Yosemite - Day 3

We were a bit tired and fed up at not being able to get in to any of the events we wanted to join through Facelift. We decided to take a bit of a break and do a little climbing. We went to the Swan Slab area. The kids wanted to do the second route above Oak Tree Flake (5.6).

Emily led the route up Oak Tree Flake. We have not climbed very much lately, so Emily whined a bit about her gear placements. Then the rope got caught in a crack on the beginning of the flake which resulted in having some significant drag on the rope because she didn't put a sling on one of her pieces. She started to really get frustrated and was thrashing about trying to free the rope from the crack. It was awful. Christian had to stop her and get her to calm down before she hurt herself. She finally got the rope out and finished the climb without any other incident.

Caitlyn could walk fine in her hiking boots with the mole skin on but when she tried to put on her climbing shoes, the result was not so good. She was tired and frustrated and wouldn't communicate with us as to the problem or what she needed. Christian and Emily were up at the top waiting for her and I was waiting to take pictures but she wouldn't move. I was getting hot and frustrated. The place was getting pretty crowded with other climbers on either side of us and a constant stream of tourists streaming past, taking pictures and yelling. Emily started to go up the second route while she was waiting (Bay Tree Crack, 5.6). After getting up a little ways though, she thought she heard a rustling in one of the cracks above her and freaked out. She came back down and I followed up Oak Tree Flake to clean her placements.

When I got to the top, Christian went back down to check on Caitlyn. She had finally decided to take her mole skin off and put a couple of bandaids on instead (which I had suggested to her earlier but she ignored me). He had Emily go back down as well so that she could watch our gear while he went to check on the possible snake in the crack above us. Caitlyn finally made it up but there were some tears as it was still painful on her feet. Christian sent her back down to change her shoes while we worked on the next route.

Christian made his way to where Emily left off and got a big dead tree branch from the Bay Tree to probe the crack. He didn't find anything there and made his way up the rest of the route. Emily came back up to where I was belaying Christian but wouldn't stay to climb the second route. I followed up and cleaned Christian's gear. Christian did find some snakeskin near the top though. We went to find the walk off but ended up down climbing some sketchy rocks. Of course, none of the kids took any pictures for us. When we came back around, we were a bit shocked at how much more crowded it was than before. It was like arriving at Disneyland all of a sudden. We quickly packed up our gear to head back over to check in for Facelift duties. We took longer than we had intended. Or I should say, the kids made us take a lot longer than we had intended for these little climbs.

After checking in for Facelift for the day, we headed out to the Happy Isles area to do some work. We took the shuttle to eliminate any unnecessary hiking. My blister would get a little better each night we rested and would be ready to burst after an entire day of hiking back and forth through some rough terrain. I did hurt it a bit on the down climb from Bay Tree Crack but luckily it still had not popped yet.

We only put in 3 hours of work each on this day but still came back with 7 pounds of trash. One of the coordinators gave us each a nice Deuter Drypack since he knew we would use it and did such good work. We also got invited to a big dinner that evening back at our campground. It was to be a big "Meatfest." The kids were super excited. We only pack the easiest things to eat and go most of the time on these trips. We don't spend a lot of time preparing our food. Our dinner for the evening was just going to be some canned soup, so we were more than happy to put it aside to join the party. Normally, we might have been to awkward or shy to join something like this, but since we got invited personally by some of the coordinators and it was going to be just next to our campground, we sucked it up and decided to join them.

But first, the raffle for the evening. Neither of the kids won anything. In fact, Timmy was not even running the raffle tonight. The kids were pretty disappointed. I actually won a Prana Yoga package. It had a yoga mat, notebook, water bottle, lip balm, chalk bag and trucker hat in a nice canvas bag. I gave Christian the hat.

We went directly back to camp for the Meatfest. It was pretty awesome. We had lamb kabobs and burgers, soup, salad, watermelon and chips. Someone was actually out there deep frying fresh garlic fries. We ate until we were about to burst. Caitlyn filled up on too much salad and didn't get to the burger! We keep making fun of her because it is supposed to be a meat-fest and she had salad. She did have some of the lamb, but still...

