Catching Up

The last couple of weeks seemed to have been filled with busy nothings. We are trying to settle in to our new school schedules but things keep coming up.

For instance, we seemed to have something going on almost every day last week. On Monday, the girls have their hula practice in the afternoon. Tuesday is the Activity Girls day. On Wednesday, we had Emily's back to school night. It was two hours long. We went through all her classes in her schedule one by one and met all her teachers. It went pretty well, all things considered.

On Thursday, the girls had a performance at an extended care facility. They were having a luau night or something and had our dance group come out to perform for them. It was very hectic. They did their home work while I got their costumes together. We drove out to the Magnolia area where the extended care facility is. When we arrived, we discovered that the girls did not bring any of their dance implements. Luckily, a friend was running late and we had her go pick it up from Christian at home.

There were a lot of girls performing and we only had a little office for everyone to change in, so we had to throw on their outfits and move out so that the next group could change. The Keiki's did three numbers. We did not have a lot of time to prepare, so luckily, they just did some old numbers that the girls already had outfits for. They newer girls were not able to perform with them since they did not have outfits and did not no all the numbers very well.

They performed a Hawaiian number called Little Brown Gal.

They performed a Māori poi ball routine from the people of New Zealand called A-E-I-O-U.

And they performed their Tahitian Keiki eight count Otea.

The girls did well and had a lot of fun. The patients and workers at the facility were very gracious and kind.

Meanwhile, I have been busy with my new church calling as a compassionate service committee member. The leader is also new and we were called this past Sunday but due to unfortunate circumstances, we had to hit the ground running. Plus the only other existing committee member had just left town to visit with family.

I spent all week calling and returning phone calls to try to coordinate some help. On Saturday, we spent 6 hours working on a funeral. We had a somewhat leisurely morning and had to leave after feeding the kids some breakfast. By the time I returned, I was only home with Christian for about an hour before he had to clean up and take off to help the youth at the Temple.

While I was gone, he cleaned up and detailed my car for me, plus he had some other household chores to do. I fed the kids and put them to bed before Christian made it back home. We were both exhausted.

On Sunday, we went to church as usual. When we got back, Christian worked on my birthday dinner. He made a super tasty italian chicken casserole. It is one of my favorites but I had quite forgotten it for the longest time since the kids were too picky to eat it. They loved it now though. We all got seconds and ate more than we should have. 

Christian got me my first smart phone for my birthday. I had resisted for the longest time, but as no one will give you manuals any more and you have to get it on some device, it is probably about time that I upgraded. Even the old women in our ward have smart phones already! Plus, it is a painful process to text on a regular cell phone. It is hardly worth it but everyone communicates that way now. It is just easier...as long as you have a phone that will support it. Now I just need to learn how to use it! 

Emily wanted to make me a treat for my birthday. She wanted to make cream puffs as she knows that I really like them. She has made it with her dad before on a previous birthday, but she forgot an ingredient and she ended up with something more akin to a cookie than a cream puff. This time, she did it all by herself (more or less) and they came out great!

Last year, for Valentine's day, we got a couple of punch cards that allowed us to go to the climbing gym 10 times. We hardly used it. Occasionally we would go, but they would have these specials and although we got the punch cards while they were on sale, this other offer was even better, so we used that instead. A few months ago, they sold out to the only other climbing gym company in Riverside. However, we were able to trade in our punch cards for regular membership. For every two punch cards we have, we got a month of membership to the new gym. We ended up with four months of gym membership. We've been going two or three times a week. With our membership, we each get one guest pass a month, so we get to take the girls once a month as well. We even made it out to one of the yoga classes they have there. We are trying to take advantage of it all while we can.

Besides all that, Caitlyn's regular teacher finished her maternity leave and got back to teaching her class. Caitlyn liked her substitute but she was a little exasperated that she couldn't spell very well and sometimes the students would have to help her or correct her!

Emily joined yearbook so that should be a new experience for her. We'll see how that goes. Plus after a month of school, they decided to create a new advanced math class for the 7th graders so Emily got pulled into the new class. That is the good news. The bad news is that her math teacher from her original class was our favorite teacher that we met on the back to school night. Oh well, you can't win them all. We will see what happens. So far it is a small class and the base of the class is based on the kids with the best math scores from 6th grade. Now that they have pulled them into it, they decided to test them to see if they truly belong in the class and who else might be joining the class. Don't you think they should have done that before yanking them out of their original classes and disrupting their schedules? I guess that takes too much planning and makes too much sense for those administrators.

San Diego

Christian's mom returned once again from Hawaii so we headed down to San Diego last weekend for a visit. We are hoping she will be staying this time.

We headed down on Friday and spent the night. In the morning we went hiking with Christian's sister and niece to Mt. Woodson.

