Winter Break

I am woefully behind on my posts. It has been difficult to work up the enthusiasm to write when there isn't anything much to write about.

Once again, we had to cancel our family trip. A lot of weather systems has been moving in and our original plan was to drive out to Utah. To visit the Arches National Park and other normally busy places while it is too cold and miserable for the majority of tourists to want to venture out in. Unfortunately, the weather system that we've had over us over the holidays would start moving off to the east in the direction we had planned to travel. We would end up following the rain to the east which would eventually turn to snow. It was just too far to travel to endure that kind of weather that would end up hampering most of our activities.

On top of that, since Emily started feeling sick on Christmas Eve, it turned into a full blown cold with a fever to boot. There was no telling how much worse it would get if we dragged her out to camp in those elements.

So we stayed home.

I decided to take the opportunity to work on the house. My project was to paint the eaves which badly needed some serious attention for the past five years or so now. Truthfully, the previous owners slapped on a thick layer of thick paint on painfully neglected eaves just to sell the house. It started falling apart and peeling after our first season here. Because of the many problems we had with the house in the beginning and then taking every opportunity to get away most weekends for the past three years or so, we have not made the time to work on it. The weekends we were here, we had other obligations or more pressing matters to catch up on.

I scraped and sanded the neglected wood as best I could before applying primer and paint, but honestly, half of the wood should probably be replaced. If I waited to do that, I knew that it was not going to happen any time soon, so I just did the best I could with what we had.

The kids helped out a little here and there with the painting and in the yard. Mostly, they ran off to play with the kids in the neighborhood. 

For the first couple of days, Christian stayed in and cooked and cleaned for us. It gave me a lot more time to work on my project. We had so much food, we did not have to cook for another day or two afterwards. 

After Christian's cooking frenzy, he spent most of his time researching and preparing for his big project over the break. He needed to change the timing belt on my Trooper. We have nearly 100,000 miles on the Trooper and since we were not going anywhere, he took the opportunity to take the car apart to put in the new timing belt while we didn't need the vehicle.

It still rained here and there so I did not get as much done as I would have liked before the break was over, but it was a good start. I was just worried that I would not be able to keep my momentum on the house up. After a day of scraping and sanding, I was pretty sore and there was always so much to clean up. Without Christian making the meals and having to go back to dropping of and picking up the kids from school, the window of time I had to work on the house was greatly reduced.

Christmas

Marian came over to spend Christmas Eve with us, as is are tradition. She got us a rib roast which Christian has been dry aging for the past 3 weeks. We spent much of the time preparing for our dinner feast.

Christmas morning brought lots of presents.

The biggest gift that Emily got this year was a new bedding set. She actually picked it out some months ago and I wrapped it up for her. She has been patiently waiting for Christmas so that she could actually see it again and use it.

Caitlyn's big gift was a pogo stick...which I thought was really random and weird.  Of course, we grew up with one, but I didn't even know that they still made them. She put it on her wish list, so that's what she ended up getting.

The girls actually bought real presents for each other this year. Caitlyn got Emily a kind of owl watch fob on a chain necklace. Emily got Caitlyn a himalayan salt lamp because she still likes to have a nightlight on in their room and Caitlyn loves rocks.

Caitlyn even bought her dad a giant tube of gourmet popcorn for Christmas. 

We got a lot of miscellaneous Columbia clothing from Marian for Christmas for our many adventures. Unfortunately, our adventure for Christmas break looks like it is going to be cancelled. We had planned to go to Utah, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Emily started feeling sick on the morning of Christmas Eve and it wasn't getting any better. There was a snow storm moving into Utah ahead of us. It was supposed to snow almost the whole time. Plus, it was expected to be super cold.

Christmas with the Wongs

We celebrated Christmas this year with my family before Christmas Eve. Normally, we celebrate on Christmas Day, but this year, my sister and her family will be on an early morning flight to Japan on Christmas.

We got together for dinner, so we had most of the day to prepare food. Christian still had to work and the kids had their last day of school right before Christmas (which was totally insane). Christian started some bread before heading off to work in the morning. We planned to serve some of our dry cured meat with crusty bread and herb infused olive oil. We also made some desserts and a side dish to bring over.

All the kids are getting so ridiculously big now. Both of Wendy's kids are currently in college. For a while, all the yearly Christmas pictures had her boys towering over all the other kids but the rest of the varmits are starting to shoot up.

The kids spend most of the time playing together. Luckily, they all pretty much get along. The adults spend most of the time finishing preparing food and chatting. At the end of the evening, we open presents and have dessert.

The girls got red envelopes from from my mom, art supplies from Uncle Norman and from Aunt Wendy, Caitlyn got a ukulele and a big warm jacket for Emily. Caitlyn had been trying to teach herself to play the ukulele from youtube videos with the little play ukulele that a coworker brought back for me from her honeymoon in Hawaii. It plays okay actually, but it doesn't keep it's tune for very long.