It was kind of weird. We were having dinner with some of Yosemite's greatest climbing legends. One of which was bivying above the rock fall (on both days) and came back down alive the next day to tell about it. Some of them got together to have a little jam session.

Photos by yosguns and mouse from merced

Christian took the kids back to get ready for bed after they had their fill and things started to wind down some. He came back and we stayed for quite a bit longer just taking everything in. It was nice there, despite the crowd and more noise than we usually like out here, but it wasn't too bad because it was made up of most of the old timers. The core of the Yosemite climbing community. All the new hipster climbers were out at the Octoberfest in town.

Yosemite - Day 2

Day two in Yosemite was Friday, September 29th. We planned to take it a little easier today. Christian put some mole skin on Caitlyn's feet and she put on different hiking shoes. We had only planned to work half the day, then take off to attend a program being given by Jeremy Collins who is a climber/artist. He was giving an Art Walk which is supposed to start at the El Cap Bridge.

We did not know what it was going to be like heading to the bridge since some of the roads were closed due to the rock fall and traffic in general was a total disaster throughout the park. Supposedly, the shuttle route over there only runs in the summer...at least, that is what the signs showed.

Since we had so much luck finding trash in or near the water, we headed towards the Merced. We got a bit side tracked in one area that might have been a day use area at some point. They had some projects to restore the area, so they were in the process of planting a bunch of new plants there but they didn't seem to bother cleaning up the area before doing so. We dug up so much trash in this one little area, it was unbelievable. We finally did make it out to the river, but just a small part of it as we were nearly out of time.

We only put in 4 hours each on this day but we still pulled out a whopping 18 pounds of tourist debris. After our weigh in for the day, we headed out towards the El Cap Bridge. We didn't have much time to waste as we worked a bit more than we had intended. We also found that the El Cap bridge was a LOT farther away than we figured. We hiked a brisk pace but was not even close when the start time for the walk came and went. To add insult to injury, as we walked along the road towards the El Cap area, we were passed by a shuttle...a shuttle that was supposedly not running anymore. We were pretty put out by it all, to say the least. 

In the end, we had a choice, continue on to the bridge where we most likely missed the start of the walk already, only to have to turn around again and head back where there may or may not be a shuttle to take us back, or cut our losses and just head back so that we can be sure to make it back before the next raffle. In the end, we all opted to head back. We were hot, tired, disappointed and by this time, I had a good blister developing on my foot as well. Plus, we were inundated with gnats everywhere we turned almost the entire time.

We did eventually find out that the shuttles were going to run until October now...little good that did for us.

We finally got back to Yosemite Village to await the the raffle.

We usually have a lot of fun at the raffles. Timmy O'Neill always presents it and he is just hilarious most of the time. But the other kids at the event are super annoying. They are loud, pushy and demanding. You are supposed to be present to win anything in the raffle but the kids will say that the person they called is their friend and will accept a prize for them. Half of them, were not even really friends, they just made it up or met them in daycare...which brings me to our next complaint. While we are slaving away, working hard to do what we volunteered to do, these kids were brought in by their parents and left at daycare most of the time and didn't pick up so much as a single scrap of garbage; yet they were still all signed up as volunteers and given raffle tickets. Some parent even signed up their baby and won something when the kid could not even walk yet. The worst insult had to be the person that signed up their dog. Yes, dog. And yes, the dog won a prize. Plus, there are always dozens of tourists who see the booths and come by to see what is going on and find out they can get free swag by signing up. Many of them don't even make an attempt to help. They sign up just before the end of the day and stick around for the raffle, while drinking with their free water bottles and pocketing their free passes. A few make a half assed attempt to bring some things in.

So we were more than a little disappointed at how things were going. Emily did win a Yosemite Conservancy hat, which she actually really needed. She claims her old ones don't fit anymore. Caitlyn didn't win anything because they threw handfuls of free stuff into the crowd and didn't have enough for all the kids in the end. Most of which didn't help and a few even whined about what they won until they traded them for something else. She did catch a nice chalk bag which would have been pretty cool, had she not already had two of them and had to sit through the other kids screaming in her ear and elbowing her to get more stuff they really should have not been qualified for. Let's not forget the baby and dog.

