December Grab Bag

Favorite part of the Christmas season.

Christmas carolers

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Caitlyn finally finished her science fair project. It wasn't until she turned in her project that we seemed to be able to breath a sigh of relief and look forward to the upcoming holiday.








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Caitlyn has been working on a number of Christmas projects as gifts for her friends and teacher for the past couple of months. She made friendship bracelets for her three closest friends and a crochet baby blanket for her teacher's new baby daughter.

Emily made a crochet cuff for her friend but I didn't manage to get a picture and although she had planned to make a bunch, she only managed to finish just the one.

Joshua Tree - December Edition

Amazingly, we had a free weekend in December. Actually, it wasn't free, but plans fell through and we took the opportunity to head out to Joshua Tree. We had to look for south facing climbs to make sure that we were in the sun. You wouldn't believe what a difference it makes.

We went to another new area called the Hall of Horrors. The south facing climbs available to us are not as easy as some of the ones we've been working on lately, so we had to stretch a bit. Our climb was called "Lazy Day." It is only a 60' pitch, but there were some awkward parts of the climb that made it a bit difficult.

While Christian was setting up, some other climbers came by. They have a little 9 year old girl that is a bit younger than Caitlyn and all the girls became fast friends. Emily set up a little aid route on one of the boulders at the bottom of the climb. 

I had some trouble getting up on the route and had a couple of false starts before I got going. Caitlyn took a couple of tries before she could get up as well. She had to take a break in between as we got tired of her just standing up on the rock. Because Emily was in the "groove" (or maybe because her little friend was sitting there watching), she waltzed right up the rock like it was nothing.

After we were done with the climb, the girls were having so much fun that we decided to let them continue climbing. Christian and I went in search of our next climb by ourselves. The climb was still in the Hall of Horrors area, but it was in the ahem...Exorcist Area. The climb was called "Jaws." It is an 80' pitch entering into a chimney. That was a pretty fun climb.

We showed the kids where we were but they were not so interested. We finished the climb ourselves and then Christian climbed the route to the right of Jaws to retrieve our anchor. It was a super hard friction climb next to the chimney called "Casual."

We had to round up the kids afterwards and pack up their stuff too. Unfortunately, the kids lost one of Christian's hooks. As nothing else was missing and all the equipment is always connected to something, one of two things happened. Either someone (namely Emily) did something really stupid and did not attach it to a carabiner, or it was taken (namely by their new little friend as a souvenir to their day together). It is hard to say which is worse. We searched the whole area and it was not to be found. It had a bright blue supertape attached to it, so it's not like we could have overlooked it. We were pretty upset about it and will unfortunately, have to be less trusting in the future...about our kids and strangers, no matter how friendly they seem.

Random

I need to get up to date on my journal here so I am just going to do a quick review of all the things I wanted to note.

For the rest of the Thanksgiving break, we had to work on the girls' projects for school. Emily has a History Day project that she was supposed to be working on since school started but she has hardly done a thing on. Emily decided to do her project on Yvon Choinard (one of the original stone masters of rock climbing). This is the reason that we took her to the "Valley Uprising" film before Halloween.

We went off to the Quarry to demonstrate how pitons damage rock. Because of pioneers like Choinard, we have many alternatives which helps us leave nature as we found it while still being able to enjoy our rock climbing pursuits.

Caitlyn got a new pet while we were out there.

Apparently, it is a mostly decomposed skull and neck bone of a dog. She calls him "Freaky."

He is currently basking in the sun to finish bleaching his skull in front of our house. So, if you come visit and see him, don't worry, he is well trained and doesn't bite.

Caitlyn is also working on her Science Fair project, which involves animal parts but not bones.

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Before the break, we went in for Caitlyn's parent/teacher conference. She is doing really well in school. As a matter of fact, she didn't skip a beat in skipping fourth grade and has managed to stay on the Principal's Honor Roll. Plus she has perfect attendance and has the highest AR points in the entire fifth grade.

After the conference, since she doesn't have school for the next two days, I took her out to lunch to celebrate. I let her decide where she wanted to go. She originally wanted to go to Panda Express, but as we were driving around running errands, she decided that she wanted to try out a new place called Golden Chopsticks or something. The place was just a typical americanized Chinese fast food joint...nothing special to speak of. She ordered the best thing on the menu. Just some simple won ton soup. It was healthy, satisfying and not too expensive. We shared a fruit smoothie afterwards from Jamba Juice.

When the kids returned to school the next week, they had the award ceremony for the first trimester of the school year.