Again, the heat was pretty unbearable. When we got to the top, we couldn't believe how crowded it was. 

In the afternoon, we met up with Christian's mom and she took the kids swimming.

Luckily, Michaela had extra swim suits that fit the girls since we did not bring any. Christian and I sat out to watch.

Christian's brother and his wife met up with us at the pool. Afterwards, we went back to their place since Grandma got crafts for the kids to do.

At dinner time, we all converged back over to Christian's sister's house for dinner. The girls had such a good time.

Aid Climbing Break

Since the weather is still extremely hot, we did not plan any trips to go climbing. Instead, we figured that we would just get up early and head into the hills in back of our house to do a little climbing before it got too hot.

Unfortunately, we did not get up as early as we wanted to. And then the hike to our destination was quite far. There are no easy and clear paths that far up the hill. We did discover another wall that looks very promising that Christian wants to develop at a later date.

Our goal for today was a traverse across a horizontal crack using ladders and hooks. Of course, Christian went first to set up protection.

Emily went next. We had to climb up and clip our rope into the protection as we made the traverse. 

We move across by hooking ladders on to the small ledge and moving them an arms length at a time to traverse across. It is a lot harder than it looks and takes a lot of strength to hold yourself up on the ladder.

I went next. One of my hooks actually popped and I got one foot caught in the ladder. I was in a real awkward position and it was pretty frustrating and a little scary to get out of. Caitlyn went next. She was pretty scared but ended up doing the best of all of us in the end as she is very careful and meticulous in her every movement.

Christian had to go back up to clean our gear and so by the time we made the arduous hike back down again, it was pretty late in the afternoon. We were pretty fried from the sun so we ended up just vegetating the rest of the night to recuperate.

Joshua Tree

After the first week of school, we needed to go out to do something. Originally, we had planned to go back to Tahquitz, but after three months, the guy that was supposed to be resoling one of Christian's climbing shoes finally called to say that it was done. So we scratched our plans and headed back out to Joshua Tree.

We were smart and picked a climb that mostly had shade most of the day on Mt. Grossvogel called Dr. Seus Vogel. It is a two pitch climb up 150'. It was pretty hot in the sun. There were no freak thunderclouds above us to keep us cool this time.

Unfortunately, Emily decided to wear her tennis shoes instead of her hiking boots and kicked her foot into a clump of dead Joshua tree leaves and it poked her foot through her shoe. Apparently it hurt pretty bad and she could not put on her climbing shoes afterwards. She hung around and played with the aid climbing equipment.
Christian and I still completed the climb. Caitlyn only went up the first pitch. The second pitch required her to go above the anchor and clip in to a few strategically placed pieces of protection. Basically, she would not be on top rope for it so she decided that she was not ready for that yet.

The descent for the routes on Mt. Grossvogel is not pleasant. We had to come down it once before from a different route. Christian did not want to go back that same way and tried a slightly different way. Luckily, he was able to just lower Caitlyn and myself from the anchor that he set up. Apparently, the way down this time was not much better as at one point he slipped and hurt his leg a bit and got a couple of bruises. Luckily, he prepared himself for the fall and did not get too hurt but it could have been a lot worse. He has never slipped before, so he was not too happy.

By the time Christian finished cleaning up our gear and got back down, we were pretty fried from the heat even if we were not standing in the sun.

We headed out to the mountain shop to pick up Christian's long awaited climbing shoes. We won't be using that guy again. Not only did he take three times as long as the longest quoted time frame but he made one shoe slightly bigger than the other when he applied rubber to the toe box. 

We were at the mountain shop for quite a long time in the end though as it was a pretty slow day and the guy in the shop was very talkative. We got to try on lots of different climbing shoes to consider for the future and we got some interesting tidbits from the guy at the shop. Caitlyn spent a lot of her time organizing their shoe boxes so they offered her a job when she get older! 

Back to School - A New Year and a New Rant

The last week of summer vacation was filled with shopping for supplies and getting class schedules. We went to a lame orientation for middle school the week before. Christian got off work early so that we could go together, only to find out after standing in line that we already did everything we needed to do during the summer so the so called "mandatory" orientation was a complete waste of time. They were not sure what to do with us and sent us on a small scavenger hunt to find out if there was some other reason they made us all come out there. In the end, I just had to sign a few papers...something they normally just send home with the kids on their first day of school.

I had three separate experiences with the middle school administration so far (starting from the summer bridge program) that proves that there is no continuity or organization among the administration there at the middle school. Basically, the left arm doesn't know what the right arm is doing or vice versa. You can't get a straight answer any where. Not that they are evading our questions...they just don't know the answer. It does not inspire a lot of confidence in me.