Christian won a small women's hoodie from Kuhl. Lucky me! I did not win anything...well, officially. Some people won climbing gear (since this is an event put on by the Yosemite Climbing Association), that you know they wouldn't even know what to do with. I guess they will put it on e-bay or it will end up in their garage for a while and eventually end up in the landfill.

We did not even bother trying to go to the evenings program as it is such a crush every night.

Yosemite - Day 1

After returning from the dentist office with the girls, we quickly packed and had dinner, then got a quick shower and a few hours of sleep before rousing everyone to pile into the car to head out to Yosemite. The girls will by ditching school for the next couple of days but they were supposed to have talked to all their teachers to get their assignments done before leaving and making up any additional work as soon as they returned. The service hours will also more than fulfill the service hours that Emily is required to put in for the year in order to graduate.

Christian drove most of the way, as usual. I gave him a small break to catch a nap before the last leg of our journey. We got into the valley early in the morning to check in with our camp host and set up camp. We requested to stay in Yellow Pines this time. We try to request different camp sites every time we come, just to see what it is like at each place. This one is the campground reserved for volunteers.

Once settled, we had a quick breakfast and made the hike into the center of the valley to check in for our Facelift duties. Upon signing up, we received new Yosemite Facelift Kleen Kanteens and free park passes in honor of National Public Lands Day for our service.

For our first day, we were sent towards Mirror Lake and along the trails and creek leading to it.  We put in 7 hours each on our first day and hauled back 30 pounds of trash! That was our record high. We found a lot of shoes people lost in the creek. Of course, there was the usual water bottles and endless micro trash but Christian even hauled in part of a tire. We  ended up catching a shuttle back from near the Ahwahnee Hotel because Caitlyn got blisters from all our walking and the trash was getting unbearably heavy.

Our camp is a ways off, so we had humped our dinner along with our lunch around all day so that we would not have to go back and forth. After weighing in our trash, we decided to get the girls a commemorative Facelift t-shirt as a kind of reward for not having cavities. Unfortunately, the new t-shirts were kind of big with deep v-necks that were totally inappropriate for the kids. Emily decided on last year's t-shirt. Even that did not quite fit Caitlyn, so she was considering some vintage ones. She was considering between 3 of them but was not overly enthusiastic about any one, so the guy sweetened the deal for her by letting her have two for the price of one! She then happily chose two of the three in question and felt much better about not being able to get one of the newer ones she liked better. 

We then finally settled in on some park benches in Yosemite Village to get some much needed rest. While we were resting, there was another big rock fall in the same area as the day before. This time much bigger. The dust from the filled the air above us like a fog rolling in. We did not know what happened exactly until people started talking about it.

Photos by Tom Evans

There were a lot of rumors of what happened, but in the end, there were no fatalities this time. The previous day, a climber and his wife were scouting around the base when the rock broke off from El Capitan. He shielded his wife and died. She was air lifted to a hospital for treatment. There were still a couple of groups on the wall above where the rock fall occurred, but no one below. There was a group of volunteers who had just passed the area moments before.

This time, the rock fall was 3 times bigger but most people were giving the area a wide birth. But because the rock fall was so big, a good sized rock flew out onto the road and fell through a tourists' sunroof as they were driving out of the valley. The driver was hit in the head and taken in for treatment. No one else was seriously hurt that we were aware of.

After all the trash for the day had been weighed and tallied, they cleaned up and brought out all the gear donated by sponsors for the day's raffle. The kids won more t-shirts! Caitlyn got a DMM t-shirt while Emily got a Patagonia one. Neither Christian, nor I, won anything from the raffle this time.

We had some dinner and tried to go to the evening program to hear some of the presentations from climbers whom they had assembled for the day but the line was so long and they place was already filled to the rim. We decided to cut our losses and head back to camp. Christian ended up carrying Caitlyn back on his shoulders because her blisters were causing her a lot of pain.

September

Most of September was taken up with just trying to juggle our new school schedule. Christian is exhausting himself trying to juggle work and school. Throw in trying to apply for financial aid, get our finances in order so that we can manage when his work is done, scouts and Sunday school, plus he has to work in a certain number of hours of classroom observation at different schools; it hasn't been so fun.

