Hello Friends!

 

We thought we only had about three regulars that came by all the time but after looking at my pictures more carefully, I can find 5 or 6 distinct hummingbirds so I don't know how many come. They are small and fast so they mostly look alike through the window. Some fly in distinct patterns and some chirp in a district way. The others are not as easily distinguishable. None will come at the same time, at least not that I have been able to capture. If one is feeding and another arrives, they will leave and come back later. The males are a bit more territorial and will chase other males away if they approach. 

I love watching them. I only wish I had a nicer backdrop to take my pictures!

Happy Anniversary, husband!

 

Christian's Birthday

Christian's birthday was on Thursday this year, right before a three day weekend for Veteran's Day. Since he took a day off mid-month in October, he decided that he should go in to work but that he would just hang out and play with the kids. He ordered a new Uno game and I offered to bake cookies for him to bring in to share with the kids. Little did I realize, that even with only one cookie each, with 160 kids, required a LOT of cookies!

I made half of them in chocolate chip and half as old fashioned sugar cookies. It was a bit insane. It took me two days to make them. Christian told the kids the day before that there would be a pop quiz that day. That eliminated a couple of the worst kids so that it wouldn't be quite so chaotic. But some of his kids surprised him too. His 6th period kids had thrown him a surprise party. They distracted him while they quickly put up decorations and brought in a whole cake and everything. Now, I would think that they got wind of his ruse from the kids earlier in the day and someone's mother brought stuff in for them, but no, they even had a little piñata filled with notes from the kids to him. It was very sweet and would have taken some planning to pull off, so I think that they actually had their plans in the works before they could have got wind of what he was doing.

I was actually a little disappointed with the cookies, honestly. They wee a little too much on the crispy side because I was too lazy to take out the very heavy cast iron pizza plate that is on the bottom of the oven. It makes it hotter in the oven. I realized that last year when I was baking and had some problems but kind of forgot about it again. But the kids seemed to enjoy it and Christian said that even some of the teachers came by looking for extras afterwards.

We had a simple steak dinner with roasted mini potatoes for dinner. I also threw together an apple pie for dessert from our stock of canned apples as Christian loves apple pies. I made a simple chocolate mousse cake this past weekend to share with his dad and Jackie already. And I guess his kids brought in a Tres Leche Cake for him too so that worked out fairly well. 

I got him a few little toys for his TJ. A new steering wheel cover as we got ripped off on the last one. It was supposed to be leather but obviously wasn't because the surface un-bonded and sloughed off of the steering wheel. It made a real mess. We got one for Caitlyn and it seemed real nice so we ordered a second one for the TJ but it was complete crap. You never know what you are getting with this Chinese junk from Amazon. You order the same exact product and you just never know what you will end up with. It's like they put in a bunch of decent ones just to trick people into giving them good reviews and then filling the rest of the stock with junk so that they can make more money. Once the reviews get too bad, they re-list it with a new fake brand and do it all over again. It is very frustrating.

Anyway, the new one appears to be real, but I will wait and see what happens to it. Emily usually puts them on for us but I didn't want to just give it to him and wait for her to put it on for him, so I had to suck it up and sew it on for him. It was a pain in the butt because my eyes are terrible these days and trying to sew black thread onto other black thread on black leather with the sun glaring through the windows was near impossible for me. It's probably not as nice as Emily would have done, but it is on there okay for now.

I also got him some cute little covers for his cigarette lighter, as they are missing. I also got him a fanny pack of sorts for trash. It hangs off of the spare tire. And the last thing he got was a locked cover for his gas cap. With the price of gas so high now, we hope it will keep casual thieves at bay or vindictive adolescents from sabotaging his tank.

The girls had given their dad their presents before they left. Emily got a 3/4 inch wrench for him. It was the only one he was missing and was always lamenting missing it...even though it is the same as a 19 mm wrench...which he has. Caitlyn got him a little book on mini lathes.

On Friday, Christian spent the earlier part of the morning trying to adjust his brakes to work better. We have new parts on order but it won't come for another week. We then took off for a short drive to test it out. The brakes seem to work a lot better now. We drove to the Mormon Rocks off the I15. Traffic kind of sucked. We are trying to get back in shape a little so that we might be able to climb still so we did a few laps going up and down a slab climb there.

