Northern California Road Trip

 At the beginning of the month, we decided to take a tour of several places in Northern California. One of which was Mount Shasta. Unfortunately, a fire broke out near the bottom of the mountain as we were making plans. As we were getting ready to go, a second fire got going near the same area. We decided to scrap the plans to Mount Shasta. We tried to see if we could just go somewhere else instead but a heat wave that has the entire west in triple digit or near triple digit temperatures which pretty much makes it unpleasant to be anywhere. 

We decided, in the end, to continue with our original plans, while skipping Mount Shasta. So we headed out on the Fourth of July. We spent our first night in the Lassen National Forest. It was a bit difficult to find a place to camp because much of the forest was closed off due to past fires. The weather this year has been so bizarre. Even with the triple digit temperatures we had to endure, we drove through a torrent of rain at one point. The intermittent thunderstorms is causing about half the fires during around us currently.

Our campsite was fairly nice except for the clouds of mosquitos.

In the morning, we continued on our way to the coast and cooler temperatures. The drive was beautiful but tediously long and we passed far too many pot farms to be pleasant. Plus we kept having to roll down our windows as we kept having to drive through marijuana fumes, either from the growers or the drivers ahead of us. It was difficult to tell.

When we arrived on the coast, we decided to take a hike up the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood Grove Trail. It was a lot more crowded than we would normally like but it was really beautiful.

Afterwards, we went in search of our campsite for the night. There are not a lot of possibilities for disbursed camping any where near the coast. We ordered some new maps and books to help us find a place to stay. The books did indicate that there were some possibilities on BLM land out there. When we got to the place indicated, we found that the road was closed. Basically, they close it all summer so that when people would most likely want to use it, they couldn't. What a great management of our public lands!

Basically, we were screwed at that point since three of our options were down that same road which made it totally impossible for us to stay anywhere near the coast. We were out of options and decided to just use the rest of our time looking around instead of fruitlessly searching for some little hole we can hide in to spend the night.

We stopped by the Stone Lagoon along the coast.

I could have spent the whole day just exploring along the coast there. As we were leaving though, we saw a little girl screaming and crying for her dad. There were not a whole lot of people along the beach so I don't know where he was. We reluctantly started towards her, afraid of what was going on. As we got about halfway to her, an older kid went to talk to her and took her further down the beach to hopefully find her father. I'm hoping they were just friends of the family or a relative that the dad left her with and she was just over reacting....I don't know.

We were quickly running out of daylight, so we headed back inland. We found a fire road that looked promising, but when we got near the end of it, it branched off. One side went to a hiking trail and the other was supposed to be a dead end. We went down the dead end road with some hope in being able to stay somewhat in the area so that we can spend one more day either at the coast or in the redwoods. Unfortunately, wben we got to the end, we saw some sketchy signs that claimed that it was "private property." We saw some make shift structures and what looked obviously like an illegal pot farm. We quickly left the area. we had seen some other possibilities along the fire trail, but they were not ideal and we did not want to be anywhere near the sketchy characters running the illegal pot farm. At that point, we gave up and just headed back across the state back into Lassen National Forest. We did see several roads that we might be able to camp at that would be hours closer, but it was getting quite late and we didn't want to spend extra time uselessly driving up and down the roads, only to be discouraged or disappointed with what we found, so we just powered through and stayed where we had camped the night before.

When we finally got there, it was like 1:am. Christian set up camp for us but we kept hearing strange scuffling sounds outside. Christian had to chase off what he thinks was a bunch of coyotes. He didn't get to bed until 2:am. 

We got a late start the next morning and headed back down the road to Truckee. Christian's boss from UCR who had died last year of cancer had purchased a large tract of land out there to donate to the Nature Conservancy. Dr. Gallie had talked to him about it some time ago and he wanted to stop by to see it. Truckee ended up being a miserable little resort town near Tahoe, full of round-a-bouts that were scary and impossible to get through.  You just want to go straight down a road but ended up getting all turned about because they wouldn't let you just drive straight through. 

