Caitlyn's Birthday

Caitlyn turned 10 yesterday. She is finally in the double digits. She did end up growing 2 inches this year but she is still about a year behind Emily at the same age so she is definitely going to be a bit more petite than Emily.

She was so excited for her birthday. She had been counting down the days. It's fun to see kids still excited about their birthdays. It was a school day, so we didn't do anything big. She has been doing year end testing for weeks so she hasn't had a lot of homework lately, so I guess that is considered a blessing for her birthday!

We had a special snack at the park with her friends. Her best friend had to leave shortly after but the rest of the small group got to play together for a while before we headed home.

We went with a Japanese themed dinner by request. She loves getting the tempera shrimp since we don't have it normally as it is more than we normally spend on a typical dinner (but it is still decidedly cheaper than eating out).

After dinner, she got to open her presents and we also had her favorite carrot cake for dessert.

San Diego

Last weekend, we headed down to San Diego. We had a lot to celebrate. Christian's sister just graduated and got her bachelor of science degree in nursing.

Christian's dad had a birthday. He turned 68.

We also celebrated Caitlyn's birthday. She will be 10 in four days. Christian's mom made this cute barbie cake for her...not that she is into barbies anymore, but it was really neat.

We had a lot going on in the family so we got together to have a feast. 

It was sprinkling and raining on and off all day. That didn't stop the kids from going out and having fun. They continued work on their fort outside. Grandpa Caldwell got them some rope and a pulley and Christian helped them put up a new zip line which extends from a tree at the top corner of the property over to the house.

The kids had a blast. They get along really well with their younger cousins and always have a great time together.

At the end of the festivities, we attempted to clean ourselves up a bit and headed over to the church. Our oldest nephew was going to baptize a classmate and we went to support him. He will be leaving for his mission in a couple of months.

School Art Contest

Emily's elective during her first semester in school was art. She would have taken it all year long if given a choice.  During her time there, the Riverside Art Museum held their 4th annual art contest for all middle schools in the district. Anybody in middle school, in the district could enter. Since she was enrolled in an art class at the time, it was mandatory. They asked each student to enter their favorite or best piece into the contest.

Her class had ended at the close of the semester. She is now enrolled in a Spanish Culture class as is most of the students in her art class as there are not a whole lot of other choices especially since they could not switch any of her GATE or her accelerated math class to accommodate any other choices. She reluctantly joined the class but has found it mostly enjoyable.

So it was quite a surprise when her old art teacher came by and pulled her out of class briefly to notify her that she won 1st place in her school for the art contest. We were invited to an award presentation and reception at the museum.

All the winners from each school was invited.  The Gage Middle School String Ensemble performed as well as the King High School Chamber Singers. The singers were quite impressive.

Emily's art work was a pastel of a mountain in front of a lake with the aurora borealis in the night sky. It was her first attempt with pastels and she was pretty excited which is why we got the girls a bunch of art supplies for Christmas.

She also got a cash prize! She was pretty excited about that too! She has decided to get more art supplies with her winnings. We are proud of her achievement. Their artwork will be on display at the museum until May 3 and then the winning pieces will go to the RUSD office for a time.

Joshua Tree in April

Last weekend, we took off for our monthly climbing trip in Joshua Tree. Our destination was in the Lost Horse Area on the Freeway Wall. The weather was pleasant. Not too hot or too cold. Spring is here. There were some beautiful flowers out but it looks like we missed the big flower showing by about a week or two at the most. It looked like the flowers were just about to burst forth on a lot of the plants.

We did not do any hard technical routes. We found some easy adventurous climbs to play on. Our first climb is called Barney Rubble. It is an easy-ish route up some loose blocks.

It was just challenging enough to keep it interesting, but overall it was kind of a fun little climb.

Next, we attempted to go up Smooth as Silk, but it was a bit more than we bargained for, so we abandoned the attempt for now. It was a moderately difficult route up a small finger crack on a slab that was, well, as smooth as silk. 

We moved on to our next climb. Unfortunately, with the nice weather, comes rattlesnake season. We climbed across this boulder field to get to our next climb which is on the other side of the wall that we were on and Christian was scouting up ahead. He had just climbed up past this nice flat rock and on his way back down to where we were, this rattlesnake popped up. You cannot even see it from the rock above as you are about to step back down. His head was facing out, ready to strike. Christian had just climbed up this rock a minute or two ago so he was pretty shocked that it was sitting there sunning itself when he came back. It freaked us out a bit and we knew that we had to be extra vigilant now.

Our next adventure was on a route called False False Smooth as Silk (not to be confused with False Smooth as Silk which was 30' to the left of this climb).

This was another easy fun route. Although the moves were not very difficult, you had to climb out on a runout slab (thankfully not as smooth as silk). So the exposure definitely kept you on your toes.