We also found out that Emily didn't have a full week of summer vacation left as she is actually supposed to start early on the Friday before. They only had to go in half day though.

Unfortunately, someone thought it would be a great idea for all the schools to start at the same time this year. Now we need to get two girls to two different schools at the same time. Brilliant. We settled on an idea to drive part way and Christian and I would both walk one of the girls to their school and enter by the less travelled paths. It has been working out okay but I don't know what we will do if it rains heavily.

The first day of school seemed to start all of a sudden and we were so busy trying to adapt to our new schedules that I didn't even take a picture. Apparently, as part of Caitlyn's new earlier schedule, breakfast is served to all the kids IN THE CLASSROOM. Because breakfast is such an important meal of the day and we parents can't be counted on to take care of our own kids, so now Caitlyn leaves for school hungry and has to wait until she gets in class before getting to eat anything. Luckily, Caitlyn is not a big morning person anyway and it takes a while to get her appetite really going...unless we are having waffles or swedish pancakes or something. If I feed her something before, then she will sit and twiddle her thumbs while the other kids eat or will get something and end up throwing most of it away like the other wasteful children at school...a habit I do not want her to take up or think is okay.

The school forgot to move Caitlyn to the 5th grade, so when we went to check Caitlyn's class schedule on the friday before school started, I had to talk to the Principal again to make sure she is put in the right classroom. Because of their mistake, several other girls and their parents were ecstatic that Caitlyn was signed up to be in their class again. I had to disappoint them and tell them that there was a mix up. Since Caitlyn is GATE, she has a specific class that is supposed to be assigned to her. Because they had already set the class schedules, they had to kick some other kid out of her class to make room for her. What a mess the administration made because they didn't bother to correct their records. We also found out that Caitlyn's actual 5th grade teacher would still be out on maternity leave for another month so Caitlyn will have a substitute for the first month of school.

In addition to this chaos, since Emily is now in middle school, she has to go to 7 different classes. When we got her class schedule, we walked around to find all her classes so that she wasn't wandering around nervous. But of course, in order to get the kids off on the right track (heavy sarcasm here), they start off their new 7th graders by throwing their schedules pretty much out the window for the first two weeks of school. Nice, huh? I'm wondering about now, why we send our kids to school and am thinking that it is a wonder that these schools are able to teach anything to our kids and how they function  because they seem so disorganized and inept.

The 8th graders at the middle school spent most of their first week in school on a "field trip" to UCR. The 7th graders spent three days of their second week of school at UCR. They were told to not bring their backpacks. They were instructed that they would issue them a water bottle at the beginning of the field trip on the first day and that it was their responsibility to bring the water bottle every day. What they failed to do was actually fill the water bottles in the first place. So, the kids had to basically walk over a mile in over 100 degree dry Riverside heat without any water. Then, they had to walk around on a tour of the campus...still without water. They passed by water fountains and were not allowed to fill them until they stopped for lunch. They were finally given water at that point...of course, they made us sign all these papers that if anything happened to our kids while on the field trip, they were not responsible. She ate lunch out on the lawn and spent basically the rest of the first day of their "field trip" sitting and talking to her friends.

They spent the next two days of their "field trip" playing games like catch the flag and running obstacle courses. For the life of me, I can't figure out what the point of their field trip was and since they did not bother to tell us and it was not made clear to the kids, I guess we will never know. Emily did really enjoy the obstacle course though since she got to climb several "rock walls."

As a side note, to Emily's relief, she has not yet had to dress for PE in the locker room. Apparently, they had to spend a week and a half (minimum) trying to teach the kids how to open a combination lock...I kid you not. It's not rocket science...

High Sierras (Part 2)

We took it easy the next day. We drove up to Bishop to take care of some business. A number of our climbing shoes were in need of some kind of repair. We spent some time in a few of the mountain shops and then headed out to find some climbs and a new campsite.

We drove around a lot trying to find certain areas that we had read about. We finally decided to stay in the Pine Creek Canyon area. We had some daylight left and decided to get some energy out on a climb.

We did the first pitch of a two pitch climb called "Merman" on the Fashion Slab. It was pretty fun but we ran out of daylight and decided to come back to finish the climb in the morning.

We camped a little way down the road. We had breakfast, packed up and got ready for out climb.

Everyone managed to make it up the 200' two pitch (5.7) climb, although it did take us all a while to complete it. There were a couple of pretty challenging spots but everyone did great. Christian led as usual. Emily led a second rope using dad's placements and then Caitlyn and I followed and I cleaned the gear on my way up. By the time we all rappelled back down, it was time to go.