We finally found Carpenter Valley after several tries. It was a small pretty little trail. The Nature Conservancy built a bunch of walkways through it with a few benches and picnic tables around. They wanted to buy and set this land aside so that it couldn't be developed, but there was a private gate at the end of the road with a bunch of private residences enclosed within. In the end, they can't develop this beautiful piece of land but it seems like they just use it for their own personal little nature walk as there is nobody else nearby except for the rich people who own the land adjacent and the rich tourists visiting the Donner Resort plus maybe a few people like us that happen to know that it is there or stumble upon it by accident.

Because of the water running through it, the place was full of mosquitoes. We sprayed ourself down with repellent, but was still swatting at the damn things. We kept watching other hikers walking through and could not figure out why they were not suffering like we were.

Afterwards, we continued on our way heading back towards home. We stopped at a campsite we have used in the past near Mono Lake. We got there just as we were losing the last light of the day. 

When we got up the next day, we had some breakfast and Christian and Caitlyn got a bit of exercise bouldering near the campsite. We just spent the rest of the morning exploring around the trails in and around the Mono Lake area. That was pretty fun and relaxing for a while but as we went back towards the main road, the dirt road we were on got pretty eroded. The ruts were so deep on both sides that we were scraping the center of the truck driving down them. We tried to take some detours to avoid the most heavily rutted trails but in the end, Christian had to get out and rebuild some parts of the road so that we could finish getting out.

In the afternoon, we went to explore Dunderberg Meadows. Christian had heard about a trail up there that is supposed to take you to the top of Dunderberg Peak. We did not find the trail but the ones we went down were pretty nice. It's a pleasant little place. We will probably go back there again to continue exploring the trails some other time. 

We considered staying in the area and just enjoying the peace and quiet and solitude that we've been needing but in the end, we got ambitious and wanted try another 4x4 trail near Independence. As we went down into Bishop, we noticed a lot of fire trucks going the opposite direction. We stopped by Bishop for some gas and found out that a fire just broke out near Mt. Tom. And as we continued on our way down the 395, the heat was just getting absolutely unbearable. Not that it was cool where we've been by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely worse there.

We found the trailhead and started down some of it, but the trail was just too hot and it didn't look like it was going to go up any great elevation that would change that fact. We also didn't want to do any very difficult trails as we did not have Christian's off-road tires on. We had his freeway tires on because of the great distances we were traveling across. We wanted as much of an edge as we could to get the best gas mileage possible with gas prices nearing $5 a gallon.

In the end, we just decided to call it a day and just go home. We were hot tired and dirty...especially Christian from digging in all that super fine sand to fix the road in Mono.

June

 Christian finished school at long last. We immediately went to work getting our stuff together to get out of town for a few days. There was another fire in the hills near our house. Caitlyn and I went up the street to take pictures at our neighbor's house.

They had it pretty much out after a couple of hours, I think. It is really neat watching the fire-fighters at work. Caitlyn actually was able to capture a line of them walking up the hill afterwards with her new zoom lens. 

Afterwards, we went back home to continue getting ready for our trip. Our goal was to make it to Coyote Pass near Bishop. We didn't quite know what to expect. We saw some footage of it on the YouTube. It didn't look too bad as long as we didn't try to take the hard way back out.

We stayed our first night off of Big Pine. We got there some time in the afternoon and spent the last hours of daylight just wandering around and investigating the area.

We found a nice campsite and Caitlyn built us a fire. The next morning, we continued on our way. We stopped in town to pick up a couple of maps and some mosquito repellent, as we had forgotten to pack our. We found the start of the trail without too much trouble.

Of course, it showed that the trail is rated as "difficult". We did not quite know what to make of that but we continued on our way to see how bad the trail was. It was really steep and winding with some exposure but curiously, in some ways, not as bad as some other trails we have been on. I think Emily would have really liked it. I think Christian would have rather gotten out to guide her than to have to drive and guide himself up some parts of it. 