By the time we all finished this climb, the sun was starting to get low in the sky and we did not want to get caught up in the boulder fields without enough light to see the rattle snakes, so we called it a day. Christian went down to clean the pieces and I stayed up on top to take down the anchor and started to head down, but Christian came back up and we took a walk up to the top of Filipino Wall since we were up there.

On our way down, we found a neat little nook that might be used in a pinch to bivouac if we needed to. We then collected the kids and headed back down to the truck for some dinner and then home.

Weekend Wrap-up

After returning from Yosemite and getting a few hours of sleep, we were off and running again. Christian went to help a friend move.

The girls and I went to the Bourns Engineering Day sponsored by The Society of Women Engineers at UCR. We were supposed to be at an Easter Egg Hunt, but as Emily is over the age limit and Caitlyn most likely won't bother with the hunt if Emily doesn't get to do it, we opted to go to the Engineering Day at UCR instead.

We checked in and the girls got little goodie bags. They started out the event with a lecture about how  scientists and engineers are like super heroes. Most of the kids were pretty entertained by it but I think the message was a little lost with too many references to super heroes. Most of the kids got too side tracked.

Afterwards, there were many activities and demonstrations that they could participate in. The girls got to make lip balm, UV bracelets, ice cream, borax slime, extract strawberry DNA and lava lamps. There was a bunch of other stuff but I won't bother listing them all here. Caitlyn got an event patch for the Girl Scouts.

Suffice it to say, the kids had a good time. It was a bit warm and fairly crowded but it is a short walk away from home. We were surprised that not many kids from the neighborhood was there but there were school buses from nearby cities full of kids there. I wonder why they did not invite the RUSD kids. I did not even see a mention of the event on the Riverside STEM website.

On a side note to that, after two years, Emily finally got a slot at the STEM academy...and we declined to accept it. Basically, she is doing okay at her current school. She only has a year left. We have enough fights with her about her homework now. STEM is supposed to have a lot more homework and that is just more battles I don't want to fight. I warned her of the consequences of her choices and her lack of taking her responsibility seriously and this is it.

We also didn't bother adding Caitlyn to the waiting list (lottery). Two years ago, when we added Emily to the list, she was sixty something on the list. There are already over a 150 students in the queue with another 76 students wanting to get on the list. Although she wants to go, it is pretty futile at this point. I'm just not going to worry about it. Our girls will be fine wherever they go.

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On Easter Sunday, our friend Marian came by to celebrate Easter with us. She brought belated birthday things for Emily as we ended up canceling her birthday party.

Marian decided to have (another) one last Egg Hunt for the girls. She made it extra challenging though, since they are much older now.

It may have been a little too challenging for them though, as it took them over an hour to find all their eggs. In the end, we got tired of waiting for them and helped them gather the remaining eggs in!

Yosemite - Day 3

Day three brought us to a climb called Munginella in an area called Five Open Books. It is to the left of the Yosemite Falls. We planned to practice our systems on a multi pitch climb. Munginella has three short pitches up 350'.

But after reading some of the comments from other climbers on this climb, Emily was not sure that she could sport lead the route...which is necessary for all of us to get up the route together. Christian considered using the long static rope instead so that we could climb simultaneously but the girls still seemed skeptical.

So, in the end, the girls opted for us to climb the route first while they played in and around the base and waterfall while we went climbing. We brought walkie-talkies so that we could stay in touch.

They walked us to the base of the climb so that they would know where we were. We had some trouble finding the climb initially as the directions were not that clear. But we found it and the descent route as well so that they would know which way we would be coming back down. There was already a party on the wall. As the girls started back down, another party was on their way up to the same climb. We offered to let them go on ahead of us but they declined and we started on our way.

There were a few difficult spots that the kids would have had trouble at. It's probably a good thing that we did the route first as we don't think that they would be quite ready for it...especially with so many people wanting to climb the same route. When I was belaying Christian at the top of the first pitch, the leader of the guys behind us was coming up and said that there was already another group behind him! I couldn't believe how busy this route was. I would not have liked the pressure of getting the kids up passed the hard parts with all those people waiting.

In the end, we did the route in two longer pitches as it seemed faster and more efficient. There was no problems with rope drag or anything. It took us almost exactly two hours to complete the climb with just Christian and myself.

As usual, the view from up top was beautiful. We told the girls that we made it to the top. We had a quick snack and drink had headed back down. We contacted the kids and met up by the bus stop to put our gear away and have some lunch together while we decided on what we would do for the rest of the day.

Neither of the girls had any inclination to do more climbing. I was pretty satisfied after climbing Munginella. Caitlyn wanted to see some more waterfalls. There still wasn't a whole lot of water in Yosemite but there was water coming down Bridleveil Falls this time, so we decided to go see that.

It is just a short hike from the parking lot so there were quite a few people there.

