Chinese New Year

We went to my mom's house again this past weekend to celebrate Chinese New Year. It is the year of the ram/sheep or goat. I'm not sure what it is exactly. All I know is that it is Emily's year. She was born almost 12 years ago as the Chinese Zodiac repeats itself every 12 years.
(This year, she will graduate out of Primary).

We headed over early as we are planning for a whole day of dumpling making. The kids got red envelopes full of lucky money and a belly full of dumplings...which makes it almost as good as Christmas for them.

They are able to help more and more with the dumpling making as they get older so we sit around the table making dumplings together. As a batch comes out of the steamer and cools, we get to take breaks to eat and then make more until all the supplies are gone and we are full. We had some problems with the dumpling dough this year so it was a bit frustrating at first but after the third batch, we definitely got it right again and have more of an understanding of the dough.

Plus we got to bring home enough dumplings not to have to cook for the next several days! I always appreciate that. The kids appreciate getting to eat more goodies.

Some February Highlights

There were other things going on this past week besides one bad thing after another. Caitlyn officially joined a girl scout troupe at school.

I don't know how that will turn out as the girl scout year is already half over and we are barely getting started. All the leaders still need training and background checks. A couple of Caitlyn's friends from church joined with us so we are hoping for the best. We will have to wait and see. 

We baked sugar cookies with the girl scouts insignia on it for their ceremony. She got her membership pin and her first patch for learning the "Girl Scout Way."

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Emily had her award ceremony at school for their first semester.

She didn't get in the group with the highest achieving GPA's but she managed to pick up her grades enough in most of her classes, except for one, to give her a pretty decent GPA. I'm pretty happy with what she ended up with but not so thrilled about her habits and laziness in getting there. Most of her friends still managed to get good grades. I'm hoping she will have learned her lesson and do better in the next semester. I'm not overly confident about that though.

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In light of us losing our climbing gym membership soon, we have been working on our little climbing wall in our backyard. We are connecting it to the kids treehouse. The kids are pretty ecstatic about that as we have only been able to take them to the gym once a month anyway.

We finished the first section of the wall. We have two more parts currently planned. Depending on how well it works out and how much we all use it, we will probably continue to add on to it.

The kids had a lot of fun working on it. We let them help us plan it out and put in the first holds. 

After climbing on it a few times, they are already starting to think about things they would want to change or add to make it even better. It will be a work in progress.

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On Valentine's Day, we had to go visit with my family. Chinese New Year is the next week so this weekend, we had to have our customary reunion dinner. This is one of the most important days of the year for Chinese families. They will travel from all around the country to return home to have dinner with their family to reinforce our cohesive family unit. It's supposed to be on the Eve of the New Year but as the kids have school and we are not close, we do what we can.

This year it happened to land on Valentine's Day. We considered doing it on Sunday but my sister and her family have to visit with her husband's family as well.

In the morning, I had little Valentine's gifts for Christian and the girls. I had it out for them when they came for breakfast. Then we went for a walk up in the hills in back of our house. The girls have been working on a service project to pick up trash in the climbing areas we've been visiting...to leave the areas cleaner than when we arrived. We are really hard on our kids and require them to do more than pick up a bag full of trash and sign them off on their project. They have picked up trash from Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Mt. Rubidoux and in our local Box Springs Mtns. When their service project is over, we will still ask them to continue helping keep our wilderness places clean so as not to let the bad seeds ruin our favorite areas.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that go up in the local areas to party and always leave a mess so there was no shortage of trash when they finished their project.

While we were up in the mountains, Christian wanted to check out a crack climb on the side of the main wall up there. It is supposed to be a pretty hard climb but Christian really liked it.

We brought my harness so that I could belay him but I did not bring my shoes to attempt it myself. While Christian climbed, Emily took a few pictures for me and Caitlyn climbed around on the boulders and played with what was available.

I love that our kids can find ways to amuse and entertain themselves without constant toys or video games.

After we got home and cleaned up, we went to my mom's to help her cook. She's getting old and it is difficult for her to do so much all by herself now. 

