February

We celebrated my mom's 80th birthday this year. We planned and sprung a fancy surprise dinner for her at my brother's house. I worked on a slide show for her of her kids and grandkids.

We also returned a couple weeks later to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Of course, we spent the day making and eating dumplings all day. It is our favorite part of the holiday! And for dinner, my brother in law brought an entire roast pig. We all made some dishes to round out the dinner. We passed out red envelopes of lucky money to all the kids. And my mom got us some souvenir's of her trip to China with my sister over Christmas.

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Emily finished soccer season. She really enjoyed it. I am more than ready for it to be over though. So tired of her long days at school and carting her around for practice and games. They are supposed to take a break and start practice again, but she will not be able to join them if she doesn't get her grades up.

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Christian had more problems with his pickup truck. There has been an intermittent problem with misfiring for quite some time, but we had not been able to pinpoint the problem. But clearly, the problem was becoming more persistent. This was happening right as we were trying to schedule time to get his smog check so it was quite stressful. We were able to squeeze through another successful smog check while the truck was running okay. Afterwards, he had to replace the ignition coil. Unfortunately, it has not solved the problem as yet, so we are still working on it. We ordered some new spark plugs and got some fuel injector cleaner. Now we need to see if anything has changed.

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Everyone has been a bit stir crazy couped up at home, so we took an afternoon to head into the back hills to do a little climbing. We climbed a short, but difficult, route called Broken Heart (5.7). The kids were amazing. They just clambered their way up.

It was not quite so easy for me. It took me several tries and in the end, Christian still helped me a little. I hate the start of some of these short climbs. They are impossible to get on and the route ratings usually do not take the beginning of the route into consideration when deciding on the rating. You have to be more skilled than I am or at least taller. I am neither and have put on a lot of weight this last year of not being active. That certainly does not help matters. I am so out of shape that I was tired just making the short hike to the climb from our house.

We had joked with Caitlyn, that it was so easy for her, that she should do the difficult face climb up between the cracks and she readily agreed to give it a try! There is actually a real route that goes up between the cracks called "Hands off the Crack." It is a 5.10a! We pretty much let her go up however she liked as long as she attempted it and didn't get fully into either crack on the side. She only put one hand on the right crack of Broken Heart near the top.

It was pretty incredible. Of course, that brought out the competitive nature in Emily. She could not be outdone by her little sister. Face climbing isn't really Emily's thing. She's loves crack climbing. Caitlyn regularly climbs up more difficult face climbs rather than get into an easier crack for some reason. Emily had a little more difficulty that Caitlyn but worked her way up as well. While her sister leaned to the right going up. Emily leaned more towards the left of the face and only put one had on the left crack once near the top. She had hoped to get into the crack to finish at that point but her dad made her stay out.

The kids were on fire! I was wiped just attempting the "easier" climb in the beginning and wasn't even going to attempt it. Christian went back up Broken Heart using an even more difficult start and traversed over. Emily was feeling extra competitive and wanted to see if she could match her dad but was not quite able to do it. She got very close. She got up and traversed but then could not quite make the transition into the crack of Broken Heart. She was very determined and made many attempts, but in the end, she ran out of steam and we were out of time.

January in Review

January was a pretty slow month. The kids spent the rest of their break occupied with their Christmas gifts. Caitlyn took the rest of her fun money, gift cards and the money she is supposed to earn at the end of the first semester for her good grades to buy a little robot since she was enjoying her electronics kit so much. She has to put it together and program it to do what she wants.

It's a pretty expensive and complicated project.

Emily played with her electronics kit too. They are learning how to work with resistors, diodes, LEDs, circuits, etc. But with less discretionary money to work with, she spent some time just looking for simpler projects to do and then playing with the calligraphy pen that her sister gave her for Christmas. Emily seems to show a knack for programming. We are trying to get her more involved so that she can decide if it is something that she might want to do when she graduates or something as she still has no idea what direction she wants to take past high school. It seems difficult to get her into anything for very long. She takes an interest in a lot of things but never sticks with anything that long. She'll work very hard for a day or two on a project then doesn't pick it up again for quite a while. 