She was only one of three students in the entire fifth grade that got Principal's Honor Roll. I expect that they would make the excuse that the new Common Core curriculum is harder but I think there were just more higher achieving kids in Caitlyn's previous grade level. It makes me a little worried.

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We actually managed to get our  Christmas  tree up on time this year and took Christmas pictures of the girls. We missed last year and never even got Christmas cards out.

We had our ward Christmas party at the beginning of the month. Christian ended up staying home with Emily so that she could finish her project. It was due in a couple of days and she was no where near being done. She worked on it all day (supposedly) but it still wasn't complete. Christian doesn't want them doing homework on Sundays so, she really had to get it done.

I went with Caitlyn to the dinner and ended up bring some food back for them. The food was really good this year so they would have really missed out.

The Primary kids sang a couple of songs as usual after dinner. That would have been Emily's last time since she is graduating from Primary shortly...if she had made it to the dinner, that is. 

It has been a daily struggle with Emily's bad homework habits, laziness and bad attitude lately. She actually finally moved up two places on the STEM list but I think that we will probably not let her go anymore as she can barely keep up with her homework now. 

I am so very annoyed at the schools these days, thinking that they can give these electronic devices to the kids and think it is some kind of magic bullet. They have all these rules against cell phone use and stuff at school, but then they force them all to accept chrome books and give them free WiFi so that they can browse the web at will and text each other all day if they were so inclined, using Google Hangouts. The stupid web browser allows them to work "incognito" so that it is not apparent that they are not working on their real work. It does not record where they have been in their history. And there is nothing that we, as parents, can do about it...short of sitting with our kids and doing nothing for hours at a time to monitor their activity like some jail warden.

I can't believe no one has sued the school over things like this. Very likely, most parents (that actually care) don't even know these things are going on under their noses. They make it so easy for them to hide it from teachers, parents and employers. And it's not even like they are having any real conversations with each other. It is totally mindless. Like a bunch of monkey's hooting at each other. It is insane. It is just disgusting and I am at my wits end.

Thanksgiving Day

Although we did not get to bed until 4:am, we were up again at 8:am to make food for Thanksgiving dinner. Because my sister insists on going to both our Thanksgiving dinner and another with her in-laws, we had decided to do an early dinner so that she could make it to both.

So, I dragged my butt out of bed, got a couple of pie crusts going and then made breakfast for everyone. Then I started some dinner rolls and finished the pies so that I could get them in the oven. Only after a load of dishes, did I have time to check my messages and e-mail. Apparently, last night, while we were driving, my sister informed us that her in-laws dinner was earlier than she had expected and wanted to change our dinner to a late dinner. Basically, I could have gotten 2 or 3 hours more sleep.

Being already tired and sleep deprived, I was not too thrilled at the last minute change in plans, but as I was already up and going, I finished my cooking chores. I shaped the bread rolls, boiled potatoes, roasted garlic and baked the rolls. Then we sat around for an hour here and there, whipped some heavy cream and we were off to my brother's house for dinner.

He made the turkey and a bunch of appetizers. My mom did the ham and sticky rice. My sister was late to our late dinner and she had all the vegetables.

Finally, everyone arrived (except for my dad who decided to go to sleep for the night before the dinner). We had dinner but I don't think that we even managed to eat half of the food. I think we ate too many of the appetizers before dinner since dinner was so late and we were hungry. My sister's family had already eaten for the most part so there was a lot of leftovers. I took some home and didn't have to really cook the next day at all. I think my brother ended up using leftovers for the rest of the week! I think we could have fed another family...or two and still had some food left!

After dessert, my sister's husband took off with her two boys and my mom took dinner back to my dad.

My brother had this super neat experiment for us to try. He is growing Synsepalum dulcificum (aka miracle fruit). I had never heard of it, but apparently it makes anything that tastes sour, taste sweet. So, we all got one tiny little fruit. What you do is, eat the fruit and then swirl the seed around in your mouth, all around your tongue. And for about 20 minutes or so, everything we tasted was so sweet! The fruit itself is quite tasty but they are smaller than a grape. We tried all kinds of other fruit, some more exotic than others. It was so fun! Slices of lemon tasted like lemonade. Out of season strawberries tasted like the best strawberries you have had at the peak of the summer season. It was really bizarre. We tasted some fresh pomegranate juice that my sister brought and although we had a bunch with dinner that was really good, after the miracle fruit, it just tasted cloyingly sweet. Apparently, you need some of the tartness for balance.

Anyway, it was really interesting and loads of fun. Pretty soon, we found that it was nearly midnight and had to bid everyone a goodnight. Time to head home and try to catch up on lost sleep. It used to be so much easier when we were young. Growing old kind of sucks.

