it was the best part of the day at the river as we were finally able to escape some of the noise and most of the people so it was pretty nice.

Austin had driven out earlier to leave his truck at the boat dock but because he was afraid of getting the key fob wet, he ended up giving the keys to Cheri. We realized towards the end that we might not have an easy way of getting back. Luckily, Cheri realized that she had his keys and drove back out there to bring us the keys!

We packed up and left shortly after the rafting group returned. Everyone took turns cleaning up and they prepared to bbq hot dogs and burgers. Mark and Danielle, who did not go to the river, had got things started while we were away.

After dinner, the kids got to light up a bunch of fireworks that Erin had picked up earlier. Our kids have never gotten to really play with fireworks since they were illegal where we live. But since everyone sets them off illegally for months before and months after July normally, we were not overly enthusiastic about them anyway.

Everything was going mostly fine until we got back from the river. Because of some personality issues and family drama with so many people in the house, it had gotten kind of unpleasant. In the end, we decided to leave the next day.  Even the girls were not enjoying themselves nearly as much as last year when they were here mostly by themselves with their cousin Michaela. We spent a long time talking very late with Cheri.

In the morning, she made us breakfast and we packed up to begin our long journey back down to Southern California. Christian woke Mark up to give him a blessing before leaving. He had asked for it before retiring for the evening.

We came back down the long way, taking the 395. It took us longer, but it was overall more pleasant.

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I had forgotten to mention back in June that Caitlyn finally got bored and got up the courage to get her haircut. She actually went with getting some bangs...so that was interesting, except, every time we looked at her with her hair down like that, we didn't hardly recognize her. When she put her hair up in a pony tail, she looked a lot more normal.

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Christian's school district told them that they were re-assigning him to Rialto High School to teach Physics. He's not too happy with that but at least they are keeping him through all of this distance learning fiasco,  We don't know what he's going to be doing this next school year as everything keeps changing weekly. The district didn't think that they would re-open for in class teaching then the state mandated that there needs to be an option for kids to be taught in the class room. Then the governor turned around and started re-closing certain businesses again so we are back to not being able to have an in-class option.

Caitlyn had chosen to return to school in the classroom as well but it will be done in phases depending on the whim of the governor and what he thinks he can get away with. 

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Towards the end of the month, Christian's dad came back up for Christian to look into recharging his air conditioner. It was not working as well as it had been and he wanted to make his first trip up to Oregon since his operation. We were getting ready to go on a real family trip but Christian got the tools and everything to help re-charge his dad's Trooper anyway. In preparation, Christian re-charged Emily's Ranger and that went well but it took a lot of refrigerant. We got some more for Terry but it did not go so well. We think that there is more wrong with his Trooper's a/c system than just being low on refrigerant. It was making some weird noises before he started and there was some strange smells occasionally when we had tested it earlier. But after trying to put in more refrigerant, it just stopped working.  We didn't really know what to do. Christian's dad needed to leave and we had to prepare for our tip, so we just had to leave it at that for now.