2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony

Yesterday, I attended Caitlyn's 2nd Trimester Awards Ceremony. She got perfect attendance and Principal's Honor Roll. She was also awarded with a medal for making it to the district science fair. She did not place in it but as we did not go to the award ceremony anyway, she did not receive her participation medal.

Caitlyn is doing great in school, as always. She and her best friend, Anevay are both always on the Principal's Honor Roll. They spend a good portion of their extra time helping out in their former 5th grade class room organizing, cleaning and sometimes helping out with the students. We are happy that she has good friends. Unfortunately, they will not be going to the same middle school next year.

Last week, most of the 6th graders went up to Big Bear for most of the week. We did not allow Caitlyn to go but all her friends got to go. Caitlyn handled it pretty well. The actual camp wouldn't do anything special...especially since we take her on plenty of real camping trips and adventures. She mostly just missed her being with her friends. But she made the best of it and was fairly excited to go to school still as they were doing a lot of fun things with the 16 or so kids that were left behind. They didn't do any actual school work since all the other kids were out having fun so her teacher did mini "science" camp activities with kids that were left. She enjoyed herself but was waiting anxiously for her friends to come back and for their schedule to go back to normal!

Of course the bus that was suppose to go and bring the kids back never showed up so they had to send for another bus and they ended up returning several hours later than they were supposed to.

Indian Cove, Joshua Tree

We have been trying to get back on track on our rock climbing training. To this end, we took a trip out to Indian Cove in Joshua Tree to Iceberg Boulder.

We did some slab training on a route called Girl Power (5.4) and Baby Steps (5.5).

They are pretty fun and easy sport routes up a 40' slab. We did some practice sport climbing each route first.

Then, while on top rope, we tried walking up the face without using our hands at all. 

A group of people arrived while we were working on Baby Steps so we did not linger and went on to our next climb. Unfortunately, when the other people arrived and threw down all their stuff next to ours, Christian did not see that he left some fancy draws behind when we left. When we got to our next climb, he realized what happened and took Emily and ran back for them. 

Christian and Emily split up to see if they could catch the people either back towards the climb or the parking lot. Luckily, he was able to get it back from that group as they were leaving the climb. Emily took the wrong way so Christian had to go back again to find her. Emily and Christian ended up free soloing the route once more while they were out there.

The next route was called Stucco (5.8). It was a super steep, mostly featureless 40' rock formation that had the texture of well, stucco. As you try to use friction to climb up, little pebbles gets scraped off and your footing slips.

Caitlyn sat out this climb. I attempted it but gave up after I got stuck about a third of the way up. Only Christian and Emily managed to make it up this route.

Next, we headed over to the Feudal Wall for the kids to lead their own multi pitch route. The route is called Marchesa and is supposed to be an easy 5.2 two pitch route up 100 feet. As always, we usually do the routes first so that Christian can make sure that it is safe and within the girls' abilities. This was not.

The first pitch I guess can be considered 5.2. The second pitch had this really difficult overhanging spot that you had to pull yourself over. It was somewhat hard for Christian being tall. It was very difficult for me. I doubt that the kids would be ready for it. There would be what we would describe as several 5.7 moves to get over it. There was an awkward fist jam on one side and a fragile flake on the other to pull yourself up while your feet pretty much dangled over the overhanging part. It was difficult to reach the holds and then you had to muscle up them. It was most certainly not a 5.2! We were not very happy about it. I managed to thrash up but my muscles were very sore afterwards!

Above that was what I would describe as a 5.4 chimney. So still not something the kids would be ready to lead by themselves. We had to do it while dozens of boy scouts swarmed the area, climbing on rocks and screaming like animals. Our nerves were shot and we were pretty irritated. It is definitely a wonder that none of the boys got hurt as they were pretty much left to their own devices out there.

When Christian and I finally made it up, we had to find the way down. Some of the moves we had to down climb were even harder than 5.2. Christian climbed down without the rope but he short roped me down some of these rather precarious boulders. The girls would not be able to do this climb right now. Emily would not be able to lead the second pitch and Caitlyn would not even be able to reach the handholds in order to get up it. We were all pretty disappointed. We could not believe that this route was so completely sand bagged. We were not happy about it.

The girls ended up just scrambling around to have fun but we did not stay too long since it was near the campground and just filled with noisy groups screaming and blasting music. One group even had a bull horn to bark out instructions to each other. It was pretty awful.

Emily's 13th Birthday

Emily turned 13. She is officially a teenager! Life as we know it is over...but we went through the motions of celebrating nonetheless.