We were a little shaky and unsure of our steps the first time up but we quickly got more sure footed afterwards. Of course, I am so out of shape that I was huffing and puffing by the time I got to the top! There is an anchor at the top so I think we will definitely be back to top rope the slightly steeper section next to where we were climbing up. We thought about going up it but it just wasn't worth the risk.

Quite a few train went by in the short time that we were there.

We had lined his trash bag in case we wanted to clean the area up a bit while we were there but there was so much trash that we didn't even bother. There was also a lot of graffiti on the bridges and stuff so it's pretty sad that it is so messed up there now. I was a little amazed that there wasn't more graffiti on the rocks at this point honestly. They have started on some of the rocks so it could be much worse the next time we make it out there. 

We also found a scream of swifts on the next rock pile over. They were really neat to see but they were so fast, it was hard to keep up with them. We were quite far down below where they were flying.

Afterwards, we did some more driving around the area. It was amazing how lush everything was still after a long hot summer.

We were originally thinking of continuing on and going farther out to the desert but decided to just drive around locally here since it was a bit less crowded than usual. Not everyone gets Veteran's Day off. I'm so glad we did because we found some really spectacular views.

And it didn't take too much gas to do it.

Corral Canyon

At the beginning of the month, we actually went down to spend the weekend with Christian's dad. UCR was having their "homecoming" celebration...which I think is just a drive to raise money from the alumni. Anyway, it is usually loud an obnoxious as they have a concert planned and there is a big risk of parties breaking out around the neighborhood afterwards.

We drove down to San Diego Saturday morning. We had planned to leave early in the morning but did not leave until mid-morning as we did not get a lot of sleep that night. We heard some disturbing things that caused us some stress.

When we finally made it down to San Diego, we unloaded our junk and took off with Terry. We went to check out Corral Canyon. While driving down the dirt roads, we heard some weird scraping noises from our brakes that was a bit disturbing...but it does make noises and squeaks occasionally, so Christian wasn't very concerned about it. We saw a couple of different fires in the direction we were heading but we think they were a bit farther on the Mexico side of the border.

We drove around for a bit and we went up to a fire lookout on Los Pinos Mtn. Sections of the trail was considered moderately difficult so Terry was a little freaked out a couple of times but we didn't think much of it as we've been on much harder trails. Mostly, he's a bit afraid of heights and did not appreciate the narrow shelf roads. I guess it is a good thing that we didn't take the doors off for the drive. It definitely looks a lot crazier when the door are off. So needless to say, he had no interest climbing up the actual fire lookout structure. A ranger was in residence and had invited us up but Terry didn't want to go up on the exposed steps and Christian didn't want to chat with the overly social and maybe lonely ranger. His kids (and even some of the teachers) at school are so demanding that he needs quiet and solitude on the weekends to recover somewhat from the chaos at school. 

Afterwards, we picked up some pizza on the way back to his dad's house to have dinner with Jackie. We got to visit and chat with them for a while before calling it a night. After his dad went to bed, Christian went to check out the Jeep brakes as it was sounding very bad by the time we got back.

Apparently, a spring in his brakes broke and was scraping his drum. It but a bit of a gouge in it by the time we got back. He removed the broken pieces and put it back together. The brakes still worked but was not quite as good. It was enough to get us home as long as we were aware of the situation.

We got very little sleep. In the end, we concluded that we would have gotten a lot more sleep if we just toughed it out and stayed home, but we would not see his Dad over the Thanksgiving holidays so I guess it was nice we got to visit a little more with him.

October

This past month was mostly uneventful. They don't give the schools Columbus Day off so it is a long stretch without any breaks for Christian...unless they are the other teachers who get paid a lot more. They seem to be able to afford to take almost every Friday off whenever they want. They only get so many vacation and sick days so if they take extra days off...which it certainly seems that they must be doing, they have to pay for the substitute themselves. They don't seem to care...which wouldn't be that big of a problem except, none of them ever put in for a substitute themselves. They just don't show up and so many of them seem to have the same idea at the same time, which causes serious problems. So then the secretary has to call everyone possible to sub for classes with no teachers. She always calls in Christian because he will usually always say yes because he feels bad for the secretary and the extra money is always good. At some point, the teachers have no choice but to sub during their "prep" periods because they have run out of options. 