We were still near the Bishop area so we had quite a ways to go to get home. Before the sun set, we pulled over near the Little Lake area to have some dinner. While I worked on dinner, Christian and Emily went to do a bit of climbing on a small volcanic rock wall that was nearby.

Caitlyn just read her book at the base. The sun started setting when dinner was ready. I guess there was a fire out there somewhere so the sunset was especially pretty. When we finished, we continued on our way. It took a lot longer than we had intended as there was road work everywhere. It was insane. But alas, we finally made it back home in one piece and have to get back to real life.

Backpacking in the High Sierras (Part 1)

Since Christian's mom left town and we only had a week of summer left before the girls would have to start school, we decided to proceed with our plans for one last camping trip. We didn't have a lot of time to plan or pack but if we hesitated, we would lose our chance to go. We almost cancelled the thing altogether as the kids would not hardly help or cooperate.

We have mostly done car camping trips with our kids (where we basically camp next to our car). It is easy and convenient. They have gone backpacking before but it has been a number of years now. As we like to keep our kids on their toes so that they don't get too "soft," we wanted to take them backpacking again. We tried last summer but due to unforeseen weather complications, it didn't happen.

Our destination was to be Lone Pine Peak. Elevation:12,944 feet. The hike is 5,095 feet up the northwest slope. Since Caitlyn didn't quite make it to the peak on her trip with her dad, she wanted to give it one more try. This time, instead of making the summit in one day, we would split it up into two so that we would have more time to make it to the top as last time, they ran out of time.

Honestly, I don't know how they made it as far as they did last time. The hike was very difficult. It is nearly a 10 mile hike. It starts at the Whitney Portal Road along the Meysan Lakes Trail which sits at 7,849 feet. The approximately four mile trail to Grass Lake winds up many switchbacks giving us around 3,000 feet in elevation gain. We were pretty exhausted by the time we got off that trail.

We made camp nearby. We spent the rest of the time setting up our tent, making a fire ring, collecting wood and relaxing. We did a little exploring after we got some rest. Then, we had dinner and read stories around the campfire.

We turned in somewhat early as we were supposed to get an early start to the summit. I was pretty tired but I didn't end up with a whole lot of sleep. I had trouble falling asleep or if I did manage to fall asleep, I would get woken up by Caitlyn bumping into me or hearing boulders fall and exploding down the gully we were supposed to climb in the morning. I just ended up tossing and turning all night. I finally got a little more sleep towards the morning but then Caitlyn woke up with a nose bleed and I had to get some tissues to help her. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep at that point. Christian got up shortly after and we woke Emily to start our day.

We didn't actually get up with the sun or anything as we did not have that much farther to go. The gully  rises up approximately another 1,800 feet in the next half a mile or so. It is filled with sand, scree, talus and rock. The kids had dubbed the gully as "The Death Gully." I thought yesterday's hike was hard. That was nothing to this short half mile hike. Luckily, there was not nearly as much rock fall as when Caitlyn went last time. 

After making it up the gully, we still had a ways to go. We had to pass several false summits before getting to the real summit. Luckily, Christian was already aware of those and we did not have to expend extra energy climbing them only to find out that we were on the wrong summit. Another 0.6 miles brought us up to the actual summit!

The girls signed the summit register and we took some pictures. The view from up on top was beautiful. You can see Mt. Whitney and Mt. Irvine towering over Meysan Lake.

We headed back down afterwards. If I thought that the hike up the the Death Gully was difficult, it was nothing compared to going back down. The hike back down is supposed to be the easy part. You kind of just had to ride the sliding scree down parts of it. It was pretty scary. I slipped several times, which was no big deal but on the second half of the gully, I lost my balance and fell pretty bad a couple of times and slid over some big rocks. My right side was covered in bruises. I could not even sleep on my right side for the next couple of nights. It was pretty awful. I was tired and banged up. I was not having fun. Luckily, no one else had as much problems as I had.

We eventually made it back down, and we debated on whether we wanted to stay another night at the campground or head the rest of the way back down the mountain side. I did not want to decide until I got some rest. I washed up next to the stream and changed. I attempted to take a nap but the shade was too cold and the sun was too hot. I managed to get a little rest regardless while Christian had the kids. When they got back, they decided that they were still hungry as we had worked pretty hard that afternoon. We ate our dinner as our second lunch, packed up and headed back down the the mountain. 

Christian sent us ahead to save time but we overshot the trail and got lost. We backtracked our way back to the lake but could not find Christian or the trail. After some deliberation, we headed out again to find our way. This time we were a little more careful about which way we went. I finally found a cairn and followed our way up. Shortly after, we ran into Christian and the trail but we lost a lot of time.

When we finally got down, it was dark. I had to use my headlamp for the very last leg of the trail. We drove down and rewarded ourselves with a late dinner at McDonalds.