Shortly before getting to the base of the waterfall, Christian decided to climb a boulder just off the trail to get a better picture of the falls away from the crowds. Emily followed him. Caitlyn and I went up a bit further to get a picture. When we went back to find Christian and Emily, they seemed to have taken off on their own wilderness trail. We tried to follow but kept getting stuck and dead ends and decided to head back to the main trail. 

From the base, we climbed some boulders up the side to get closer to the falls. Some of the rocks were really polished and slippery. But since there was not that much water there, it was easy to get up most of the rocks.

Before we stopped, we finally spotted Christian and Emily way up next to the waterfalls. We didn't think that we wanted to go up quite that high so we stopped to relax and put our feet in the water. Boy was the water cold!

Apparently, Christian continued up and went way up next to the falls. I don't think we could have even followed. Emily didn't go up the really scary parts but he got some spectacular pictures of the falls. And from the side of the fall, they could see really neat rainbows. At some point, he climbed down and got a great picture of Emily in the middle of one of the rainbows.

We met back up some time later at the bottom. We headed back near camp to have dinner and go to the last Ranger Program. They were showing a film on Ansel Adams. We did stop by and take some pictures of some more of the Spring flowers that was blooming in the valley.

When it was over, we headed out of Yosemite and back home. We drove through the night again. I took a shift driving again so Christian could get a couple hours rest. It was hard going but worth it. We would have stayed an extra day but we had to get back to help a friend move the next morning. We got home around 3:30 am, took a shower and got a few more hours of sleep.

Yosemite - Day 2

Amazingly, we all got a good night's rest. We were all exhausted when we went to bed. Although it was crowded, no one was too obnoxiously loud. The weather was not a lot warmer than in November as it got down into the low 30's every morning but it was not as wet, so it didn't get into your bones as much.

We got up, had breakfast and Christian got our gear ready for the day. We headed out to Swan Slab on this day which is just a short walk away from the campsite. We were glad because we got a good parking spot and had no intentions of moving our car until we were ready to leave. Even though people came and went, the parking lot, for the most part, was full most of the time.

Caitlyn wanted to climb the Swan Slab Chimney again as she had a problem close to the top last time and didn't quite finish it. Christian set up the route for her. This time, not only did she finish the route, she sport led it as well with no problems.

Emily belayed her sister. While she has practiced belaying before, she has not done it in a long time. Caitlyn didn't like the way she did it or didn't trust her to do it. Christian also didn't like some of what he saw while she was supposed to be belaying her sister so we stopped letting her do it. This time, she did good. She was attentive and Caitlyn had no problems.

The rest of us wanted to get on to the new climbs so we did not climb up the easy chimney again. Instead we did a route just on the other side of this one called Oak Tree Flake.

Christian led the route as per usual. Emily and I sport led the route and Caitlyn ended up top roping it. She started off trying to sport lead the route but had a hard time at the flake. She had not done a lie back before so it was scary for her. Christian took her off and put her back up on a top rope and she did fine.

Next, we climbed a route called Hanging Flake. The was a pretty short crack climb. 

I didn't get any pictures of Emily on this route as we were video taping her.  Caitlyn had a bit of a rough start but was able to figure it out and get up without too much trouble.

When we were done, we still had time, so we top roped a climb we saw a guide taking people up which was just around the corner from where we were just climbing. We were not sure of the exact route but in the end, the consensus is that we probably climbed the Pin Scar Seams.

We couldn't believe that we still had some time. So I flipped through Christian's climbing book, searching for another climb to do. We decided on a climb called Penelope's Problem.

This was a pretty hard climb. I almost didn't make it up. It took me several tries because it was really awkward in one spot and it took some strength to make it up. I was going to give it one more go before giving up and I finally pulled through the spot and made it up. I was ready to be done after this climb!

The girls took off while we were climbing to practice putting up anchors, so we just let them play. When we were cleaning up for the day, we noticed that one of the guides left a pair of climbing shoes and an anchor kit behind. We decided to drop it off at the mountain shop for him.

The Ranger Program for the evening was going to be at the Ahwahnee this evening. Normally we just go to the ones at the Yosemite Lodge as it is pretty much just across the street from Camp 4. But since the program for the evening was to be a fireside called "Stories of the Stones." We were pretty sure it was going to be a rock climbing fireside. It is difficult to drive around in the valley and we didn't want to lose our parking spot, so after we put our gear away at camp, we hopped on the shuttle which took us on a loop through the valley. We got out part way to go to the mountain shop and then hopped back on to continue our journey to the historic Ahwahnee Hotel.

We got there early enough to get good seats but it was filling up quickly. Lucky for us a family was just sitting in the front relaxing with a glass of wine when we got there. They left before the program started and offered us their seats so we were front and center. They got at least double the people that they were expecting so the place was packed before it began. I think all the other people were just tourists that were curious about how climbing works. It was fun and the kids got to stay and talk to the speaker afterwards and finger some of the old equipment she had.