August was a very busy month. Christian started back to work shortly after we got back from our Coyote Flats trip. Every morning was still spent working on the trucks until it became unbearably hot. We usually tried to go until lunch time. Christian spent the first two "prep days" in one meeting after another and had very little time to actually prepare for classes to begin.
The girls and I drove out one day to visit my mom and to do some preliminary shopping for cooking supplies before to get ready to go back to school. Between shopping trips, we stopped to have lunch with their grandma and visit for a bit. Of course, we splurged and picked up some boba at our favorite boba shop out there for our drive home.
We went on a couple of more shopping trips here and there once work was done at home. Caitlyn ended up getting talked into a store credit card by some cashier and it seemed like a reasonable idea to establish some credit for her since she was having trouble getting a simple college credit card.
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Marian was finally able to take some time to come visit with us while the girls were still here. Her job has taken over her life...which is saying something because she is a bit of a workaholic. I think she just moves from job to job for the challenge. Once she fixes the problems the company has, she moves on. Apparently, this company is unfixable and she has realized that she needs to move on before it kills her. We actually realized that we haven't seen her for nearly a year. The last time we saw her was before the kids went back to school last fall.
She came over after work on Friday for dinner. She brought this massive Wagyu beef brisket for us to smoke on Saturday. She had had Emily buy some salmon the other day and learn to cook it. She opted to use her dad's smoker to smoke it. So this time, she was going to make Caitlyn smoke the brisket. Caitlyn had never cooked a big chunk of meat before. She usually just makes a quick stir-fry or something with meat. The giant expensive cut of meat was too much for her though, so she basically just seasoned the night before. Emily and Christian ended up doing most of the smoking and slicing up the meat afterwards. She did make some mashed potatoes and coleslaw to go with it.
So anyway, we seasoned it the night before. When I got up, I set it out to warm up a bit. When Emily got up, she started up the smoker. As usual, Christian was working on one or two of the cars in our driveway. Marian took me with her to get donuts for breakfast. Marian paid the girls to wash and vacuum her car for her. Then we took the girls on a shopping trip to 99 Ranch to get some supplies for lunch. They were having a sale on lobster and Marian figured that it would be a quick and easy lunch since you just basically boil it. She picked up a fish to go with it. Caitlyn picked up some cabbage to make kimchi for school.
We started in on lunch as soon as we got back. It was not quite as simple and easy as we had expected. The fish was supposedly "cleaned" at the market, but it still had a lot of scales left on it that needed to be cleaned off. Emily looked up a quick recipe for the lobster but it took a long time to boil a pot of water big enough to fit the lobsters. She had some trouble getting the rubber bands off of their claws. They were too feisty before going into the pot and after, they were heavy and slippery to hold up with tongs in boiling hot water while she cut the rubber bands off. It all turned out very tasty though.
We had a few presents unopened from Christmas so we exchanged those and opened them up finally since they had been sitting around for months now. Caitlyn worked on the sides until dinner time. Marian went home after that.
The news, weather services and government were all crying about a category 4 hurricane come up through Mexico the next day. Christian's district even planned to shut down on Monday in anticipation of this epic storm that was supposed to come through. Basically, we got some rain. A pretty good rain at certain times but I can't even say that it was necessarily a very bad rain storm. We've definitely had worse. But I guess since the government doesn't maintain roads or clear storm drains anymore and some of them are filled with trash from the inundation of homeless people we now have in our area, we did get some flooded areas here and there but that's about it. Most of the problem was caused in the shear amount of prolonged rain in areas that usually don't get that much like out in the deserts. The desert areas have gotten a lot of rain this past year, which is unusual.
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Since Caitlyn is 18 now, we had her get her own car insurance. She had to learn to call around and get rates and make a decision on who to go with. It is expensive and not fun but she got it all done in a day. I was not expecting it to go so quickly. I had to then call and get our insurance adjusted. Unfortunately, that did not go as smoothly or quickly.
I also had to take the girls to the dentist and get all those not so fun but necessary things out of the way. Emily had two little cavities though. Her first since getting her adult teeth, so she was not happy. Luckily, we were able to schedule to get it fixed before she went back to school. Caitlyn is still completely cavity free in her 18 years. Hopefully she can keep that up. She definitely has nice strong enamel.
Emily toiled away in getting as many pieces of her car apart as she could to help clean them and get them ready to put back on her car. We had already rebuilt the front axle before they got home, but did not get a chance to put it back in. She got the back axle out and started cleaning that up. They also found some major electrical problems inside the car while trying to chase down some electrical draw that was draining and damaging the battery.
Caitlyn and I got the hood of her car sanded down to bare metal and Christian got that painted up.
Caitlyn also helped me with tidying up some of the flower beds around the house. It was a lot of work as it was badly neglected. She picked out a few new plants for us to put in. The beds started to look really nice, even Emily came out to help us here and there as making it look nice was a bit infectious but we still couldn't work too long or we'd end up with heat exhaustion.
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Christian's dad and his wife came out to visit with the girls as well. We made them lunch and visited for a while. We were on a role, so we smoked them some ribs. Terry offered to take us out but Christian needed as much time in the morning to get some work done. Anyway, Terry rarely gets a home cooked meal since his wife doesn't cook. Plus, he had plans to take the girls out the next week, so we figured, we'd save him some money and just make lunch at home as it would fit our schedule better anyway.
Terry was originally wanted to take the girls out to Catalina for the day but after some thought, he figured that he would not be able to manage that after all. He would have to drive out to meet us in Dana Point. We would take a cruise out to Catalina, spend some time there and take the boat back, then he would have to still drive all the way back to San Diego. After sleeping on it, he realized that it was a bit too much for him, so we just settled on going to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. The girls were a bit disappointed but they always thought that it was a bit too ambitious anyway and didn't put too much stock into the idea.