It had some amazing views though. We stopped along the way to investigate some rocks that Christian wanted to climb. We want to come back and maybe put up some rocks on a crag that we named, "The Chief."

We passed a couple of cars on the way up, but we seemed to have most of the place to ourselves, which was really nice.

We saw some deer and a bunch of miniature lupine when we got up to Coyote Flats. There was lots to investigate. It was just a matter of deciding which way to go.

We could see the Palisade Glaciers from our road and Christian went in search of a good place to take some pictures. At some point, he figured that the best view would be from the Sugarloaf across the canyon from the Glaciers. We decided to attempt the hike up. The peak is at 10,896 feet, so it was not exactly an easy climb when you have been so out of shape for so long.

It was definitely worth the hike up though. The view was breathtaking...or that might have been the thin air.

Christian found a little log at the top and Caitlyn signed it. We can add it to the many peaks that she has bagged. Afterwards, we went back down to find a place to camp. We realized that it was going to be a lot colder than we had anticipated. Last night, we had discovered, much to our dismay, that Caitlyn's old sleeping bad didn't even fit her anymore. We had apparently not used it in many years and didn't realize that it was now too small. The last times that we've been out camping, it was either a lot colder or a lot hotter, so we had brought other gear to use.

We did not want her to be really cold and uncomfortable all night, so after much discussion and contemplation, we decided to retreat to lower ground. Unfortunately, one of the only other campsites we would have considered on our way up, was already taken by another party. In the end, we retreated all the way back to Big Pine.

We were initially going to just camp at the same place where we camped the night before. It was isolated enough and fairly warm but it was somewhat windy. It was a lot worse when we came down the mountain into Bishop. And although, it was not as bad here, it was still windier than we would have liked. Since it was still somewhat early, we decided to go a bit further and see if we can find a better place to camp and explore some new areas. 

In the end, as the sun started to go down, we found ourselves in Death Valley without any place to camp that would give us any cover.

We decided to go back to our original campsite after all. But after further consideration, we decided to just head home. We were going to head home in the morning anyway and we knew that there was going to be a package waiting for us at home. As it is most often the case these days, it was either supposed to have arrived before we took off on our trip, or it was supposed to arrive after we got back, but the delivery date shifted and it was going to be sitting on our doorstep while we were away. It was not a very high value item, but we didn't want people passing by to get any ideas so we decided to just go home early.

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After Christian finished his dad's air conditioning system, he had decided to re-charge my A/C and swap out the dryer to make sure my compressor stayed in good working condition. After doing that, it worked great for about two days and then the whole system shut down. The compressor would no longer turn on. He spent the next week trouble shooting the system. He figured that it was an electronic problem with the way it was acting. In the end, he found out that it was the clutches on the compressor. However, you cannot just buy the clutch and replace it. They do not even seem to sell it to the general public. You have to just buy a new compressor and replace the whole unit! Luckily, my compressor is a lot easier to get than Terry's and significantly cheaper as well. Christian had also decided that since it was just the clutch, there was no reason to have to replace the condenser or any of the other parts in the system. 

We got a freak thunderstorm roll through while Christian was out working on the car. It hot and humid out and it was totally unexpected. Clouds hardly ever result in actual rain in this area.

We've had the worst heatwave this summer so far, so it was really nice to be able to get my air conditioner back. 

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For Father's Day, we decided to go down to San Diego to visit with Christian's dad.  Mike was going to bbq some more tri-tip. I made some baked mac and cheese to go with it and a triple chocolate mousse cake. Unfortunately, I forgot the mousse in the refrigerator here at home.

It was good, but after eating it for four days afterwards because we didn't have a bunch of people to share it with, I can do without chocolate mousse for a while.

We got Terry a spare tire cover for his Trooper and Christian crafted some new bolts for his spare. For some reason, his spare was only being held on with one bolt!