Caitlyn is trying to join ASB this year but there are a lot of kids wanting the same thing. Emily tried out for soccer this year. She has a bunch of friends on the soccer team and they spent most of last year trying to get her to join too. She made it on the JV team with them, so she's pretty excited since the only soccer she has even played was in PE. The only thing we've been having trouble with is trying to get her a sports physical so that she can play.
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Christian's dad came up to take me out to lunch for my birthday. Other than that, my birthday was pretty uneventful. We didn't have a lot of time or money to do much.

Christian managed to find some time to put in a new faucet for me. The cheap plastic handle broke on the one that came with the house but we hadn't had the time to fix it for a while.
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We did manage to get the family all to the dentist though. I am happy to say that neither kids had any cavities! Caitlyn has never had one and was pretty excited to keep her record clean. This is the first time Emily didn't have anything so she was pretty excited as well. We were just relieved.
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Other than that, we are about to head out to Yosemite for this year's Facelift event. The kids are ditching school for the next couple of days so that they can go. While we were at the dentist, we heard about a big rock fall from El Capitan. There was one fatality.

August

We went to go visit my mother over the weekend. While we were out there, we found one of our tires were getting kind of low. We found handfuls of nails in two of our tires. We put the spare on the tire that was going down and had to hope and pray that the other one would be fine until we got back.

To make matters worse, the tires are getting kind of old and some of the tread was thin in parts so they would not patch up the tires, we had to get a whole new set of tires. We had hoped that we would have at least another year or two with those tires before being forced to swap them out.

We took the car in to Sears to get our tires and get the car aligned. That's where we normally take it. I found a decent price for tires online for them but when we took the car in to get it done, I had to haggle with them over the price as they don't have the same sales as they do online. They tried to match it for me but the price must have changed overnight because they could not find the price that I went in for. In the end, they said that they would honor the price if I had a screenshot of the sale price. Fortunately, I still had the screen up on my computer from the night before. But I had to drive back home to get it and go back out to place my order for them as they did not have them in stock.

It was quite a hassle and pretty frustrating, but I ended up getting the tires that I wanted (or at least the closest ones that I could afford) for the price that I was willing to pay. The shipment got in too late for me to get it in that next day so I ended up making an appointment to get them put in the next day after that. I had to keep an eye on the tire and it was stressful since I no longer had a spare and had another tire with several nails in it already. I kept wondering how long it would last.

The girls and I finally went in to get the work done. We made a day of it and wandered through the mall for a while. We brought a lunch as well since we knew it was going to take a while. It was suppose to take a couple of hours, but when a couple of hours was up, it was still not done. We were tired of the mall so we took a walk across the shopping center to get the girls an ice cream shake with one of their summer reading coupons from the library. I was going to just steal a couple of sips from each of them but ended up getting my own because it was so hot and the girls were being very patient.

After another hour and a half, we returned once again to the auto center, only to find that although they finally got our tires changed out, they still had not done the alignment. In fact, they had taken the computer offline for maintenance during this time. We were hot, tired, irritable and sick to our stomach from too much sugar from the shakes by the time they finally got all the work done. It took four and a half hours. The lady felt so bad for us that she ended up giving me a small discount on the alignment and refunded some of the money to me. It wasn't much but it made me feel a tiny bit better. I still don't think that I will go back there for tires again. It is never a very good experience. I think we swore never to go back there after the last time we had work done because of something or other that we were not happy with.
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The girls went with the other youth from our stake to their annual beach trip. They had a lot of fun but it always irritates me. They never leave on time and then they come back later and later every year. The first time Emily went, they came back at 9. The next year they came back around 9:30. This year, Caitlyn was able to go as well and they didn't get back until 10:pm. I'm sure no one else cares but us, which is partly what irritates us. Why does no one else care that their kids are out that late? Why does no one else even make their kids go to bed at a decent hour? They've come back after their bed time on Temple trips when they have school the next day as well. We aren't allowed to get irritated with them. I mean, what's our deal, right? They are off with responsible adults doing good things.

We know no one else cares, because we teach a lot of these families kids at church on Sunday. If they don't miss church on Sunday entirely because they stayed up too late playing video games or watching movies, they come in like zombies or hopped up on sugar to keep them going. None of them are well rested and ready to learn, much less attentive and reverent.