We had Marian and some of Christian's side of the family over for lunch. My mom stopped coming to the birthday get togethers when her cataracts made it more difficult for her to drive out to unfamiliar areas. They won't operate to fix it until it gets much worse.

We cleaned up the yard a bit, which was quite a challenge since we have let it go for many months now. Plus, every time the Santa Ana winds kick up, it looks like a tornado came through.

We asked Emily what she wanted to eat. All she could think of was fresh bread toasted over the fire. Since we can't expect everyone else to just eat bread, we made paella too.

We had more people come than we were realistically expecting and ended up making two batches of paella, plus two big loafs of rustic bread and salad so we had quite a bit of food in the end and had what was left of the second paella for dinner later that evening.

We sat around and told Emily stories (half of which seemed to also involve bread for some reason). She had a ton of presents.

Grandma Cheri had sent a whole bag of gifts with us when we were together in San Diego last weekend thinking that she would not see her for her birthday, but they made it down after all and she brought a whole new stack of presents to add to what she had already given us. It was crazy.

We got her some more arrows to go with the bow we got her for Christmas and the quiver she got herself with some of her Christmas money.

Even though she doesn't get much of a chance to practice, she is getting pretty good.

Afterwards, we had cake and everyone had to roll on home. Marian is the only one who stayed a little longer and she indulged us by watching the Emily videos and pictures we painstakingly spent many days putting together for the special event. Eventually, she ditched us too...literally.

Cheri's Birthday

On the last Saturday of the month, we headed down to San Diego to celebrate Christian's mom's birthday. Her birthday is on the 29th, so she only "officially" has a birthday every leap year. Which makes this year her official 16th birthday! The next time Cheri has a birthday, Emily will be actually the same age as her grandmother!

The girls got to help with some decorations. Mike did most of the cooking. I brought down a cake that I made while Erin helped get everything else ready.

We had lunch and opened presents. Christian's mom shared some stories of her childhood.

Erin's kids played some musical pieces for her and then we had cake.

The girls had lots of fun playing with their cousins and visiting with their Grandma Cheri.

Red Rock, NV

For President's Day weekend, we decided to go on a trip. It had been over a month since we have done any climbing due to my accident. We decided on some easier routes in Red Rock in order to ease back into it and see how my back is feeling.

Unfortunately, since it is a major holiday weekend, the place was pretty packed. To make matters worse, the park service also did not charge entrance fees in celebration of the holiday. So, it was definitely more crowded than we would like but if we got out early and went up to climb, we were able to get some relative peace. But when we returned to the car is when it seemed like we were walking through Disneyland.

We went a couple of years ago for Spring Break with my brother and his kids and because Red Rock is not a National Park but a National Conservation Area in the BLM land, they did not have Junior Ranger programs but something called a Junior Explorer. They did the workbook for the program the last time we came, but because we left early (and unexpectedly), they did not get to turn in their workbooks to earn the reward. Consequently, the kids wanted to make sure that we got a chance to get their Junior Ranger badges this time so that was the first thing we got done when we arrived.

We did a couple of super easy climbs on the Scrambler's Wall off of the first pullout. We all practiced lead climbing again.. The first route was called Green Eggs and Ham (5.2).

I guess we are all improving in our gear placements. Christian still goes through to check to see how well we placed our protection pieces. The whole process takes quite a while. Caitlyn is super slow but her placements were almost all bomber.

Afterwards, we had our lunch and tried to decide what route we wanted to do next. The girls decided on Scrambled Salami (5.3).

Caitlyn also wanted to practice belaying. Christian belayed Emily but after Emily pulled through the crux, he handed over the duty for Caitlyn to do while he went up after Emily to check on her placements. When Christian was at the top, he tested Caitlyn by yanking on Emily's rope to see if she would keep hold of the rope or let go and she had no problems. 

Next was Caitlyn's turn to climb. Caitlyn had a little bit of hesitation still on the crux as it was a bit scary for her but she did it in the end.

We did not quite have enough time to do another route so instead, we did a bit of exploring on our way back to find the route we had picked out for the next day. We wanted a bit of daylight still to look for our campsite. 

We camped at the same place we did the last time we were here. Luckily, there was a lot less wind (although we were prepared for it this time). We turned in relatively early as we expected to get an early start the next morning.

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We got up a little bit later than we had intended but we still got a relatively early start, and it is a good thing too because there were lots of people that wanted to do our route.

The route was called Chips and Salsa (5.4). It is a three pitch climb up 250 feet. It's a pretty fun climb.

Emily sport led the entire route on Christian's gear placements and Caitlyn and I followed while cleaning the gear.