Christian spent almost the entire time trying to re-align Terry's Trooper for him. We had done it initially when Christian did all that work to his front end, but afterwards, Terry took it up to Oregon and got some new tires. Apparently, they seriously messed up his alignment. The next time we met up with him, the toe was completely off and Christian tried to fix it really quick before Terry had to go home. Apparently, the change only made it worse because it was not square to the rest of the vehicle. So, we noticed how bad it was when Christian did the A/C system. He drove it back down to San Diego for him. Caitlyn and I drove in the XJ. The working conditions at Terry's house was less than ideal for many reasons, so it made it a lot more complicated than we anticipated.

After we got back home, Christian got his Father's Day dessert for himself and he got to open a few presents of his own. We had a bit of an ordeal coming back home on top of the fiasco that was aligning the Trooper, so we were pretty tired and irritated by the time we got back to take any more pictures to record Christian's Father's Day celebrations, but I guess he didn't really get much of a Father's Day for himself anyway!

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Caitlyn has spent the month taking her online driver's course. She took her written test at the DMV and passed! Now we just need to get her her behind the wheel lessons to validate her driver's permit.

She also go more adventurous with her hair. She decided to cut her hair again. The haircut she wanted was a lot more different than she has tried in the passed but she wanted me to still do it for her. So, we watched some videos on the YouTube and then just jumped into it. It isn't quite what she wanted since she is still growing out her bangs, but all things considered, it turned out pretty cute.

She is enjoying the ease of care of her new much shorter hair.

May

 At the beginning of the month, Marian threw a big party. It was a Star Wars themed brunch at some steakhouse in Whittier.

Unfortunately, we were so full afterwards, we had to practically roll ourselves out into the parking lot to get home.

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On one free weekend, we took off to drive Old Dale Road once again. It was Caitlyn's nemesis for a while but she has pretty much conquered it. She just wanted to do it again to get some practice driving the trail. She is doing really great. She just needs to work on getting her permit now.

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Christian spent most of the whole month taking apart his dad's Trooper to replace the entire air conditioning system. We had it scheduled for months but they kept yanking us around about the new compressor. In the end, we had to settle for a refurbished one as that is the only thing available. Every time he touches that Trooper, he finds out half the fasteners are damaged or just missing. He spent half the time searching for replacement parts or having to find some way to fabricate new ones himself. He also did a little bit of body work on it. He paid Caitlyn to help him clean and protect the dash and a bunch of other parts that he had to take off.

The a/c came together finally at some point but we were still scrambling trying to get all the pieces to put it all back together as not all of the parts we found even fit properly. As we were almost done, we found out we had a deadline as he planned to take it up to Oregon the next week to do some work on his property there.

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Caitlyn got to go to a couple more youth activities including another dance this past month. She is having a lot of fun at those.

We took my mom out for a Mother's Day picnic at the San Dimas Canyon Regional Park. My brother and his family was supposed to meet us out there but we had some miscommunication and he was having some problems with his neighbor by the time we realized the error that we told him to just not worry about it.

We've been to the park before but they haven't taken very good care of it in the past couple of years and they blocked off a lot of the trails so it wasn't that nice.

We went back to hang out at my mom's and ended up staying most of the day. My brother decided to come over that evening and he brought some tasty new Indian Curry pizzas for us to try. They were very different but pretty tasty. We want to see if we can figure out how to make them at home as they were pretty expensive for pizzas.

Christian smoked some ribs for my Mother's Day dinner and I got a bunch of cooking gadgets.

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Caitlyn and I went to the dentist this past month. Caitlyn has still never had so much as a cavity in all her 16 years so we are pretty happy about that! My dentist kept complaining about my high blood pressure so I guess I am going to have to do something about that soon.

Caitlyn finished her Junior year with straight A's! They went back to school 5 days a week this past month. They still had a really weird schedule so it was kind of irritating but we powered through it.

Christian has an additional week and a half of school so he is still slogging away with that. To top it all off, he had another kidney stone. We did not go to the hospital this time as he still had some medicine from the last time, and that's about all they can do for him anyway. It is just debilitatingly painful.