December Update

After I got back and got back into the daily rhythm of chauffeuring the kids back and forth from school, meals and laundry, half of December was almost over. I realized that I had barely started Christmas shopping, we haven't put up any lights or the tree nor had we worked on this year's Christmas card.

Christian started to feel better, at long last, shortly after I returned from my trip. He had an ultrasound scheduled while I was away, but we had yet to hear the results. He tried to make an appointment with his doctor but he wouldn't see him until some time in January. It was pretty frustrating. Although Christian was feeling better, we were still pretty worried about what was causing the problems.

I finally called and got him an appointment with a different doctor. The wait was long and excruciating, even with an appointment. We waited nearly two hours! If we were not so desperate for answers, we would have left. When we finally spoke to the doctor, everything was finally cleared up. Christian has gall stones. Apparently, one of the gall stones was obstructing his bile duct, which was causing all the pain. It had settled back down, which is why he had started feeling normal again. If this happens frequently, we will have to consider removing his gallbladder, but for now, we'd rather keep all his organs where they are supposed be.

While having gall stones is not good, it is certainly not as bad as we had feared at first and finding out, certainly helped us breath a little easier. At least now, we know what we are dealing with.

The wait for the doctor was horrendous, but we really liked her and quickly switched over to her as Christian's primary doctor.

With the weightier matters taken care of, we worked on and ordered last minute Christmas cards. I got the outdoor lights up but didn't manage to get the tree up this year. I just decorated the mantel so that it was still festive. I managed to get all the Christmas shopping done. Some of the packages arrived a bit close and one never arrived at all. The postman mis-delivered my package. It has not been uncommon for us to receive one of the neighbors mail or packages so you could only wonder how many of our own mail gets mis-delivered and ends up tossed away or stolen.

The rest of the month has gone by in a blur of school projects and deadlines. The nightmare of which, I don't even want to recall at this point.

Pacifica

As usual, my mom and I were up way before my sister. We packed up and had breakfast while we waited. It was a sunny day so we made pretty good time down to Pacifica. It's a good thing, since we were planning on meeting up with my uncle and aunt for dim sum. They don't drive and they couldn't get a ride, so we dropped by my sister's house and unloaded the car to make space and headed into San Francisco to pick them up.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures, which is a shame since I rarely see my uncle and aunt. I love Chinese food in S.F. They have mostly Cantonese food with flavors that remind me of my childhood.

After lunch, we left my mom to catch up with her brother and his wife while we drove back to Pacifica. My sister wanted to show me some of the hikes along the shoreline. We knew that my mom would not be able to do too much of it. It was really beautiful.

We hiked until the sun started to go down and then headed back as we watched the sun set. We went back to the house to meet up with my sister's husband then picked up my nephew and my mom for dinner. We had more Chinese food in S.F.

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The next day, we took my mom out to see the coastline. We only walked over the first hill or so. Mostly we were distracted watching hundreds of cute little sandpipers. We could have been happy to just spend all day watching them.

We grabbed lunch afterwards at some local taco stand and headed back to their house. They had several get togethers planned that evening. My mom and I hung out at their place. They left me a car, but we didn't feel up to venturing out. We entertained ourselves by watching weird movies and I worked on putting together a berry trifle for their potluck in the evening. It took me most of the time to work on their dessert anyway since their kitchen isn't very well stocked in supplies or equipment!

I ended up winning first prize for my dessert in their potluck that evening. I brought home some weird cake pan out of the deal.

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We packed up and left again the next morning. This time, we were headed all the way back home. The way home was pretty uneventful. We stopped by some roadside fruit stands near Visalia, that was about it. Christian picked me up at my mom's house that evening.

Lake Tahoe - Part 2

On the fourth day, we headed out to find Rabe Meadows. One of the rangers recommended it to us as being relatively easy for my mother. We thought we would give her an easy day after the hike we did to Vikingsholm.

It was a beautiful, but short hike. We did not know where else to explore, so my sister convinced us to go to one of the casinos. We were only in there for a short time. We played some cheap slots. I spent all of one dollar. I made the money back and a little more, but lost it all again. In total, the three of us spent something like $15. But we won back about $10 and we decided to cut our losses and take the money to buy some hot drinks.

My sister and I decided to brave the outdoor jacuzzi this time. We warmed up inside the indoor one before running out to the one on the outside. It was actually perfect as we could not stay inside the indoor one very long as we got too hot, but you could stay outside for quite a while. The most treacherous part was crossing over to the one outside as it was quite icy and slick.

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My sister had originally intended to come out to Tahoe to relax and do some computer work that she needed to catch up on but between our outings and then downloading her pictures and stuff, she hadn't gotten anything done. So, on day five, we left my sister back at the lodge and my mom and I went in search of a hike near the lodge. We found the Tahoe Rim Trail. It was spectacular. Best hike of the trip...well, the start of it. It started snowing on us and we did not bring the trekking poles. My mom got a bit nervous as to where the trail lead and how far it was and we ended up turning around and going back after a while.