Thanksgiving Break - Part 3

Day 4 began slowly as we took our time to get moving. It was to be our last day in Yosemite as we had to get back for Thanksgiving. We packed up our tent and gear and headed out. 

Although we did manage to get sleep staying in Camp 4, I wouldn't exactly say that we would miss it.  Amazingly, there were a lot of quiet and respectful parties staying a the campsite. Unfortunately, it only takes two or three parties distributed throughout the campsite to ruin things for everyone else. 

In the end, the only thing that saved us was the below freezing temperatures every night. Although, the dirtbags had their alcohol and bonfires, at some point, it is still just too uncomfortable to stay up all night partying. So, although they did not respect the camp site's "quiet hours," we did all eventually get to sleep when it got too uncomfortable for the idiots to stay up any longer. So overall, it was a success. I can't say that we didn't almost pack up and leave that last night, but we grit our teeth and stayed and everything turned out all right.

On this last day, we headed back to El Capitan to climb "The Footstool." It is the climb that we wanted to do over the summer but it was just too hot. It was perfect for us this time, because we really needed a sunny climb.

We had to get our gear ready and reorganize because of all the camping gear that we had to throw back into the car so we got a late start. The approach to the beginning of the climb was also a little longer than we anticipated. It was only supposed to take about 20 minutes but it seemed a lot more than that because it is all uphill. Emily was really dragging most of the way to the climb.

By the time that we got to the base of the climb, we had to take a break for lunch. The climb itself is one pitch up 120.' Christian found that the route was pretty difficult to protect. 

Everyone made it to the top eventually. We did a really big rappel back down to the bottom. Our rope was barely long enough.

By the time we were all done, the sun was setting, yet again, on another day in Yosemite.

There is a really famous climber, Tommy Caldwell (a very distant relation), that has been working on a very difficult climb called the Dawn Wall near where we were climbing. We passed a bunch of his gear that he left behind. He left the valley to have Thanksgiving with his family just as we arrived. We had read about his movements before coming to Yosemite. We were quite surprised that he just left all his gear there. You can just barely make out his portaledge way up on the wall. He had a fixed rope leading down below with a bag of gear he left stashed in a corner.

We took a few snapshots, while fingering his gear for kicks. Christian left him a note.

We had hoped to meet him in person, but I guess fingering his stuff would have to be the next best thing.

We had dinner back at our car and then we decided to let the traffic die down a bit while attending the last ranger night program. It was a good thing that we did because it was the best one yet.

We hit the rode after that. Christian and I took turns driving back. We got back at 3:30 am on Thanksgiving morning.

Thanksgiving Break - Part 2

On our second day in Yosemite, we decided to take it easy and warm up on some easy climbs on Swan Slab. It is a short walk from the campsite, so it was very convenient. Especially since I was still tired. I was woken up early in the morning by a banging sound on the bear boxes. At first I thought that it was a really rude camper getting up early and making a bunch of noise. But as I listened more closely, the sound resembled the slapping sound of a big paw on the heavy bear box doors. We had just gone to a ranger program about bears in the park the evening before, so I still kept questioning whether it was just my overactive imagination. The sound repeated itself several times. Apparently, the bears have learned that if they smack the doors in the right place and if the door was not properly locked, they will pop open. After that, there was nearly 10 minutes of near silence before I heard tent zippers opening up in the direction of the noises. Which only proved that the campers were not out and about, but still tucked in their sleeping bags at the time. By now, it was just light enough to see. I was cold and tired and did not investigate further but several people came by to see if they needed anything but they were packing up and leaving.

After we got out and about, we decided to drive somewhere sunny to organize and sort our gear. It was a pretty chilly night and it never warms up all that much in camp during this time of year as it is always in the shadows.

We drove out to the meadow in front of El Capitan. Christian got some relatively clean space to set out our gear and organize them and the girls and I were able to get out in the meadows to enjoy the views and take some pictures.

When we were ready, we headed back to camp and set out on foot to our climb.

We did three relatively easy short routes: Bobcat Crack, West Slabs, and the Swan Slab Chimney. Honestly, the kids didn't climb that well. Caitlyn didn't even finish the last part of the chimney. Christian had plans for us to climb this big multi pitch route the next day and realized that it just wasn't going to happen. It was a bit disheartening for him. But we came out to enjoy ourselves and he decided that we had to make a change in our plans. We returned to camp for dinner and went back to the Lodge for the evening program. While we waited, he reviewed our options so that we could make new plans.

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Day three brought us another frosty morning. We thought that it might warm up as the week wore on, but it didn't feel any warmer, I'll tell you that.

