Thanksgiving and other matters

Since we came back a day early from Yosemite, we should have been well rested and had plenty of time to work on cooking before heading over to my family's house.

Instead, Christian and I found ourselves back in the emergency room at about 3:am Thurday morning. Christian had intense abdominal pains. It was a little over a month ago that we were there for a kidney stone. We were starting to wonder if they diagnosed him correctly, since we never was able to recover an actual stone.

After an examination, blood tests and an EKG, he got some pain medication and we were sent on our way. They did not know the cause of his pain, but ruled out something more dire. He got some PEPCID for possible gastritis and a referral for an ultrasound as it was too early to get one still at the time.

Christian's pain was at a more manageable level, but was still having a hard time of it, especially if he attempted to eat.

He got some rest on and off after we got home while I worked on our Thanksgiving contributions. We were wondering if he should actually stay home, but in the end, he decided to go and hope for the best.

There was a ton of food, but unfortunately, Christian was not able to do more than sample a dish or two. It was torture for him, since he still had an appetite. He just was unable to eat without suffering greatly for it.

I had planned to go on a trip with my sister and mom to Lake Tahoe shortly after Thanksgiving. The timing could not be worse. I was afraid to leave, not knowing what was wrong with Christian and not being available to take him back to the doctor, if needed. In the end, he insisted that I should still go. I spent the better part of the next couple of days stocking little things for the house to be sure they had food (since we had been gone for our camping trip) and packing.

Yosemite

The kids have a week off for Thanksgiving break, so we planned to spend the first half of their vacation in Yosemite and return just before Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, the weather was not looking too good for our trip. The weather kept shifting and we kept shifting our departure date based on the forecasts.

We finally, got sick of being swayed by the uncertainty of the weather and decided to just go. There was supposed to be rain earlier in the day, turning into snow by evening (5 to 8 inches supposedly). We did not get any precipitation until after we arrived in the valley and set up our tent.

We moved all our food and camping equipment into our new temporary home away from home, prepared our dinner and went to go see what Evening Ranger Programs were available. They used to post all the information at the ranger kiosk, but apparently, the new concessionaire does not provide that service (among many others) to the park service any more.

Apparently, the rangers were not even putting on any programs. I don't know if most of them left for the holidays or what. A naturalist working for the new concessionaire just showed different little National Park videos each night...all of which are also posted on YouTube. Don't get me wrong, they are still good videos...it was just disappointing.

It pretty much rained all night. We were sitting in our tent wondering when the rain would stop so that we can get out and have breakfast. Although we did not necessarily have to heat our breakfast or anything, if it continued to rain, it would be miserable to stand out there in the rain eating our food. We could not eat in the tent since we are in bear country. Luckily, the rain tapered off around 9:am.

We could not do anything that we really had planned for the day because everything was all wet and slippery. It was too warm for snow.

In the end, the kids decided to go up the Mist Trail, up to Vernal Falls. Caitlyn wanted to show her sister, since Emily opted not to join us on our hike to Half Dome. Emily wanted to see it since she had never been there. The trail was still fairly crowded despite the previous weather.

Considering that it just rained, I didn't think that the waterfall was very big. We hiked up past the crowds a bit beyond the top of the falls to find a quiet place to have a late lunch and then decided to go back down to do some aid climbing back at the Le Conte Boulder.

Actually, it was just Emily and Christian. Caitlyn and I took pictures.

She did the Kor Practice Aid Ladder! She was able to do it all on her own except for one bolt. She has grown a lot since we have been here but was still unable to reach all the bolts and ended up using a stick clip to get past it, but she made it to the top.

Christian went up quickly after her as he's done it before.

It was starting to get cold and dark by the time they finished but there was still a little bit of daylight left, so Christian had Emily try The Hooker again. She seemed to have a harder time on this one that the massively overhanging Kor Practice one!

There was still one bolt on here that she could not quite reach again and had to use the stick clip once again. I think last time she did this one, Christian just left a hanging quickdraw for her.

That was pretty much the end of our day. We returned to camp for a quick dinner and more Ranger films.

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Day 3 was mostly clear but cold. We took the opportunity to do some climbing, although, I would not go so far as to say that the rock was exactly dry.

We went to the Glacier Point Apron area, thinking that the sun would hit there first and dry the rock. We were wrong, we never quite got any sun. We could see it out by the falls and other areas across from us, but we never could catch any sun rays.

First, we all climbed up on The Goblet, Right. 

Then we climbed a difficult slab variation in the center.

Caitlyn made it look easy but there were some pretty difficult parts for the rest of us.

Christian and Emily also climbed The Goblet, Left.

The views were fantastic, but after a while, it started to get pretty chilly, especially since the sun never reached us to warm us up at any point. 

Because the weather forecast for the evening was supposed to be more rain/snow continuing into the morning, we thought that it would be pretty pointless to stay another night. Even if the storm stopped in the morning, everything would be all wet once again, and we would not be able to climb anything. We had done most of the touristy things we wanted to do in the valley and didn't want to stay another night and have to pack up a bunch of wet gear in the morning so, we decided to end the trip a day early and head home.