Christian goes in early to avoid traffic and so he can work on lessons or grading or whatever, but he ends up having to substitute for 0 periods as well and ends up having absolutely no time to work on anything. By the end of the seek, he's already exhausted but when he is having to cover 7 periods on that last day and still not have any of his grading or planning done, he can barely function when he gets home.

So for the past month, there is about 30 teachers out every Friday. It's been ridiculous. I don't know why or how they let them get away with it. The few times Christian has taken it off, he has had absolutely no problems getting a substitute to cover his class...even if he puts in for a substitute hours before school begins....so those other teachers are not even bothering to. 

About mid-month, Christian was pretty burnt out. He had to risk taking a day off. But of course, he put in for a substitute and had no problem getting one. We drove out to the San Bernardino Mtns. for a little drive. We drove down Clark's Grade and aired down at Cold Creek Falls.

It was mostly a fairly simple drive but it was very nice. Our drive took us above the clouds which is pretty spectacular.

Near the top of the grade, we stopped to take a short hike.

We continued down a different trail towards Big Bear Lake. It was really nice. It was still kind of warm but it felt almost like fall since there were a a few trees and stuff changing colors in places.

In other news, the girls experienced the first snow fall of the season. They were not too thrilled about it. Since most days it is still 80 or 90 degrees and above here, it's hard to see why. 

Also, Caitlyn officially changed her major from Business Administration to Computer Science. I think she is happier about that.

Otherwise, the girls are doing good. They are working their butts off trying to keep their grades up. I hope they can.

At the end of the month, Christian's dad and his wife came to take us out for our birthdays. Mine, which had passed and for Christian's which is around the corner. He was up in Oregon for my birthday last month.

Hello, Friends!

 

September

We didn't do too much through most of September. We were mostly just busy working and taking care of things. It was still pretty hot though most of the month so we couldn't go out to do too much. Gas prices reached nearly $7 a gallon at times. It was pretty miserable. Christian was working on getting the fuel tank out of the ZJ to replace the fuel pump. It should have been fairly easy but it didn't go that smoothly and he ended up having to take it on and off many times for different reasons so it was pretty miserable.

I celebrated my birthday. It was during the week, so we didn't do too much. Christian works until nearly evening and eating out isn't really worth it most of the time. I got us some nice steaks and some shrimp and prepped everything. When Christian came home, he helped me cook them up and we had a nice quiet evening at home.

He got me a couple of aprons for my birthday. It's not as dull as that sounds. They are really nice. They can be more accurately described as a pinafore than just an everyday apron. I've been really annoyed at how stained all my clothes are all the time. I can't seem to keep any of my shirts unstained and it is really frustrating and embarrassing when I go out of the house. I have an apron and I throw it on some the times but I don't wear it all the time and it takes just a second to get a splatter or stain. So my reasoning is if I got these aprons that are so cute, I will wear them all the time unless I go out, then I can keep all my clothes cleaner!

So far it is working out quite well and when one gets dirty, I can wear the other one while the other one gets washed. My old apron was actually made by my mother and I had it a long time. It is just your typical flowery apron. It did its' job but was never so cute that I wanted to keep it on. I just remembered to put it on before doing some serious cooking but if I just throw something together or fix up a quick snack, I never bothered with it.

Christian also printed some neat little things for me with the 3D printer. I got a little hummingbird feeder and a little self watering pot.

I was a little disappointed at first as I couldn't tell if any hummingbirds found our little watering station for them, but it seems to be a popular stop for them now and I just love watching them come by!

The girls actually got us some little birthday gifts before they left as they knew they wouldn't be here. Emily got me a new cover for my Kindle Fire. Caitlyn got me a meat mallet and made Tonkatsu for us!

That weekend, we did manage to go out and do something. We kept somewhat local as the price of gas is pretty high. We went up to San Jacinto to Fuller Ridge. We drove down some of the off road trails there. We did a little hiking on a little section of the Pacific Crest Trail there. 

We mostly went to just get off the beaten path to try to get a bit of peace and quiet and some fresh air and exercise. That was nice. We will definitely make an effort to go back as it was not very far away.