We started with a late lunch of winter solstice soup. We were supposed to just have dinner but I guess my brother thought it was lunch and showed up early.

After lunch, we spent a lot of timing prepping for dinner as we were planning on having a lot of dishes. A lot of the food that we eat have meaning and symbolizes different things like noodles for long life, or whole fish that symbolizes abundance and whole chicken which symbolizes opportunities. A lot of it is based on what the Chinese words for those things sound like. For other things, it is what the food looks like. For example, dumplings are made in the shape of gold ingots to represent wealth or fried spring rolls represent gold bars. Anyway, I always joke that everything has some kind of meaning so we have one of each animal on our table!

I was too busy to take any pictures and too tired to even remember to do it. My brother and sister went home after lunch to work on a dish or two on their own. I don't know how my mom used to do all this on her own. Grant it that she did not have quite so many people to cook for when we were younger and there were no extra spouses or grandchildren to feed but still, it is an incredible amount of work but we love it and I'm glad that my children can experience it. I would hate for her to give up and have us go out for dinner like so many others. It takes a lot of the family and togetherness out of it when you are not at home and are around a bunch of strangers and not eating the food of our childhood. 

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

It started off having to take Emily to the doctor to get a note so that she doesn't have to play any ball sports that will re-injure her finger...which she injured during PE in the first place. I made an appointment but apparently had some dain bramage because I made Christian take us to the wrong office for her appointment. Since the Kaiser we went to was on the other side of town, we missed our appointment. They said that we had two choices at that point since it was too late to race across town to see her doctor. One, we could wait in urgent care, or two, we could wait another couple of hours for the open pediatric hours.

We went to urgent care and the line was not too long, but after waiting in yet another line, they told us  her injury was too old to be seen in urgent care and would have to wait for the pediatric hours after all.

I certainly didn't want to wait two hours with all the other sick rabble, so we went out to do some shopping at a asian market nearby. On leaving the parking lot, a car made a "California stop" and proceeded to turn right in front of us as we were going straight and had the right of way. Christian yelled at them. The guy stopped and was totally irate that we called him on his bad and reckless driving and threatened to beat Christian up if his wife wasn't in the car with him. Turned out he was someone we knew. Worse than that, they are...let's say, friends of mutual friends that we used to go to church with. We are no longer in the same ward but still occasionally end up at the same dinner parties. I even taught one of their kids in Primary before. I don't know if he recognized Christian at the moment. I wonder if his wife did though. Nice, huh?

We went shopping but it didn't eat up enough time but we eventually made our way back to Kaiser and got Emily signed in for another appointment. We waited another hour and 45 minutes until she was seen. Her finger was not so swollen anymore but was still black and blue. After all we went through and a $20 copay, she gave Emily a little splint to wear and only gave her another two days more exemption from playing sports. What a useless waste of time and money.

To add insult to injury, we did not make it back in time to collect Caitlyn's science fair project. If we did not collect it buy 7:pm, they were going to throw it in the trash. We got back a quarter after 7. Everyone was tired, hungry and cranky...and we lost her science fair project.
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The next day, while I was out, I ran out of gas. I managed to just make it home. The car was spluttering and threatening to stall. I had to call a friend to take me to get gas and pick up Emily. I got enough gas and we had enough time to get Caitlyn and then go up the hill to finish running my errands and fill my gas tank completely.
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The day after, Christian and I went to the climbing gym in the morning. On the way back, we heard a weird noise like there was something stuck in my tire. We got to Christian's lab and got out to take a look. There was a giant screw stuck in my tire. Christian had to check out how bad the damage was so that I don't get stranded somewhere. He removed the screw and the air started gushing out. He had to change my tire in the parking lot of his building and put on the spare.