November Update

The kids got their grades for the first quarter of the school year. Emily started off super strong at the beginning of the year, but her grades waned quite a bit in her two weakest subjects by the end of the grading period. History and English takes too much reading and writing for her to keep her grades up without putting a substantial amount of effort into doing what she does not like to do. It's a bit frustrating for her to do A-level work in most of her assignments and tests, only to get a much lower grade in the end because she just flat out refuses to do several assignments or turn them in late. I was really hoping she would crack down and take her grades more seriously now that she is in High School, but so far, it does not seem to be the case. She is still doing really well in her other classes, so at least there's that.

Caitlyn did pretty good in her first quarter of Jr. High but struggled a bit in her accelerated math class. She seemed to understand everything for the most part, but did poorly in tests. In the end, she cracked down and did everything she could to raise her grades and by the end of the grading period, she had straight A's in every class. Plus, every A was pretty strong in all her classes. I was a little worried she was falling into some of Emily's bad habits using her Chromebook. And she does waste some time occasionally doing things that she shouldn't be doing until she finishes her work, but for the most part, she appears to be doing her work, and it certainly reflects that in her grades.

Her teachers did warn us that Caitlyn would have quite a bit more homework than Emily had in structuring their new "Honors" track at school. That certainly seems to be true since Caitlyn seems to finish her homework later than even Emily in High School...but that may be just because Emily refuses to do certain assignments.
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Christian had a birthday. We gave part of his present early as it was something he really needed and we bought it a bit early because of a sale and wanted to make sure that it worked.

For the rest of it, we waited as long as we could but realized that we would be too busy to properly celebrate on his actual birthday. His birthday this year landed on a Wednesday, so after work, he would get to come home for dinner and then have to leave again for his new calling in Scouts.

So we ended up celebrating his birthday the day before. I made him a Brazilian meal with crepe cake made from Doce de Leite (a caramelized condensed milk product) he got from a visiting scientist from Brazil that had worked in his lab. I got to use my new crepe pan that I got from my birthday! It worked out pretty good, but I didn't quite have enough time to chill and set it before we served it, so it was a little hard to cut and serve the pieces.

We opened the rest of his presents after dinner. It's so much better not to have him have to rush off after everything to go to Scouts.

On his actual birthday, we had enough leftover dinner and dessert from the day before. The crepe cake and finally set and was a lot easier to handle. We saved a few little token presents for Christian to open on his actual birthday. The kids made him a really neat exploding box. Unfortunately, I didn't take any more pictures. 

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We had our 19th wedding anniversary. We had a special dinner at home. Christian got us a lamb shoulder, so I braised that and made a Boston Cream Crepe Cake for dessert. Can you tell that I'm still on a crepe kick? 

This year also marked our 27th year together. Happy Anniversary Christian!

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Christian has been spending most available moments working on or researching problems on my Trooper. We've replaced the radiator and got new CV boots (inner and outer). Next will be the timing belt and rear springs. As my car gets older, it seems that everything seems to need replacement all at the same time!

El Cajon Quarry

Last weekend, we went to the El Cajon Quarry to do some aid climbing practice. The weather finally cooperated (for the most part), so we took advantage and headed down to San Diego. We were practicing on the Bolt Ladder. It is a two pitch aid climb up 100'.

Emily actually went up the bolt ladder, at least to the top of the first pitch. She's had some pretty good practice so far and she did great.

I just jumared to the top of the first pitch to belay Christian up the second pitch. Jumaring is still difficult for me, but we are starting to figure it out.

It was still pretty warm out there. There was not a lot of shade but we made due with what we could find. The girls hid in the shade of a bush to work on puzzles or read while they waited for us.

After Christian finished the route, Caitlyn and Emily jumared up to the top of the first pitch while Christian practiced setting up the portaledge.

Caitlyn seems to be a jumaring monkey. She just races up the line like it is nothing, while I struggle most of my way up!

After everybody was up, we pretty much had to pack up and head out so that we could see our way back down the trail while having enough light to see if there are any snakes curled up in our path!

Halloween

Last weekend, we attended the Dean's annual Halloween party.

The kids dressed up to hang out with their friends. Emily went as a pirate. Caitlyn dressed as a mummy. That outfit was more than we bargained for. The strips of cloth didn't stay where we wrapped it so we ended up having to sew little tacks in everywhere to keep it in place. It was a nightmare but turned out pretty nice. Christian and I were going to dress up, but he spent all day working on my car and I spent too much time working on treats to bring to the party and Caitlyn's outfit so in the end, we were too tired to do anything.

The kids played games but in the end, we left fairly early. We had not had any dinner and there was not a whole lot of food at the party. The food I brought all but disappeared at the blink of an eye while we spoke to the hosts. I barely got a taste of the food I made. Plus, we were pretty tired.

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On Friday, I took the girls to our church chili dinner and trunk or treat. Christian stayed home to prepare for our trip to El Cajon. The girls just put on the same outfits they had on before. This time, we wrapped Caitlyn up without sewing any of the loose pieces together. They did not stay together too well. By the end of the night (after playing in the bounce house), she looked like she was in a fight! I forgot my camera as we were running a bit late and didn't take any more pictures.