But hey, they just want to be happy and we are just cramping their style.
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We had another fire up in the Box Springs Mtns behind our house. It was a lot closer this time since it was actually directly behind our house. We heard sirens blaring by and smelled a little smoke, but by the time we ran over to the back door and looked outside, the fire was already racing halfway up the mountain. We watched for quite a while. It was quite spectacular how the fire fighters worked on the fire. They had several helicopters dropping water and a bigger plane dropping fire retardant. At one point, the plane took this spectacularly deep dive in order to control the fire from spreading too much on the left that by the time they pulled up, it looked like it was going to crash into our house if it didn't pull up fast enough. Christian got a video of the whole thing but it doesn't look nearly as heart pounding as it did in person. The fire didn't get any structures thankfully but they had some brief evacuations of the houses on the other side of the hill in Moreno Valley. They got the fire under control that evening but it took two more days for the fire to be put out entirely.

The firefighters would hike up the steep hill everyday, in the sweltering heat, in all their heavy gear, with shovels and axes to beat down any smoldering embers.
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Marian took a day off work and came out to visit us before the girls had to go back to school. She tried coming earlier this summer but was pretty swamped at work getting ready for an audit. She took us out to lunch and took the girls out to buy a couple of things for school.

She also brought a whole trunk full of gifts and had this whole convoluted game made up for it. They were all in boxes or bags and she made us wrap them all for her. She told the girls that they were gifts for some charity thing she was doing. It was as big as Christmas. In fact, half the gifts were for Christmas and we aren't allowed to open them until then. There was even ones for Emily's birthday, next March! She called it her purple elephant game. Think white elephant except with twists.

Some of the stuff was weird and some of it was just embarrassing. There was a little bit of stealing gifts back and forth but mostly everybody ended up with what they got with few exceptions. Emily was going to go out of her mind not getting to open all her wrapped gifts. Marian had to take extra precautions so that she would know if Emily decided to cheat and take a peak before Christmas. After we finally cleaned up the mess and found places to squirrel all the unopened gifts away, she settled down somewhat and stopped agonizing over it.

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Our friends, the Deans, threw a party the last weekend before school started. We had not seen them all summer as they were out of town this July 4th. This party was a big water water fight with pizza and popsicles. We, admittedly, were not that enthusiastic about attending a party out of doors as it was pretty hot. We got a couple of thunder storms this month that came in and gave us a little water but not enough.

Emily had a small squirt gun but Caitlyn didn't have anything so she decided to take a little bit of her mad money to buy a squirt gun for the occasion. We found nothing left at the first store we went to so it was not very encouraging since it is the end of summer. However, we found a nice Nerf water blaster at the next store on clearance, so she only had to spend five bucks! I don't think her sister was too thrilled about it though since hers just as much and was a fraction of the size.

One of the adults at the party was a terror throughout the whole party to the young and old alike. In fact, he even attacked the Elders that came by for dinner. We won't mention names but his name rhymes with 'bet.' I tried to get the kids to organize and gang up on him, but they were too divided to make any difference.

They also put a couple of slides and plastic tarp together to make a makeshift water slide. So of the little kids were a menace on it though. They wouldn't clear out of the way so that the next person would go and when they finally moved out, they would race back up, cut in line or push the big kids out of the way so that they could get on. All the older kids were pretty patient and respectful though.

In the end, Emily was able to round up some very small children to gang up on our water bully. It was pretty funny. I didn't get to see it but he told me about it. I was so proud. It would have been more exciting though if they were able to get everyone to join in. I kept trying to encourage them and waited with my camera ready, but it never happened. At some point, I gave up because I was afraid for the safety of my camera with all the water going every which way. Holding an expensive camera gave me very little immunity to the water wars. I got a few from a distance but was not able to get as much as I would have liked.

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It had been merely hot this month, as is normal for August weather around here. Some times it is worse than other times but we ended up with a week here and there that made it bearable. But as soon as school started, it became stifling hot again. It was just horrible. It never cooled down in the evenings and we had to have our air conditioning on for half the day.

Not only did Emily and Caitlyn go back to school, but Christian did as well. Christian is going back to school to get a teacher's credential and hopefully his masters degree as well. He had been getting all the stuff he needed together and we were cutting it pretty close but he went in for a meeting with his counselor to finish going through all his requirements when we found out that he would be able to start that very evening. In the end, even though he had been working on getting admitted for months, it seemed to happen very quickly.