We didn't have time to get the tire fixed right away, but when the weekend came around, we went to spend it fixing the flat on my tire. Apparently, I have a nail in another tire as well but it isn't leaking or it has such a slow leak that it does not make a big difference. We did not bring it in though and the next free weekend we have will probably be spent having to fix the other tire.
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There were a few other things going on but they were just more everyday type annoyances but seemed bad at the time in light of all the other big things that kept going wrong. Anyway, that was my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Hopefully next week will be better.

Joshua Tree - February Edition

We haven't done any real climbing since the beginning of the year, so we really had to carve out some time to go out (especially since all the weekends for February is already booked solid).

Our destination for Joshua Tree this month was Echo Rock. When we got there, there was a ranger about to give a ranger program on Joshua Trees, so we tagged along.

It took about 45 minutes out of our climbing time, but we thought that the kids would enjoy it. Especially since Emily would not be able to climb very much because she hurt her finger this week playing basketball during gym. She jammed her finger on the ball and sprained it pretty badly. It is bruised and somewhat swollen.

Our first climb was an easy chimney up "The Trough." Christian and I free soloed the route while the girls sport led it using protection Christian placed for them. We were not sure if Emily could climb at all today but after getting a feel for the route, we came to the conclusion that she would not have to use her fingers very much to get up a chimney. The route was about 80' long. 

After Christian put up the protection for the kids to use, I went up halfway and waited on a ledge to take pictures. Caitlyn came up first.

She did pretty well but she just muscled up the first part instead of using real chimney techniques so when she got to the crux, she had a bit of trouble because you had to use real chimney techniques in order to get up. I was not far, so I climbed up closer to her and showed her what she was supposed to be doing. She tried it and got right up.

Emily went next. It was pretty easy for her until she got to the crux as well. Because Caitlyn is small, she can squeeze into the safety of the chimney and get up. Emily tried to do the same, but as she is much bigger, she could not move very well and I could not convince her to move out of it. She had a fit because nothing she was trying was working for her. Christian came part way up to get her to calm down. She tried coming out a tiny bit where she could move more but then she just flailed around instead of using her chimney moves and was frustrated that she still could not get up. I went passed her to show her how to get up while she calmed down again. After that, she got up as easily as she would have walking up stairs. Emily's climbing has been really frustrating the last few times that we have been out. A lot of the times, she shows that she can climb better than any one of us and then the other times she freaks out and whines and cries up routes that her little sister can do without too much trouble. We just can't figure out what exactly sets her off and why she has been doing it so often lately. We hope that it will not be a growing trend.

Next, Christian and I did a friction route on a slab to the right of the chimney called "Double Dip." We knew that Emily could not do this route as there was a lie back on a flake halfway up. We were originally going to have Caitlyn come up it as well, but after trying it, we decided that the holds were way out of her reach to be able to climb it. In fact, I had a hard time reaching the holds as well but it is easier to make that leap of faith to get to the next hold when you are following on a top rope. But if I was as short as Caitlyn, there would just be no way that I could make it up unless I was an expert slab climber...which we are not. It was a 140' pitch.

Meanwhile, the kids explored the rock and looked for climbing "booty." The girls started to build a little fort while we climbed.

We moved over to the next climb that we could attempt. This was a slightly harder slab climb called "Stichter Quits." This was a 115' route that was somewhat run out (especially at the top) so Christian was not too thrilled about it but he forced himself to do it anyway. There was 25' of run off at the top before you got to the anchor so, even though it wasn't as steep as the first part, it was a lot scarier for Christian. I followed and cleaned the quick draws. I had a difficult time reaching the quick draws to clean them. The route was pretty difficult. I was having a hard time getting up to past the first bolt. A climber that had just finished the route was watching my embarrassing display of sliding off the slick rock and suggested that I do a lie back on it. It worked and I was able to finally move forward. I still had some trouble reaching all the holds but it was still doable for me...just barely.

The kids did not bring their cameras and were too busy working on their fort so we did not get any pictures of either of us climbing since we have to belay each other up the routes. You can't just let go and take a picture! I got one of Christian coiling up the rope at the top of Stichter Quits.