Emily is doing okay back at school. She joined another intramural soccer team. She has more roommates this year but she seems to be getting along with all of them better. She had a 24 hour stomach flu one weekend but she got through it okay. Either that her her and her roommate at something bad the night before. Who knows?

Sweet 16

 Caitlyn turned 16. Happy Birthday Caitlyn!

Caitlyn only had school for a couple of hours online today. Grandpa Terry and Marian came for her birthday luncheon. We had to wait until Christian was done with his classes at 12:30 though.

She chose skillet potatoes for breakfast and carne asada fries for lunch. She went with a carrot cake this year.

We had lunch and opened presents. She got a very generous Amazon gift card from Grandpa.

A strange selection of gifts from Marian.

We got her some camera accessories that she has been heavily hinting at. 

Plus a little something for Grandpa's birthday as well. His birthday is about a week before Caitlyn's.

Afterwards, Christian took his dad home because he was leaving his Trooper here again for more repairs. This time Christian is replacing his entire air conditioning system. 

Marian took us out for Boba. We tried to get her to think of something else she wanted to do but she couldn't think of anything so we returned home again. We chatted for a while and then Caitlyn decided that she wanted to go out for a walk to try out her new zoom lens. Marian decided to head home but we ended up chatting in the driveway some more until there was no light left for poor Caitlyn to take pictures.

Emily tried to get a hold of Caitlyn several times to wish her a Happy Birthday but they kept missing each other. She finally got a hold of her late that evening before bed. Before Emily left for school, she made a duvet for Caitlyn's weighted blanket that we got her for Christmas out of a sheet. She also got this cute candy making kit for her.

I think it was overall more fun and cute than tasty. The "salmon roe" was super neat though and quite tasty. It was the strangest thing watching them being made and having them pop in your mouth.

She was supposed to get chicken flautas for dinner but nobody was hungry still as our lunch was to filling. She will have to wait for another night soon to get it.

April

We started out the month going back down to San Diego for another bbq with Christian's family to celebrate Easter. 

The next weekend we headed over to see my family for Tomb Sweeping Day. We had lunch afterwards at my sister's house. Her in-laws were also there after doing tomb sweeping for their ancestors. They ordered a ton of food so Emily got lots of Chinese food.

The girls finally got to play the new organ at church. They played for the whole service. Well, Caitlyn played for almost the whole service. Emily played during the sacrament portion. They both did a great job. There are still some issues with the organ but they just played through it.

Emily started packing to go back to Idaho. She was pretty excited to be back with her roommate. She changed her transmission oil with the help of her Dad to get ready for the long drive back up. She has been breaking up the drive into three sections. The first day, she stops in to visit her cousin Austin. The next day, she heads up to her roommate's home. They got up really early the next morning to finish the shortest leg up to Rexburg. They want to make sure they register early so that they can get a choice of rooms or at least to make sure that they get a room together so that they don't get stuck with someone they don't get along with. It was a hard drive but she made it with no problems. 

Caitlyn and I continued sanding on the XJ. It is so much work! Christian painted the roof, back and the back quarter panels. It was really stressful. We are maybe about halfway done. We plan to take a bit of a break from it for a while as Christian is going to be fixing the a/c system on his Dad's Trooper next. He is replacing the whole system, so it is going to take a while. We are currently waiting for all the parts to come in. Some of the parts have been really difficult to get as we have been waiting on the compressor now for months.

The cursed neighbors have been having parties every weekend. If it is not one, it is another. In between, they are still out there blasting the music from their cars or garages and it has been miserable. We have not had any peace around here for quite some time. The neighbor right next to us was obviously planning a huge party again since they were putting up speakers and tables full of beer in the morning. We decided to skip town for a while to try to keep some sanity. 

We headed out to explore some different roads out near Death Valley.

It was a pretty nice drive. We didn't run into any problems on the road but we were out driving a long time. We didn't get back until two in the morning. As we passed our neighbors house to park in our driveway, we saw that some of them were still out there. The music was still going with idiots talking loudly over the music and lights flashing all over. One of the younger kids (under the age of 5) was out there too just wandering around in the front lawn at 2:am! We were so pissed. I was exhausted though and just turned on my white noise machine to try to sleep. Christian said they continued until three in the morning!