I had just picked up the girls from their first day of school and swung by to pick up Christian from work to go to his meeting. By the time the meeting was done, he had to drop us off at home, scarf down and quick dinner and head back to school for his first class!
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At the end of the month, we had yet another fire near our house. The fourth one this summer. This time, it was on Sugarloaf Mtn. which is between the kids elementary school and the middle school. Caitlyn was on a field trip at UCR at the time so she wasn't even there but Emily said that they had to eat lunch in the classrooms because of all the ash falling down. When I picked up the kids from school, it was pretty scary out there. The wind was blowing, a new storm seemed to be brewing and there was all kinds of dust and ashes thrown up in the air. It looked a little apocalyptic!

July

This summer's heat has been pretty unbearable. We've had two fires already in the local hills near our house. The big giant eucalyptus tree at the foot of the Box Springs Mtns here has fallen over and died. We, like many of the neighbors over the years, have taken our kids to swing in the huge tree. It has not been looking well for some time. The last few years has been hard on the tree with the drought and being inundated with graffiti and trash. It finally got some good earlier this spring but it wasn't enough to keep it going. All the damage was done.
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There was no annual Fourth of July part for us this year. I made an apple pie and we met up with some neighborhood friends to have dessert and hiked up a little way to watch the fireworks over the city. The police and the city tried to crack down on illegal fireworks this year. The result was that there seemed to be more illegal fireworks going off all across the city than ever.

One of the girls' friends had a bit of a scare with a traveling tarantula that decided to cross her path.
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Our garden has still been producing very well this year. We have armfuls of zucchini, grapes and apples. We also got a few dragon fruit and we got our first figs.

I've been spending most of my time processing apples. When the summer apples comes in, they come in fast and intense for about two months and then they are gone. So we have had endless apple cakes, apple bread, apple pie, and apple crisps. Plus, we have made apple sauce, apple butter, canned apples and dried apples.

We have given bags of apples away to neighbors. The flow of apples are finally starting to dry up now though. I have a love hate relationship with our apple tree. I love having the delicious apples and getting to make so many different things with the apples but the heat combined with the intensity that the apples are produced makes the process a miserable one at times. We definitely have a good amount of apples to last us the rest of the year now.

The girls help me with the apples now but not nearly as much as I would like. Even Christian has pitched in to help peel apples several times when he was available.

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The girls have spent much of their time with the various chores we have assigned to them. The both have piano, of course, which they seem to be a lot more eager to work on this summer. Emily seems to actually enjoy it now, which is nice. They are also each supposed to be cooking a meal a week. We have had mixed success with that plan.

Emily is supposed to try to fill in some the gaps in her chinese language studies since we have not been very happy with her teacher this past year. She is also supposed to go over some of her PSAT practice questions to help her prepare for that next year. She had one summer reading assignment for her class next year. It was just a small book, The Lord of the Flies, but I had to really push her to get it done. 

Caitlyn is suppose to work on her History Day Project for next year since they demand a lot and do not give them very much time to do it during the year because they have all their normal work to do as well. Plus, her history teacher is a slave driver. The project has always been a major thorn in our sides. Emily will not have to do one this year, so that is a relief. This year's theme is supposed to be 'Conflict and Compromise in History.' She doing a report on the Tiananmen Square massacre. I try to get the kids to work on it over the summer so that they don't have to pressure of working on it so much during the school year when they have so many other assignments to do, but it has never gone that well. They do get a head start, but they never get so far as to make the deadline any easier when it comes around. We'll see how this year goes for Caitlyn...personally, I'm not that hopeful as to the result.

Plus the girls have been dabbling with learning how to code since Caitlyn came back from the GenCyber conference. Actually, Emily has put more work into it that Caitlyn. Mostly because she simply has had more time and energy than Caitlyn has had to do it. They've also been having fun taking apart old computers, monitors and printers. They see how things are put together and how it works. Afterwards, they harvest useable parts like fans, heat sinks, buttons, led lights, power supply, nuts and bolts, etc. You can't believe how many hours they can spend on taking apart something without getting bored. 