By the time we got back down again, the sun was pretty low in the sky and the last route we wanted to do on this side of the rock was occupied. We decided to pack up and head out to take some pictures of the sunset. We got some pictures of the kids fort before moving off.

We originally were looking for Barker Dam, but we ran out of time and we did not prepare and find out exactly where we were supposed to go.

So when we ran out of time, we just scrambled up some boulders at the edge of some private land and took some pictures and watched the sun set while we had a snack.

We had a pretty good day overall. Emily picked up trash as part of a service project she is working on to earn her Faith in God award.

January at a Glance

The kids got back into the swing of school. Caitlyn had her Science Fair at school shortly after we returned. She managed to get 2nd place.

She will be moving on to the next level (although, I thought you had to place first at your school in order to do so).

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We had to ease into returning to daily life, so we took off for Joshua Tree for a day of climbing. We

climbed on the east side of the rock this time. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera for some reason and have no pictures to show for it. We climbed a route called "Filch." It starts with a shallow off width and leads to a hand crack above. It is only a short 40' route but we found the off width very difficult. Emily couldn't seem to make it up at all. We didn't end up getting to do anything else as Christian was insistent that we learn how to do it. So we just did laps on it. Christian went up probably 4 or 5 times. Caitlyn went up twice and it got easier as she practiced. I did it pretty well the first time but the second and third time game me a lot of trouble. Emily tried it several more times but was still unable to get passed the off width no matter how many tourists came by to watch her. She was in whiny mode so even the tourists got uncomfortable watching and moved on.

I think that we will probably have to come back and try again some other time. Christian is determined that we learn how to climb a simple off width which is easier said than done. It is not big enough to fit in and it keeps wanting to spit you back out. If you can't figure out to get your heel and toe wedged into the off width, there is nothing to keep you from slipping back down and nothing to help you progress up to easier holds. 

Christian was going to do a face climb next to our route, but the sun started to get low in the sky and wanted Emily to end with some kind of achievement. So, we headed back over to Cyclops Rock and she jumared up the big giant rappel with big wall ladders and Christian's new ascenders. Christian went up as well. It was too late for anyone else to try and Caitlyn and I didn't think we had enough energy left to attempt it anyway. There was a beautiful sunset though and Caitlyn and I kicked ourselves once again for not bringing our cameras.

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Emily finished her first semester of middle school. I think she ended up with a better note that her first quarter but it was like pulling teach with her bad homework habits (and attitude). We have not received her report card as yet as they were still doing testing the week AFTER the semester ended. I don't even ask anymore. You just have to deal with it.

Her elective was art and she loved it. However, we found out that it was only a semester long and there were not a lot of alternatives for the 2nd semester. They assigned her to a Spanish Culture class and she was not a happy camper. I went in with her to talk to a counselor and they explained her options. Since she has a couple of Gate classes and an accelerated math class, they are not able to move her around very much, which limited her options even more. Because she was doing well in school and she brought a parent in to talk to them, they were willing to work with her a little bit but after they narrowed down the other possibility to choir unless a couple of other openings came up, she started to see the Culture class in a better light!

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Caitlyn's school is trying to start a STEM based Girl Scout Troupe. We went to the first meetings to

see if we were interested in having her do something like that. I was pretty skeptical going into it but after the first meeting, Caitlyn and I are still interested so far. Three meetings are planned. We have to decide by the end of the third meeting whether we want to join or not.

They taught them the Girl Scout Promise and Law. They sang some songs and they worked on decorating a handkerchief. They showed them something like 50 things you can do with a handkerchief. Caitlyn has some friends that are also investigating, so that certainly helps. She didn't get very far on her handkerchief, so she has been finishing it at home and is supposed to wear it to the next meeting.

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Emily only has another month or so of Primary before moving on to the youth group. We have been trying to pressure her to make some plans to finish her Faith in God program but she has been procrastinating. We finally got her to put down some definite plans as she is quickly running out of time. We will have to see now if she will follow through with her plans.