Of course, the neighbor across from us thought it was a fine idea and had a party of their own the next two weekends consecutively. 

Caitlyn decided to attend this year's youth conference. We are glad that she has been getting to know some of the other kids more and has been trying to get out and socialize more. She's been shut in far too long. It isn't good for anybody.

March

Spring Break this year was pretty messed up. Christian had the third week off and Caitlyn had the fourth week off. That pretty much made it all but impossible to really do anything. At the start of Christian's break, Emily and her dad decided to take off for a bit of an adventure. Their plan was to do Steel Pass in Death Valley with Caitlyn's Jeep. Of course, as usual, as soon as it starts, we get a weather system in.

Regardless, they said most of the towns they went through was super crowded. They got rained on which turned to snow at some point. A lot of the roads were messed up but apparently, it was beautiful out there.

They camped in the rain. The tent needs to be treated. Apparently the rain got in and some of their stuff got all wet. We've had the tent since way before the kids were born.

They got up in the morning and headed into the snow.

We don't have chains for the Jeep yet but luckily, the ones for my truck mostly fit on her tires. They certainly needed them.

At one point the road gave way and the Jeep ended up in a pretty precarious situation. As before, Christian ended up having to rebuild and redirect the road to get out. Emily tried to help him move some rocks and broke our camping shovel. We always bring a full sized shovel for these situations and that's what Christian uses to literally dig himself out of these situations.

The pictures never really show quite how bad the terrain really is. It is really hard to capture. Luckily, they didn't roll over and the only thing that got damaged was a hanger for the exhaust pipe. Hopefully Christian will be able to weld it back to something useable. 

Because their camping gear got wet the night before, they decided to cut the trip short and head home after their long ordeal. 

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Christian spent the rest of his break working out in the shop mostly. He has a bunch of welding projects lined up. Emily worked on and off. When Caitlyn finally got her Spring Break and Christian had to get back to work, we planned a few afternoons out. Emily only had a few days that week that she wasn't working. On one of the days, the girls and I drove out towards LA to do some shopping (and eating). Emily wanted a few things before heading back to Idaho. We planned to have lunch out there and the girls were excited but we had trouble with most of the places we picked out. Some of the restaurants were not even open that day. We wasted a lot of time driving around and around. 

We finally settled on a little Chinese restaurant. The food was pretty good and we were adequately hungry by then but we didn't want to stuff ourselves because the girls wanted boba afterwards. We did some shopping in between. We had actually intended to stop by to see my mom while we were out there but we took too long and decided to head back and come see her another time. We didn't want to run into the worst of the traffic going home. We had a good time though and it was nice to spend some time with both of the girls. Sometimes Emily and I would go out but Caitlyn was usually in class or home doing homework or whatever.

Emily and Caitlyn spent one of their free days going to the beach. They had a great time but came back fairly sunburned. Caitlyn put some sunscreen on but her coverage was not that great. Emily didn't put any on at all and got it the worst.

The girls spent a lot of time this past month trying to relearn their organ songs. Their teacher wanted them to play during church which we were supposed to start back up. The organ was mostly put together but they were still putting some finishing touches to it and we kept having problems. We had to keep pushing back the date for them to play because the organ just was not ready yet. It was very frustrating.

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We did manage to get together with what is left of Christian's family this past month in San Diego. It was nice to see everybody for the most part.

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We spent the rest of the month sanding the XJ down to bare metal so that we can paint it. It is a lot of work. We are starting with the roof as that is where there are the most rusty spots.

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The girls went to another youth dance. The youth are sick of being isolated and basically missing out on the last of their childhood and have decided to get together with others who aren't afraid to get out and live their lives. Before all this, I tried to get the girls to go out to official church dances but they scoffed and refused to go. They never did too much with the other kids from church except once in a blue moon or during special holiday get togethers. Now, they have a group chat going and they get together every few weeks or so for a dance or to play games or whatever. It's kind of nice.