Caitlyn had been sick for 3 weeks or so before the holidays and Emily started getting sick just after Christmas. They supposedly had soccer practice all that first week but we didn't let her go. She did end up going during the last week of vacation though. In fact, they had an actual game over the break, which we thought was pretty ridiculous.

North vs Rialto

They asked her to play on the freshman team this time since they did not have enough people on that team show up. She has subbed for the team before when they needed help.

Because the JV team got a couple of extra people that played her position right before the season started, they either had her sit out nearly half the game, rotating her in occasionally or trying her out as a forward.

Now they are putting her and her friend down in the freshman team since their defense is pretty weak. At first Emily wasn't that happy about it, but I noticed that she was having a lot more fun while playing. I think in the JV team, she was frustrated being benched part of the time and then having to fight her own teammates who wouldn't stay in their own positions. So not only did she have to fight with the opposing team, but her own teammates as well. There is too much of a division on the JV team and not everyone got along.

Plus, on the freshman team, she got to be one of the superstars. She not only got to play the entire game again, but she got to play with her friends as well. 

North vs Poly and Arlington

Christian spent most of his waking hours studying for his science CSET exam. After his test, he also went down to San Diego a couple of times and spent several days each time helping Christian's dad redoing a portion of his roof.

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The kids finished their first semester of school. Caitlyn has a strong 4.0. Emily's grades left much to be desired, to say the least. Christian also finished another session of his classes and did really great.

Caitlyn also participated in the district History Day contest. She is actually the only student in her school to enter as they decided not to do it this year. She won last year as well but couldn't make it to the district contest even though it was held at her own school that year because we had family obligations to celebrate Chinese New Year. This year it was held at Amelia Earhart, so we had to drive back and forth for that but she didn't place to move on. We think she didn't do that well on her interview as she is not very good with verbal communications...hopefully this will give her some practice anyhow.

Christmas Day

This year, instead of heading out to my family's house, my brother and his family decided to drive out to our house. My sister and her family took my mom to China for Christmas this year so we won't be able to see them. They got together earlier this month, but we were not able to make it as Christian was frantically finishing his paper while helping Emily finish her science fair project.

We decided to be a bit more adventurous for our Christmas dinner this year. My brother and I wanted to try to roast some meat in the ground. We have lots of space and wood for it out here, so a couple of weeks before Christmas, I started looking into how to make our fire pit. Christian suggested that we just do it in our existing fire pit. I had to clean it up as we have not used it in quite a while and the stupid gophers have been excavating their tunnels into my fire pit. It is a big mess. It took several days of back breaking labor to clear out the excess dirt, and trying to expand the hole to line with bricks. It seemed pretty deep but when I lined it with bricks, it looked like it was too shallow again. Plus, the bottom was uneven, so I could not fit the side bricks in at one side so I had to pull out all the bricks to level it but I wasn't going to attempt to make it any deeper as the ground was as hard as cement the farther down you went. We will have to build up if we need more space.

Christmas morning, while Marian was packing up, Christian went out to split firewood and get the fire going. We figured it would take at least a couple of hours of burning to get enough coals in the pit.

My brother and I decided to have a Puerto Rican Christmas meal. We were going to shove a Pernil style pork into the ground to roast. The pork he bought came in a two pack, so he decide to make it all. I think there were 13 pound of it in all! We wrapped them separately to cook though because we didn't want it to take any longer. We already estimated that it would take about 6 hours to roast it.

Norman and his family arrived shortly after Marian departed. We had a quick lunch and Christian and Norman set about getting the roast ready to go in the ground.

The fire was super hot. Christian singed a lot of the hair on his arms and stuff maintaining the fire. Actually, the heat of the fire actually split our fire ring that we've had since the Fig Street house. I think we over did the coals as we could barely get the meat in the pit; it was so full of coals. We ended up stacking one extra layer of bricks on top of the ring of the pit to make room.

Meanwhile, the girls got to play together with their cousins. They had an ugly sweater cookie decorating contest from a cookie decorating set that Christian got from our white elephant gift exchange the other night.