Between chores, the girls spend much of their time playing and swimming with our neighbor up the street. It is a great blessing to them to have a friend with a pool within a hop skip and a jump away. And it's been nice that the girls are able to take armloads of apples and grapes to share with their friends as they play. 

This summer has been so hot that all we can manage to do it hide in our homes or they can go swimming. It has been much too hot for much of anything else. On a couple of rare mornings, we manage to make it out to ride our bicycles for a bit.

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The girls went to see a children's musical performance with their friends. They actually enjoyed that.

We had a couple of unexpected rain storms at the end of the month. We got some rain which was nice, but it made it pretty humid.

On one of the first mornings, we took advantage of the cooler morning by doing a bit of climbing at the Riverside Quarry. We each got to go on two or three routes before it got too hot and unbearable. Plus, Christian still had to go in and get some work done.

There has still been no change in our employment situation, so things have been pretty stressful.

June Update

The school year has finally come to another end. We've have gotten none of the June gloom of previous years and have skipped ahead to weather that is just scorching hot.

Emily did well in a few classes and as usual, managed to pull her grades up at the last minute in several others. She swears that she has learned her lesson and will try harder next year to keep up her grades but I've heard it before and will believe it when I see it, as it has caused us no small amount of stress watching her skimming the line of passing and utterly failing classes.

Caitlyn has still been maintaining a 4.0 all year. She has had more homework than Emily had in Jr. High, so we are pretty pleased with her hard work. In fact, she, and few of her friends, were invited at the end of the school year to join a week long cyber security day camp held at Cal State San Bernardino. CSUSB received a grant from the National Security Agency and partnered with the Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio to put our this weeklong free day camp.

Caitlyn was pretty excited. The cyber security camp taught them some of the basics of cybersecurity, they had guest speakers from Bank of America, Facebook and Google to name a few, they got to try their hand at hacking and protecting drones from being hacked and they had various obstacle courses they got to go through. They provided transportation to and from camp everyday from her school.  Plus lunch and snacks while they were there. Plus, she got set up with a Raspberry Pi of her own at the end of the camp!

She didn't really get grouped with her friends but she met some new friends and looked forward to getting up going to camp each day. Now she has a tool to learn how to program. Hopefully she will take advantage of it and learn lots of neat and useful things.

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Meanwhile, Emily stayed home and worked on trying to catch up on her piano. Now that her sister has kind of passed her up in their lessons, she seems more self motivated to catch up. I don't think it sits well with her that she is behind her sister in anything. She mostly stopped practicing regularly (not that we put that much work into it before) when she got into Jr. High. It was like pulling teeth to get her to practice. I usually regretted trying to make her and decided to just stop pushing. It wasn't as difficult to make Caitlyn practice still, although, it became less frequent when she went to Jr. High as well. Once they get issued those stupid Chrome books, we seem to lose all control of our kids.

Anyway, Caitlyn liked the idea of being ahead of her sister.

She also got a new bike. She bought it mostly by herself and with some help from Caitlyn. Caitlyn has outgrown her bike for some time now. We are not able to buy her a new bike at this time but she had enough money that she has earned and saved up to buy her own. She decided to contribute to her sister's new bike and inherit Emily's old bike instead since Emily has kind of outgrown hers as well. It worked out for the both of them as they are both happy with what they have now.

Plus, Christian taught her how to put her bike together and taught her some basics of maintaining her bike.

She loves tinkering mechanically with things so this was great for her. Plus, now she can maintain our bikes all by herself!

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The kids garden is doing much better this year, they got their first zucchini harvest, plus they have corn and melons growing. 

It is also apple season, so we've been doing a lot with apples lately. 

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Caitlyn gave her first sacrament talk on Father's Day. She did a great job and got so many compliments from people. Despite her nervousness, she spoke loudly and clearly.

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After a few weeks of hard work, Emily finally finished her first piano lesson (Alfred's Basic Piano Course Level 1A). Finally, on to 1B! Hooray! Hopefully, it won't take her another 9 years to finish the next level. She doesn't seem to mind it as much as before and she still has a little more to technically catch up to her sister. Hopefully she won't get lazy again if she catches up or once school starts back up. I guess only time will tell.