After a full year of being away from school, Caitlyn's school started re-opening at the end of the month for in person classes a couple days a week. Of course, because of "social distancing," they have the kids who signed of to go back to school split into two groups. Group A goes Monday and Tuesday and Group B goes Thursday and Friday. They are still online on Wednesday which is a minimum day anyway so they really only check in to all their classes. But because the teachers are stretched so thin, they pretty much reduced the amount of work the kids had to do by half. It's all pretty pathetic. None of the kids are getting much of an education. It's all a joke and the teachers are tortured with all kinds of useless red tape.

Caitlyn wanted to take the CHSPE and just test out of high school at the end of this school year but because of "COVID," they kept delaying the test date. Once it was finally announced, we found out that there were no test sites in the Inland Empire this year and the cost went up more than double. 

She only needs two classes to graduate and is trying to figure out some kind of loophole to get around it but it doesn't look good for her as her district won't let her take anything less than 5 classes so that they can be sure to get the funding for her attendance. They offer nothing in the way of electives that is worth taking so she is very frustrated.

Emily's Birthday

 Emily turned 18!

It's so crazy that it has been 18 years and she will be leaving again for Idaho next month.

Her birthday landed on a Friday this year, so we were just home by ourselves. She did not have to work. I guess it was a good and bad thing. She didn't really want to have to work on her birthday but they still have her working very minimal hours still. Every week she gets a little more so she might be working halfway decent hours by the time she has to quit and go back to school! We are happy she got a chance to earn a bit of money for school though and now she has a bit of job experience to help her get her next position.

As usual, we had some of her favorite foods she either doesn't get that often or missed. For breakfast she asked for some rice porridge. For lunch, we picked up some carne asada fries at our favorite taco shop. And for dinner, we made poke at home.

She also got to open/use some of her birthday gifts. her main gift was a couple of pairs of new Vans.

Some of her old shoes were pretty trashed so I got her some new ones on the condition that she throw away one of her old ones that she keeps saying is still "fine."

We had the usual suspects over for a big birthday luncheon on Saturday. We have not all gotten together in a long time. 

I always save her fancier cake for her party as I don't have the energy and time to do that twice. So if I know we are planning a bigger party, I will do something simpler for her actual birthday with just ourselves. She got more presents...well, sort of.

Apparently, Emily was in the doghouse with Marian again. It seems that they had another agreement that Emily did not follow up on. I don't know what it was and frankly, I don't think I want to know but Marian definitely wants Emily to know that that is not okay. So she got a shredded $20 bill and a bag of Idaho potatoes. Don't ask...I won't either. But in the end, Marian got her some gas so, they came to some kind of understanding about it all.

She also brought over the rest of our presents from Christmas since we didn't see her for the holidays this past year.

She got Comfy's for all the girls including myself. Evidently, a bunch of Emily's college friends had them so she knew what they were. Marian had described them to me before but I had never heard of them. They are very warm! Emily will definitely get lots of use out of hers in Idaho. Caitlyn has already gotten lots of use of hers since she gets up early for Seminary and just sits in front of her computer all day. Our house is kept fairly cool most of the time as Christian usually runs hot if he is not also sitting in front of his computer teaching.

Christian had to rotate Marian's tires as well. Seems like everyone needs it. That's the third set of tires he's rotated in the past month that doesn't actually belong to us. They were going to try to get her to get a new set of tires but Christian said that she doesn't need them yet and just rotated them so that they would wear a bit more evenly. Plus, she had one tire that was over inflated which seemed to be causing the problem. With that fixed, hopefully Marian will not need new tires for a while yet.

After Terry and Jackie had left, Marian got us some cap steaks for dinner and she played MahJong with the girls. Caitlyn has been wanting to play again since they learned to play over Christmas. I have forgotten completely how to play. Our set has not been used since college when we played with Marian!