All the parents voted and Emily and Collin won. Caitlyn and Lauren's cookies were too cute still.

We had the kids open their last presents from their uncle and aunt. Aunt Wendy also sent along some gift cards to the girls before she left.

Emily got nice new soccer shin guards that actually fit her properly and Caitlyn got some cute panda slippers she had her eye on. Caitlyn pretty much got everything that she wanted for Christmas this year. She was pretty ecstatic. Not that she wanted a ton of stuff. Most of it was pretty practical. Emily couldn't really think up much of anything except stuff for soccer.

My brother also made arroz con grandules. I made some sofrito black beans and a green salad. We made two kinds of Puerto Rican desserts, drinks and an appetizer to go with the meal. We went all out with our theme. It was really fun and tasty. We could barely get a taste of everything. It was so good. Needless to say, we had a bunch of leftovers as well. 

We wanted to take a walk before dessert but my sister-in-law had to go home to rest as she still had work in the morning so we plunged ahead and brought out the desserts even though we were pretty full already.

After all the cooking and cleaning for the past few days and making treats and things to bring to neighbors and friends, I was pretty wiped out by the time Christmas was over. Hopefully the rest of the break will be a bit quieter around here.

Christmas Eve and Morning

The girls waited impatiently for Marian to arrive on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, by now, Emily was also sick. After she arrived, they helped her unload her car and gave her car a wash that they promised her from another Christmas a year or two ago. She also put them to work helping her wrap presents. Basically, she had Emily wrap Caitlyn's and vice versa.

We feasted that night on prime rib, courtesy of Marian, of course. As usual, we all had too much and decide to take a walk around the neighborhood. We attempted to watch a movie, but Marian fell asleep. We sent the kids to bed afterwards but they were pretty tired. I turned in early myself. Christian stayed up a bit to study and since Marian had a nap during the movie, stayed up to fill the stockings and chat with Christian.

On Christmas morning, we got to open presents.

Emily got a lot of clothes and a number of slippers. Christian got the girls these electronic kits. Emily didn't quite know what the heck they were.

Caitlyn recognized what most of things in her electronics kit was. She also got a bunch of computer pieces she will need for her Raspberry Pi next year when she has to return her Chromebook back to school. She got a lot of shoes and other bits and pieces as well. She's been growing so much during the last half of this year, she is outgrowing a lot of her stuff in the past few months. She is nearly as tall as I am now.

We still had quite a hall this Christmas, mostly thanks to Marian. 

We had our usual Belgian Waffle breakfast before Marian packed up to move on.

December

We set up the Christmas Tree right after Thanksgiving to take the girls' annual Christmas picture and get a head start on this year's Christmas card.

We had our ward Christmas party at the beginning of the month.

We didn't get to do much else. Christian worked with Emily to help her get her science fair project done while finishing up his second session of classes. It was pretty hectic.

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The JV team for North is doing fairly well so far in their pre-season. They have won most of their games. The games they didn't win, they tied with their competitor. 

We went to a couple of their home games to see Emily play.

North vs Ramona

North vs San Jacinto

Emily normally plays defense. Halfway through the Ramona game, he switched her to play forward. For the San Jacinto game, her coach put her in as a forward for the entire game. During practice and previous games, she normally plays defense so that is what she is used to so she gets a bit discombobulated when he switches her.

Unfortunately, practice and games take a lot of Emily's time and she has not made much improvement in her grades so I don't know how long she will get to play. She really enjoys it and the opportunity to do something with her friends but it doesn't seem to be enough to put much of a flame under her to improve her grades. We only see an occasional flicker and it isn't enough.

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Christian did really great in his second session of school. He got an A in both classes. He got full points again in one of the classes but the teacher in the other class knocked a couple of points off on his final assignment for something she wanted but did not specify in her requirements. He was pretty ticked. 

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Caitlyn's history teacher had her TA's make a wish list for Christmas. She didn't give the kids any guidelines, so they all picked mostly little things. Instead choosing one of the things on their list, she pretty much got them almost everything on their list and a bunch of extra stocking stuffers to boot. Caitlyn was pretty excited.