We usually went to bed without much a do but when we got up in the morning, we indulged in running the heater for a bit before getting started for the day. Nevertheless, we had to scrape the ice from our windshield and head out to organize our gear for the day.

For day 3, we decide on a multi-pitch climb near the Yosemite Falls. By the 3 day after the rain stopped, you can already tell that the waterfall doesn't have as much water as it did a few days ago when we arrived. Our climb took us near the base of the lower falls, so we took a very short detour to take a look.

Our climb on this day consisted of 3 pitches, up 400 feet with a variety of different climbing (offering us practice on a little of everything). We climbed up Sunnyside Bench Regular Route.

We had our lunch on a nice sunny ledge at the beginning of the climb and headed up. The girls did pretty good for the most part on the first two pitches but Emily started whining up the last pitch and it kind of through everybody off. Caitlyn climbed well today but we were quickly running out of time by the time Caitlyn and I went up. I ended up going last to clean on the last pitch and I was afraid of missing some of Christian's placement and leaving gear behind.

The sun was setting as I started up and by the time I finished, we knew that we would be descending with our headlamps. Unfortunately, the descent was no where to be seen. We had to scramble up another 250' or so before we found it. There were some scary exposure on parts of it. The climbers trail back down was not always obvious and we found a few forks in the trail before we were certain which way to go. The descent was long as we now had to hike down 650' of dirt, leaves and talus. Some parts were pretty sketchy. Luckily, it was a lot warmer in the higher elevation and we did not feel the cold until we were nearly down.

We missed the ranger program on this night and limped back to our camp for some warm dinner and rest.

Thanksgiving Break - Part 1

As soon as school let out, we started preparations for our trip. We decided to head back to Yosemite before the snows come. We were hoping to be able to head back in the east entrance as we had in the summer, but as the date of our departure neared, a storm came in and they closed off then entrance for the season.

Our only choice was to enter by the west entrance...that means traveling through LA and up through the grapevine. We decided to get an early start. We got everyone up at 4:am to make sure that everyone was good and tired and prepared for our trip. We expected everyone to go to sleep after dinner and we would get up after a few hours and hit the road. Unfortunately, no matter how tired I was, I was unable to fall asleep, and it was time to get up and go again. We packed up some last minute items, through the kids in the car to continue their sleep and we were off.

The drive was pretty good that time of night and we arrived in Yosemite before 8:am. We did not know what to expect at the campsite. We planned to stay at the notorious Camp 4 (the climbers camp)...which was a pretty sketchy plan considering the past experiences we have had at campsites. Anyway, they don't take reservations. It is first come first serve and people usually line up at 6:am in order to try to get in the queue by the time the park rangers arrived to work. Luckily (or unluckily) the night time temperatures were expected to be below freezing every night so there were no lines to get in. We self registered, picked our spot and set up camp.

That is not to say that there were not many others also in the camp still...it just wasn't as packed as it would be in the spring or summer.

We were too excited to be in Yosemite to take a nap, so we drove around the Valley to try to find the climbs that we planned on working on during our trip so that we did not have to waste time later on it.

It had just stopped raining when we got to Yosemite, so there was actually water in Yosemite Falls this time. Not only that, but there was a beautiful and vibrant rainbow at the base of the upper falls.

After we found all our climbs, we decided to do a few touristy things, like visit the visitor center and museum.

There was a reconstructed Ahwahnee Indian village in the back of the museum. Inside the museum, there was somebody making arrowheads out of obsidian using deer antlers. The girls were so excited to make their own. The docent was telling them though that only men and boys were historically allowed to make arrowheads. He also made beads using pine nuts and pumice stone. So the girls are now eager to go back to Mono Lake to collect some materials to make both.

We then decided to take a hike from the camp to Mirror Lake. We didn't know anything about it, but it sounded like it would be amazing. We have seen pictures of Half Dome reflected in a glassy lake and we only surmised that this must be where they took the pictures. 

It was approximately and 2 and a half mile hike. When we finally arrived, we found it bone dry. Apparently, it is not a true lake at all but a pool that forms when Tenaya Creek is full. Unfortunately, although it just stopped raining when we arrived to Yosemite, the creek was even dryer than when we bathed and swam in it in the summer. Thus, there was not even a muddy puddle left of the so called "Mirror Lake."

It was still a beautiful hike. It was just a bit disappointing because of our expectations. We could not linger too long though as the sun was starting to set, so we got back out on the trail to hike the 2.5 miles back to our campsite. We got a glimpse of a beautiful sunset as we made it back out.

We found out that there were ranger programs every evening at the Yosemite Lodge. We had a quick dinner at walked over to the lodge to kill some time and warm up.