Death Valley - Grotto Canyon

After we got back from Mosaic Canyon, we headed over to spend the rest of the day in Grotto Canyon. It is an area that we have not yet explored. There were only two or three other groups in Grotto Canyon as there is no paved road going in there and some parts of the road was quite sandy. The other cars stopped along the road once they got too nervous about driving in any further. We have 4x4 but even we had to tread carefully.

On first inspection, the canyon seems pretty unimpressive. The canyon seems to be composed of mostly dirt and pebbles. As we wanted to check it out, we continued into the canyon. We came upon a small wall that was a little precarious the climb up but we got over it with our hiking shoes (except for Caitlyn who needed a little help from dad). You continue in a little ways and end up on another short wall. This one is a little more difficult (or actually, a little easier if you are tall enough to reach the hand holds). Christian was the only one that could get over it. He went back to get some rope for the rest of us (and I guess we could have bypassed this entire section but it was kind of neat). Emily half climbed and half got pulled up with the rope but it seemed pretty painful. Christian made a little aider with the rope for Caitlyn as we did not like the method Emily tried. The loops were kind of far apart and Caitlyn still had a difficult time with it but I helped boost her onto the rock. I tried the aider but the rope stretched too much under my weight and I could not reach the next step on my own as there is an overhang at the bottom. Christian tried another version but I still could not get up. It was a frustrating and painful process. Finally, he came up with a rope ladder that he made and I managed to get up that way.

Once we got through, the canyon opened up again for a ways. We got into a more interesting canyon after but it stopped at this big smooth chute with very little features to climb so we had to turn back but then Christian found a way to get up and around it and we were able to continue in.

The further in we got, the neater the features got. It was pretty amazing and we had the whole place to ourselves. At some point, Christian and Emily got way ahead of us which is just as well as Caitlyn and I wanted to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures. There were lots of little chutes we had to go over, but none of them posed much of a problem.

When we finally found Emily and Christian, they were on their way back. It was getting late and we needed to head back as we did not bring any head lights with us. Apparently, it was even more beautiful up ahead, but neither Emily nor Christian took any pictures for us!

The sun was starting to set by the time we got back to our vehicle.

In light of the fact that it was going to be another extremely cold night, we had no where to camp and our tent was broken, we decided to cut our trip short and head home.

We passed the New Year in the relative peace and quiet of Death Valley. When we returned, we found out that the cold front that came in also brought snow to Temecula and even some in Perris and we missed it all. All we knew at the time was that, we expected to come home to a nice warm home and it seemed unseasonably cold when we arrived back home.

Death Valley - Mosaic Canyon

For the remainder of the kids' winter break, we decided to head back to Death Valley. We had a lot of ideas where we wanted to go camping, but it is just too cold in most places at this time of year. We departed later than we originally planned as we were not feeling so hot after all the Christmas festivities. After we recovered, we took a couple of days to pack, organize, shop and cook for our trip.

Just as we were about to leave, a weather system came in and we had to expect a fairly cold trip, even in Death Valley. When we got there, we headed straight to Mosaic Canyon. We wanted another shot at getting in deeper into the canyon. This time, we were devoting the majority of our trip to this project.

There is no overnight camping at the canyon trail head so Christian had to drop us and all our gear off and drive back down to town to park. Then he had to hike 2.5 miles back up to the trail head. When he came back, we all got our gear on and headed in.

We seemed to have a ton of gear but even so, we had to only go with the bare minimum and carry only what was absolutely necessary. Naturally, Christian carried the bulk of the gear (145 lbs). But the rest of us still carried what we could. I had 40 lbs, Emily had 30 lbs and even little Caitlyn was carrying 20 lbs in her pack.

We headed into the beautiful canyon, hiking and clambering up boulders and ramps all while balancing our packs. I think we hiked maybe another 2.5 miles before getting to the first wall. We got up and over the first wall without too much incident as we have already climbed this wall. But it took a while and we were starting to run out of daylight. After Christian led up the wall and fixed an anchor for us, Emily and I went up to set up a tent. By this time, the wind picked up and we had a heck of a time setting up the tent as the wind kept trying to yank it out of our hands.