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Christian and I went to a adults only dinner party and white elephant gift exchange on the kids last day of school. We told the kids that they were on their own for dinner that night and wanted to see if they would cook for themselves and what they would do, but they were lazy. They ended up just reheating some leftovers. It was either that or they would just make themselves some ramen noodles, so the leftovers were probably a better option anyway.

When we got home, we were shocked that they put themselves to bed. We got home about an hour later than we had expected anyway. Caitlyn had been sick for over a week and apparently and Emily was exhausted from practice.

November

We celebrated Christian's birthday near the beginning of the month. With school, homework, soccer practice and packing for our Joshua Tree trip, it was a small affair.

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Caitlyn got to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain on Saturday with a couple of her best friends. Apparently Caitlyn and her friend Aubry have made themselves unofficial teachers assistants for their history teacher. They get their work done early and help her out or sometimes they will spend their time helping her before school. Her friend Raven is actually an official TA for the class during a different period. Anyway, to thank them for all they do for her, she invited them to go to Magic Mountain. Some groups at school were getting a bus to go that day, but the tickets had to be purchased. The teacher offered to purchase the tickets for them if they wanted to join in on the field trip.

She had such a good time. Her and her best friend Aubry are a good match because they are a bit more timid about which rides they wanted to go on. Raven is a bit more adventurous and has been to the park before so she rode a couple of rides without them. They were a bit disappointed because a few of the rides they wanted to go on was closed but counted themselves lucky at least that they didn't get rained on. There was a distinct possibility of that earlier in the week. They even got the history teacher to ride on one of the tamer rides with them.

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Our pomegranates have finally finished up and I used the last batch to make some pomegranate jelly which is so good!

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary with a tasty feast, courtesy of Marian. We had an early dinner by ourselves since Christian had class that night. Caitlyn ate with her sister when Emily got home from practice.

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We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family at my brother's house. Christian and Emily was supposed to spend the week trying to get most of the work done for Emily's science fair project at the lab. Halfway into the week, however, when they went in, they found that someone had drained all 75 gallons of liquid nitrogen, which they needed to work on her project. They would not get more in until Monday, so the rest of the week and weekend was a bust. They will have to modify the project a bit now since there will be no way to get all the work done.

Emily, ever the procrastinator, didn't find out what their science project was supposed to be until the last moment and then had to quickly come up with something in two days. She didn't know what to do and Christian won't have time to do a whole lot on it with her this year, so in the end, he was going to have her work on the samples that he had planned to do for Dr. Gallie anyway. He just had to build some kind of small project around it.

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Emily had her first soccer game at the end of the month. They had a tie so they were relatively satisfied with their performance. The coach felt that they should have been able to win though since the other team just went on brute strength and luck and not a whole lot of technique.

Joshua Tree

Christian's sister Erin and her family got a membership to the local climbing gym near them and has been wanting Christian to take them climbing. On Veteran's Day weekend, we finally agreed to go out to Joshua Tree. They also wanted to go camping. Christian was in charge of where to go and everything related to climbing. His sister was in charge of all the food.

They met us up at our house and we headed out to Joshua Tree at 5:30 in the morning. We took advantage of the early hour to choose a more popular climb. Originally, we were going to take them to The Eye at Cyclops Rock, but it was a very chilly morning and some people arrived just before we did. We decided to try White Lightning (5.7) instead.

As Christian lead up the route, he realized that no one else would probably be able to make it up. It is a fairly straightforward crack up 120 feet, but there are two slightly overhanging sections of the rock that you have to get over. We had our eye on a slightly easier climb to the left of White Lightning for the other family to try. Emily followed up the route without too much trouble so Erin decided to give it a go. Meanwhile, a couple of other climbers had come and claimed the easier route to our left. Erin couldn't get over the first crux. I went up next. I had some problems as well on the first crux but was able to pull up through it and make it to the top. No one else wanted to try it though. Erin was a bit disappointed and we were getting worried about getting overnight parking as the park was starting to fill up, so we rappelled down and headed over to the Overnight Boy Scout camping area and head out for easier climbs. It was already fairly crowded but we managed to get a couple of spaces.