We had some lunch and headed back out together to find Cave Rock. We found it but could not find a way to get to it. We drove back and forth looking for how to get to it, but was only able to take a picture of it from below.

Strangely, there was no snow and it was relatively clear from this side of the lake. We then headed over to a vista point called Logan Shoals.

We were pretty much running out of places in Southern Lake Tahoe to visit. In the end, we decided to cut the trip a bit shorter than we had originally planned and go explore my sister's new house and the area around there for an extra day.

While dinner was cooking in the Instant Pot, we headed into the gym to workout a bit as we were a bit restless still and most of our destinations earlier were driving ones. I think I over did it a bit because I was a bit sore afterwards. But we got my mom to go out even to the outdoor jacuzzi after our work out. We relaxed the rest of the evening and watched the sunset outside of our window on our last night in Tahoe.

We did start packing a bit and took a load down to the car just so that we would not have so much to do the next day.

Lake Tahoe - Part 1

The week after Thanksgiving, Christian dropped me off at my sister's house and we hit the road. It made me pretty nervous since Christian was still having pretty bad abdominal pains. It took us most of the day to get up to Stateline, which is where we were staying.

We made pretty good time, so we arrived a little early. We had fine weather all the way up. But by the time we got there, the weather started to change. It was cold and the wind kicked up. My sister and I went to go check in but since our room wasn't quite ready yet, we went back out to get my mom. It started to snow, just as we were heading back into the main building to wait for our room. Apparently, we made it just in time. There was no free WiFi at the lodge, but luckily Wendy purchased WiFi for the week to do some computer work. I was afraid that I would not be able to communicate back home as much as I would like. This is the first time I've ever been away from the kids this long. It has been a very long time since I have been away from Christian this long.

We hauled all our luggage up to our rooms (which was considerable for just the three of us). Our room was on the top level of an 8 story building. We settled in and made dinner. It snowed the entire night. We could hear the wind howling all around and above us...and it was loud! In the main living area, the sound was loudest above us or from the top vents. It was quieter in the bedrooms but I don't know if there was a loose window in our room or in the room next to us, but it was quite annoying. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep. I didn't sleep that well before the trip either, as I was worried about what to bring and if I forgot anything, or if I should be going at all!

Morning brought us much clearer weather and beautiful views from our window.

My mom and I did not sleep did not sleep well and ended up rising pretty early. Apparently, my sister slept like a baby and we had to wait some time for her to get up.

On our first outing, we decided to hike up to Eagle Falls. We actually had several short hikes picked out, but we were not sure how much my mother could take.

The hike was a little harder than we had anticipated, but my mom did a great job. She was a little fearful and it took a bit of coaxing, but she eventually got up.

My sister our I would occasionally, run up ahead to make sure there was not anything too heinous ahead for her.

Once we got to the bridge across the falls, we decided to call it a day. The trail continued up some more steeper trail and we figured that we should not push my mother too hard on her first day. Still, it wasn't bad for a 78 year old woman! Actually, another deciding factor was that my mom needed to use the restroom!

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Day two, brought us another sleepless night of howling winds. I thought I was going to go crazy at this point. I was so close to dragging a blanket off the bed and looking for some corner of the hallway outside to sleep in. It was maddening. If you close the bedroom door, you hear less of the air tunnel noises that is in the kitchen, but the window or whatever banging every so many minutes made it impossible to sleep. I ended up dragging a blanket out into the living room. In the end, the constant air tunnel noise, although loud, was at least consistent!

Today, we tried a couple of other hikes, but found them inaccessible. The snow was too deep and no one had gone that way, so we could not tell where the trail lead. We ended up walking around the marinas in Southern Lake Tahoe. First, was the Ski Run Marina.

Then, we went a bit further back and found the Timber Cove Marina.

There were not too many people about, so we made some snow angels and a snowman. After lunch, we went into town to do some shopping for some more groceries. I went to look for earplugs as I needed sleep pretty badly. We wanted to try to change rooms but they never got back to us. 

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On day three, we headed back towards Emerald Bay. We hiked above Emerald Bay on our first day, but we wanted to find a way down. After a couple of false starts, we finally found a trail down to Vikingsholm Castle which is at the edge of the Bay. I was a little worried because the trail marker indicated that it was a strenuous trail. It didn't look that bad, but we didn't know what we would run into and what my mom could take.

It was a pretty nice trail. The castle was nice, but closed for the season. 

It was a longer trail than we had taken my mom on thus far, but it was easier as it was a well established trail and we did not have to trudge through snow and rocks. My mom made it, but she was pretty wiped out by the time we were done.

We did some more shopping in town before heading back to the lodge. After the long hike, we finally got my mom to agree to go to the hot tub with us in the evening to relax her aching muscles.