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On the actual Halloween day, which was on a Monday this year, we stayed home. I made a meal in a pumpkin. While it tasted pretty good, it wasn't quite cooked enough, even though I baked it for an extra 20 to 30 minutes. I think next time, I will have to bake it for two hours or increase the temperature. 

We did not get any trick or treaters.

Joshua Tree

We had been waiting for months for the weather to cooperate enough for us to go climbing again. It was a beautiful weekend and we headed to Joshua Tree. Unfortunately, it was one of the only things that was working out.

We headed to Split Rocks in Joshua Tree. Our first climb of the day was supposed to be an easy 5.4 climb called Nectar to get us warmed up. The kids were supposed to practice leading.

Christian went first to check out the route. It was a little more difficult than we expected but not anything that we couldn't handle.

Emily had a couple of stalls, but was able to lead the route without too much trouble.

I ended up just top roping the route after I saw that it wasn't that easy for Emily. I got a T-DaP booster and flu shot the day before and my left arm was pretty sore.

Caitlyn was given the choice of how she wanted to climb as well since we have not climbed in a while and this would be her limit for leading. She chose to just top rope the route as well.

Unfortunately, she froze up just a little after getting started. Emily had some trouble at the same spot but she figured it out and continued on her way. When Caitlyn freezes up, she becomes scared and unresponsive. She won't try (even though she is being held up on a top rope and is perfectly safe). She also won't come down, so she just stands there, clinging to the rock while one of us has to hold on to her rope until she decides to snap out of it. This can sometimes take an hour or more (which it did). It is very tiring and very trying to our patience.

Emily and I played around on the slab, which was part of the approach to this climb, while we waited for Caitlyn to decide what she was going to do. When Caitlyn finally started moving again, she didn't seem to have any trouble getting up the route.

After Caitlyn finally finished the route, Christian tried to have her go up again, this time, just practicing mock leading to get her comfortable with climbing and so that she knows that she can do it without panicking. She ended up stopping at the same spot again.

By this time, two poseurs were coming up to our route. They wanted to use the rope Emily and I were playing on to climb up. Since they looked like a couple of drunk, possibly stoned, jerks, we did not want to be liable for any part of them hurting themselves and so, refused them the use of our old fraying rope. We figured that if they could not even get up to the start of the climb, they had no business being on the rock anyway.

I told Christian to just make Caitlyn come down so that he could climb his route. She finally came back down but Christian was pretty irritated and decided to leave. After some time of placing and pulling on their gear, the idiot poseurs finally made it up about this same time and talked a bunch of smack about climbing the hard routes that were up there.

We decided to leave and the idiots started blasting their music as they sat there "contemplating" their climb.  Caitlyn and I got cleaned up to rappel down while Christian and Emily climbed around a bit in the back side of the rock.

After we got back down, the two obnoxious poseurs came back down too, without climbing a single thing. We kept wondering why they kept looking our way when we were rappelling down. They were essentially waiting for us to leave so that they could get back down too after they annoyed the hell out of us and finished sitting their spraying about climbs they had no intention and probably no ability to climb.

We had our dinner and called it a day. It was a less than productive day back climbing.

ER

Christian and I spent the better half of Saturday in the emergency room. Christian woke up early with some severe pains in his lower abdomen which got progressively worse. After a couple of hours of writhing in pain and throwing up, we ended up rushing him to the emergency room. We left the kids at home.

They set him up with pain medication and anti-nausea medication with his IV. He got a CT scan and we waited for the results. The initial pain medication didn't do much of anything but the second dose seemed to take the edge off enough for him to rest a bit more. At some point, it was bearable enough for him to take a nap...if the monitor didn't go off constantly because of his slow heart rate. Between that and the machine going off occasionally to take his blood pressure and having to get up constantly to use the restroom because they gave him three bags of IV fluid, rest was pretty fleeting.

Finally, in the afternoon, the results of his CT scan was in. He had a kidney stone about 2mm big. The only thing we could do was wait to flush it out of his system. They had just given him his 3rd IV bag, so we decided to let it run through since it was the fastest way to flush so much liquid through his system.

Once it was finished, they processed his papers for him to go home and we picked up some drugs to help as we continued to wait for it to get flushed out.

We got a hold of some friends to go check on the girls, give them an update on the situation and had them log into their computer so that we could chat with them.

In the end, we are not sure if he actually did get it out at the hospital or not. We couldn't tell because Christian felt so awful from the trauma of the ordeal and the drugs. He did not feel as bad anymore, but didn't feel good still with some residual waves of pain. He took some of his medication that day but tapered off the day after until he was sure that it was no longer a problem and actually went to work Monday morning.

It was a pretty stressful and traumatizing weekend for us all...not to mention painful for Christian. Apparently, once you get kidney stones, you are susceptible to getting them again and again in the future. We think that it is possible that he has had them before, but we had dismissed it to his stomach not agreeing with something he ate, or something to that effect. It was just never this severe and lasting so long. But we are definitely thankful that it is not something even worse.