It took them a while to gather all their stuff together. They had a lot of things that didn't fit in their backpacks. Plus, we were lending our niece Caitlyn's backpack, so they still had to pack that. Caitlyn was going to give one of my old backpacks a try. It's a really nice pack but too small to fit everything I need to bring now with the kids and all the extra climbing gear Christian has to haul around.

We finally headed out to Bear Island. We figure that we had to start them off a lot easier and chose a good starter climb on the way out to where we wanted to camp.

The route Christian picked out for them was Shardik (5.3). It is a very easy introductory climb. WE have done this climb before. It is rated at 5.3 but we had thought it should have been more appropriately rated at 5.2. Erin and her whole family was able to give this one a try and everybody made it up. A few of them where a bit surprised at the height though. It's only 55 feet but we are mostly used to the heights. This was new for them since they only climb in the gym.

I think they all enjoyed this climb. It didn't require very much in the way of difficult techniques but they got a feel for the rock and being up high. We had our lunch out here.

It was starting to get late though, so we hurried up and packed up to continue our hike out to our camping area. We headed out towards West Outer Mongolia to the Asian Fever Buttress.

We finally got to our destination and decided to camp in the wash just before the sun set. Unfortunately, some other campers decided to camp right above us and we could hear their loud voices along with their music. On top of that, we discovered that the girls didn't air out our tent like they were supposed to after our last trip in Yosemite, so there was small amounts of mold all over our tent. We aired it out the best we could and settle in for the night after a brief dinner.

In the morning, we were only a short walk to our next climb, Me Love You Long Time (5.4). It is another moderately easy route up 200 feet with a small traverse near the top. Not all of Erin's family was too excited to try this climb. Christian took some time to set it up. It is not quite so straightforward to climb because of the traverse. And he had a difficult time deciding where and how to set up and anchor for everyone to top rope the climb. There is also a bit of fourth class scrambling to the top of the climb. Christian decided to just set up the climb at the top of the 5th class climbing area and skip the scrambling part altogether. 

I followed up Christian and he belayed his sister up before we decided how to set everything up. We finally got everything ready and taught Erin how to rappel back down to the bottom. After all that, the rest of Erin's family was a bit reluctant to do the climb. Emily and Caitlyn went up while they were trying to decide what to do.

Even Caitlyn was a little hesitant about it until we reminded her that she has already done this climb. In fact, she lead this climb already. She felt more at ease knowing this and had no problem scrambling up. In fact, she finished the climb on some difficult slab at the top instead of the nice safe crack we all went up.

Our niece felt re-assured about the climb not being too difficult after Caitlyn went up. She did really good. She's a natural, much like Emily. Our youngest nephew and their dad was not so easily convinced. Erin finally half cajoled and half bribed our nephew to go up. He had some difficulty half way but finally made it up three quarters of the route but didn't want to make the traverse and came back down before he could finish the route. Erin's husband opted not to climb this one at all.

Christian and I had to go back up to clean the anchor and the directionals we left in the rock for the traverse. Then we had to finish the route to the very top and head over to the rappel rings on the farther end of the buttress. 

We had to pack up and leave after that. Erin was supposed to work early the next morning. They wanted to stop by and get everybody burgers for dinner before leaving. The kids and Erin headed back out first. Mike stayed to see if he could help but Christian still had to sort and repack all his gear so Mike and I headed out next. 

Christian didn't get back out to the cars until the sun started to set again. We were a bit worried because we thought that he would be just behind us. It was a lot more crowded in the parking lot now since it is a free entrance fee day because of Veteran's Day. 

We stopped by McDonald's for dinner. It gave us weird flash back to the time we got stranded in the parking lot because our truck wouldn't start when Christian's fuel pump gave out on us. I don't have any pictures of us climbing as our kids were too busy playing with their cousins. Hopefully, I will get some pictures for Erin later.