Christian hauled all the gear up and transported it to the campsite. Caitlyn stayed down with the rest of the gear until it was all up and then jumared up with ascenders.

Christian had to help us stake the tent better as the wind was really bad. He ended up staking it to the rock on one side with pitons as there was no where else to stake it on that side. We were right up next to the rock wall. It was bitter cold and the wind just ripped through you. We ate a hasty dinner and retreated into the tent for the night.

The next morning, it was not much warmer but we got working on trying to get up the second big wall. Christian got about two-thirds up and was not sure what the features looked like up past a certain point and did not quite want to commit to continuing until we got a better look at it. If he went any further and could not place gear, we would have to bail and probably leave gear behind in order to get back down safely. We decided to go around and hike back down and see what it looked like from the top before we went passed the point of no return. The kids stayed in a little chute at the bottom as it was the only place that gave any kind of protection from the wind which had not subsided.

When we hiked up to the top, we found that there was a lot less wind and the sun actually hit the area which made it pleasantly warm. We hiked a little way before we found the entrance back into the little canyon that we were in. Christian put up another anchor and we rappelled back down in the canyon. We found two more big chutes as we worked our way back to where the kids were and did the same. By this time, we were wondering if we even had enough gear to get back to where we left off on the wall. 

While we were working back to the kids, they were starting to wonder where we were and went looking for us. You can only hear Christian pounding pitons and stuff intermittently as we went on. They finally found us as they went searching for us and some sun. I thought that their chatter and laughter was getting louder as we neared where we began, but the noise was not coming from ahead of us any more, it was coming from above and behind us. By the time they found us, we decided that we needed more gear and rope and went back out to gather supplies and some late lunch. We took the kids back through from the top, rappelling through the back end of the canyon until we finished setting the last anchor back into the original wall we were attempting to climb.

Unfortunately, by the time we got back to where we started and found that there was indeed places to place gear and continue on our climb, it was getting late and we were running out of daylight. Christian decided to go back through and clean all the gear while we went to start dinner. We considered just finishing the climb of the second wall or leaving the gear and finishing in the morning but we had plans for the next day and so we decided that it would all have to wait until our next trip. I went to start dinner and the kids stayed in the chute to play some more. They spent half the day there already and wanted to play some more. I have no idea what they were doing there as it is a very small isolated area.

The next day, we packed up our gear and hiked back out. We found that our tent pole broke in the wind (probably from that first night before it got staked down really well). We could not tell initially as Christian staked it down so good, you could bounce quarters off of it. I'm pretty disappointed in the tent as this was not the first problem we have had with these tent poles. Luckily, I have some spare parts from the fiasco of trying to get a replacement after the last problem we had. I won't even attempt to try to go through the company again. If I run out of parts or am unable to fix it, I think I would rather order some better quality aluminum third party poles instead of getting these cheap fiber glass ones that come with it...that is, as long as the break doesn't tear through the tent next time.

On a side note, we used out free $200 North Face gift certificate from Gear-CoOp to buy a new family tent before the holidays. We had our eye on a $300 tent and had been waiting for a sale. It came up before Christmas and we ended up getting the tent for $24! It is a lighter tent that we plan to use for backpacking trips. Unfortunately, they don't make the tents like they used to, so we will see if it will hold up to the elements any better than our cheap Browning tent. I will reserve judgement until after we put it through similar situations.

We hiked back out on the upper crest above the canyon. At some point, we rappelled back into the canyon and ended in some small side canyon. Unfortunately, tourists seem to enter this small fork of the canyon only to urinate so we had to make sure the kids avoided the wet spots! The girls and I went back out into the main canyon and headed back to the trail head. Christian decided to continue on the upper trail for a while. I am not sure where it took him, but he ended up back out on the main trail a short time after we got out there.

We had a small lunch before deciding to head back to the car. We decided to all hike back to the car together instead of waiting there for Christian to bring back the car.