The first two pitches are rated at 5.4 but the last pitch is more of a 5.2 scramble. We felt a bit rushed as the next party was climbing directly below us at some point. It took all four of us about 2 hours to get up the 250'. We are definitely improving our time but we are still working on our systems.

When we got back down, we had a late lunch of beef jerky and of course, chips and salsa.

It was a zoo back at the parking area so we had to decide whether we would throw ourselves back into the fray or try to find a new, less crowded area. We decided on the latter. We drove out to the Willow Springs area. We could not quite find the approach to our climb and ended up doing a lot of sketchy bushwhacking through thorny cat claws and poison oak. It was not too fun and we were pretty tired by the time we found our climb.

The climb we wanted to do was called Little Black Book (5.4). Unfortunately, there is this super hard roof problem at the very beginning of the route. It is totally ridiculous. Nobody that can pull that roof wants to bother climbing a measly 5.4. I hate routes like this. The other people that manage to do it do it by cheating and climbing a small tree/bush to get over the roof. The rest of the climb looked dirty and mungy and not at all appealing. We were kind of ticked off.

In the end, we opted to do a route on the left of it called Senior Moment (5.5). It is a long 160' one pitch climb. By this time, the sun was getting pretty low and there was a strong breeze so it was a little chilly. Emily was complaining of being cold and tired so both girls opted to sit this one out. It was a bit harder than we anticipated because there was a big bush growing out of the crack system that we were supposed to go up which was not there  (or was much smaller ) before. The alternate route we chose was a bit sketchier. I think I would have rated it a 5.6. We had a lot of problems with rope drag. It was pretty bad. But overall, the climb was pretty fun.

It took us a little while to find the rappel anchors which all the climbs in this area is supposed to share. Then I had some problems rappelling down because of the weight of the rope. I had to feed the rope through my device during the first half of the way down in order to move. While I worked my way down, Christian had the kids pack up and start heading down as we were losing light quickly. At least we found an easier way back to the car.

On our way back, we heard some punk teenager yelling to his younger sibling to call 911. Apparently, he found his way up to the top of the rock formation that we were on but could not find his way back down and was stuck up there. The sun was down and it was almost completely dark by this time. His mother went to try to get help. She tried to get us to help her son but we do not know the area, we did not know how on earth he got himself up that high (our route did not even take us to the very top of the rock formation), there was no light left and we were exhausted. We recommended that she go get help from the search and rescue team as that is what they are there for. It won't hurt her son to sit up there and stew on the consequences of his actions for a few hours while they got help. 

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The next morning was Sunday so we took it easy. We had the kids sleep in. Christian got up to take pictures of the sunrise though.

We made biscuits in our new camping oven for breakfast while we read our scriptures. The biscuits got a little burnt on the bottom but they were pretty good! We made some plans of how to make improvements next time.

Emily was still pretty exhausted and there were a lot of people driving into the area. We were originally going to go find some place to take a nice walk but opted to just stick around as we did not want to lose our campsite for our last night in the area.

Christian went up to check out the climbs in the area. It was a long and hard hike so we opted to just hang out at the campsite. Some time in the late afternoon, a big group of rowdy young people came in carrying lots of junk food and beer and settled themselves under a nearby tree. We did not want to camp next to them. It was not going to go well. We had to decide whether to tough it out with a sleepless night so that we could climb one more day or cut our losses and go home and get a good night's sleep at home. We ultimately decided to just go home.

The girls slept most of the way back. They took a shower and got a late dinner and went right back to sleep. Emily slept in the next day. We discovered that she actually had a fever and did not tell us so it is a good thing we opted to return home. She rested on and off all day and ended up staying home from school for the next two days as well!

Chinese New Year and Other Matters

On February 6th, we got together with my family for our annual reunion dinner to celebrate the end of the lunar year. We went over early to help my mom with the preparations. My mom put Christian to work chopping things up and then she wanted to run out to get some Chinese roasted pork so I went to help her with that. Emily wanted to tag along as well.

The place is a zoo this time of year so, my mom jumps out to wait in line while I attempt to find a parking space. It probably takes me about 15-20 minutes to find an open spot after circling the parking lot for the nth time. We find out that my mom hasn't moved much in line and decide to go into the grocery store next door to look around. The line inside the grocery store is not much better so we only look around. Emily and I check on my mom's progress a couple of times before just sitting outside the place waiting for her. An hour after my mom got in line, she finally gets up to the front of the line to find out that the lady in front of her just bought up the rest of what was left of the roasted pork. They are all out, they don't know when they will get more and no, you can't prepay for the next batch and come back later for it. What a colossal waste of time. She buys a chicken and we leave.

My mom is so disappointed and since we were out, we run over to the next available place that has roasted pork (someone else mentioned that there is still pork there). We circle another crowded parking lot and find a spot relatively quickly. We get inside and take a number. It doesn't appear that we should have to wait too long but it ends up taking us nearly another hour before walking out with our goal in hand.

We get back home to help Christian finish lunch which consisted of our traditional winter solstice soup.

We also had the chicken that we ended up getting at the first place, the roasted pork that we went out of our minds trying to obtain, along with some bbq pork my sister made.

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After lunch, we celebrated my mom's birthday (which was actually at the end of last month), with a Japanese Cheesecake that I made her.

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Chinese New Year was actually on February 8th, but we did not get together to celebrate until the 20th since my sister was out of town the weekend before. This year is the year of the monkey.

We got together to make dumplings. My mom made the filling the night before and we got together to work on the actual dumplings together.

In addition to our traditional dumplings, we made, shu mai, daikon cake, taro cake (none of which are actual cakes, but more dim sum fare), and fa gao (a steamed cupcake). My mom planned to make another deep fried dumpling but she was exhausted so we told her not to worry about it. She was up late working on the stuffing for all the dumplings and then as she was finishing up, my father gets up and starts moving about. My father has been legally blind for the last 40 plus years and has been diagnosed with dementia for several years now and possibly alzheimer's to boot. He used to get more exercise and walk around more but in the last several years, he has gotten tired easily and hasn't moved around as he should. His leg muscles are not what they used to be and he seems to get episodes where he gets dizzy and loses his balance. I would not say that he simply loses his strength and falls because he always falls backwards. He has hit his head a lot. This night, he put a hole in the wall. 

My mom manages to get him up and he seems okay for the most part so she puts him to bed and tells him to stay there. She gets ready and gets in bed. A few minutes later, she hears a big bang. Apparently, he got back up and walked back out into the living room, lost his balance, fell again...hitting his head yet again, and put another hole in another wall. My mom was beside herself. She only ended up with a couple of hours of sleep because she was afraid that he would get up again and hurt himself again.

While we were there, he actually fell again. Christian and I watched in what seemed like slow motion from across the room as he teetered and we ran to try to help him. We did not make it in time but he hit is lower back on a soft chair and not his head at least. The grandkids kind of watched the whole thing in horror. He was okay though, Christian took him around for a walk so that he wouldn't try to do it again on his own. My sister took a turn taking him around a bit later so I don't think he got himself in any more trouble that day. I don't know how my mom manages him. I don't know how long she will be able to continue taking care of him at this rate.

School Update

The girls are doing good in school. It was a little sketchy for Emily at first and we were a bit concerned. She had skipped several assignments in a few of her classes that she did not like but as they were special projects and were graded and weighed heavily, it had the potential to really pull down her grade (which would be a real shame as she was doing really well in the classes otherwise).

We had to force her to crack down and get the assignments done before the end of the semester. She was able to finish most of the missing assignments and make up for some of the lost points enough to pull off all A's except for one B that she got for English. There was no way for her to make up those points.

We went to her honor roll assembly on February 5th towards the end of the school day.

They calculated her GPA wrong on her certificate. And then that evening, I get an automated call from her school saying that she was truant during 6th period that day. Can you believe it? The awards ceremony was held during 6th period. The principal was there, as were the school counselors and 300 plus other students from 7th and 8th grade and they mark them all as being truant! Apparently, someone went through to correct them all afterwards but not before making themselves look ridiculous and having 300 plus parents notified that their kids were ditching 6th period. How these school continue to run is beyond me with how inept the staff appears to be. It makes me really worry about what kind of education my kids are managing to get out of attending.
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Caitlyn went to the district science fair the next week. Since she is now in 6th grade, she had to have oral interviews as a part of the judging process. She had to spend an entire day at UCR (where RUSD science fair is held). They couldn't bother with assigning time slots to different grades or schools so they all had to just sit there twiddling there thumbs all day until it was their turn for their interview.

None of the other kids from her school bothered to go but she knew several kids from other schools there. After missing a day of school to await her interview, we find out that her "interview" consisted of several useless questions.

1. What is your name? How do you spell it?

2. What was your project about?

3. How long did it take?

4. Did you have fun?

They recorded their answers via video but apparently it would be too much trouble for them to actually look at the project and judge it on it's own.

Then, that night, I get a call from her school telling me that she missed school that day. I turned in 3 separate permission slips to her school for her to be at the science fair that day. Her teacher said that it would not affect her attendance record and some district personnel checked the kids into the conference room at UCR that day. There is something seriously wrong with these people.

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We were notified that Emily was accepted into the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma program at North!