September

Not much of note happened through September.

The kids got to play some prelude music on the organ one Sunday. That was pretty cool. Emily was scheduled to give a talk that day as well, so she thought it was pretty unfair to have to be up there so much that day. But the kids did well and we thought that it was pretty neat.
--------
Emily is doing much better in school this year so after she got her first progress report, we let her go back to soccer practice. They had already had tryouts, so it was a little late, but since she played last year already, they were not so concerned with her late start. However, because of last year's performance, she is pretty much skating on thin ice with us though, so if her grades start to drop or if she even misses an assignment, she won't get to go to practice or play at all. We'll see how it goes. She usually does pretty well at the beginning of the term and peters off at some point but she is still going pretty strong so everyone is happy.
--------
Caitlyn and her friend had a brief inclination to join cross country but after we took them on a hike over the summer, we got them to drop that notion as they would have to run over similar trails in the heat of the summer for practice. She has no interest in any other sports, although Emily and her friends tried to get her to join soccer.

Instead she has joined a couple of clubs on campus. She is giving ASU (Asian Student Union) and Art Club a try. She showed some interest in joining Key Club but they meet on the same days as ASU and has only made a slight effort in attending any of their meeting so nothing has materialized on that front.
--------
I had my birthday this past month. My sister and mom came over to take me out to lunch. Christian joined us as well. We ended up at this little gastro pub downtown for some Pork Belly Burgers. Actually, my sister and I tried the Pork Belly Burgers and my mom and Christian decided to try a portobello sandwich, so we all shared and got to try both. Christian is going to try to make the Pork Belly sandwiches at home and see how that turns out. It was pretty tasty.

Unfortunately, that was it for our plans as Christian and I had to be at church that afternoon for Primary practice for the Primary Program. It was to be the last practice before the program and they provided pizza for dinner afterwards. The girls had leftovers at home for their dinner.

Christian did get me a really neat and fancy wheat grinder for my birthday though. It grinds wheat effortlessly in minutes. Previously, we were doing it all by hand and it took hours. You can imagine that we only did it in fits and starts as it was kind of a pain in the butt to use.

August

Emily finally returned from her trip with Grandpa Caldwell. She was a bit dismayed at how hot it is still here. We had her show us her pictures and catalogue them, work on her journal so that she would not forget, but we all know how well that worked out.

The girls were invited over to their friends' house for some end of the summer fun. They had made these big slides in their backyard. The kids missed the previous party since we were out visiting my mom and helping her move. The best consolation for missing it was that we got to make Doong or Zongzi (粽子). The kids love them and I'm pretty sure my mom won't be making them anymore. It is too much work for her now. She handed over some of her supplies to Christian. Neither of my siblings' families are very big fans of them. 

But I digress, it was not a good time of the month for Caitlyn, so only Emily got to play on the slides. Caitlyn came with me to say hello and drop Emily off. I snapped off a few pictures before leaving.

Emily's friend didn't want to play on the slides as she doesn't like to mess up her hair or get dirty or some other nonsense like that. Emily was on her own for a while and made the best of it by entertaining her younger brothers. The oldest sister had the same problem as Caitlyn and just stuck around a bit to help out. Emily's other friends came later and she got to have more fun.

--------

We had the girls volunteer at this international summer camp for Chinese students visiting from China. They changed locations at the last minute and it also ended up conflicting with the kids registration and orientation schedules so they ended up only going for two days. They are supposed to get service credit for helping. They need it for their high school requirements. The girls mostly enjoyed it. It was an interesting experience for them but the camp doesn't seem like it is put together very well.

--------

Emily and Caitlyn had to go in to register for their classes, pick up their books and schedules since school will start next week.

This will be Caitlyn's first year in high school...so a big change for her. She also attended the orientation at the end of the week to get her familiarized with the school. Plus they get class t-shirts from school, so she definitely wanted to get that.

This has been the shortest summer ever. It's so unfair that the kids got cheated out of two weeks of their summer. Plus, except for Emily, we didn't get to do hardly anything this summer. When you add the record breaking heat we've been having, it's been a pretty miserable summer. I wish I could say that at least Caitlyn had a productive summer, but she didn't finish her history project and didn't even begin her other projects so I'm not sure what she's been doing all summer.

Emily's Big Summer Trip

So this post is about a month overdue. I encouraged, threaten and cajoled, but could not get Emily to give me some pictures from her trip and write about it in her journal. She started writing it, but couldn't be bothered to finish it. She picked out her favorite pictures but never sent them to me. So, here we are, part way into the school year and I have not made my post.

I finally gave up on her and put what I could together from a couple of pictures she originally took with her iPod and sent to me while on the trip when she had WiFi, a few pictures that Christian's sister texted to him while they were there, and a couple of pictures that I got from Christian's dad afterwards. She hasn't even returned the camera she borrowed from Christian to take all those pictures that we didn't get on her trip or my SD card that she borrowed for the camera.

Christian's dad came very early Sunday morning, July 22nd to pick her up. They headed out on the road and met up with Erin's family in St. George, Utah for lunch. I know that they stopped in Tooele where Grandpa Caldwell was born and they apparently visited the cemetery where his dad (Christian's Grandfather and Emily's Great Grandfather) is buried. Emily apparently took a fall in the parking lot or something and never ended up recording any of it for us. I never could quite get a full story of what happened so I am presuming that she was doing something stupid with her cousins at the time.

They stayed with friends of Erin's family while out there. In the morning, they headed out to Idaho. Emily's cousin Mason is going to school at BYU Idaho currently. They planned to pick him up along with his girlfriend (fiancee?). Emily and the younger cousins were supposed to get a tour of the campus. Christian tried to set it up for her a week ago but never heard back from them. They finally contacted him after they already took the tour. Apparently, they were having commencement ceremony's that day and they got a very abbreviated tour of campus. They gave them from free swag and sent them on their way....all of which was nice, I guess...but less than helpful.

That evening, after Mason and his girlfriend got off work, they all headed out to the cabin in Yellowstone where they would be staying for the next couple of nights.
--------
On their first day in Yellowstone, they went hiking around to see a bunch of geysers and hot springs, including Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic.

On the second day in Yellowstone, they went to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which includes  Yellowstone Falls.

They got to do some swimming somewhere near there.

The next day, the party split up with Erin's family heading back to Utah and then home, Mason and his girlfriend were going to go visit her parents and Terry and Emily heading out to Montana to visit with Terry's brother (Christian's Uncle Tony).

--------

Tony has a cattle ranch in Montana. He raises Red Angus breeding stock. He puts up his own hay still. Emily got a small glimpse of what life on a ranch is like. Terry went out of his way to take her around to a few places in Montana to keep her entertained.

On their first full day there, he took her to the World Museum of Mining in Butte. It rained after that, so they headed back to the ranch.

The next day was Sunday, so Terry and Emily ventured into town to attend Sacrament Meeting but did not attend the full block of meetings. They stayed home that day to hang out and visit with the family. Uncle Tony took them back into town for dinner.

On Monday, they went to another museum in Helena. On Tuesday they went to Georgetown Lake. Apparently, Emily got to do some more swimming.

They also stopped by in Phillipsburg to go to The Sweet Palace and loaded up on a bunch of candy.

They made their way home after that. They spent the night in Nevada before continuing on their journey home.

As far as I know, the best part of her trip to Yellowstone was of course, seeing new and beautiful places but also, hanging out with her cousins.

And the best part of her stay in Montana, was Uncle Tony's basement, where she got to stay. She said that it was so cool and quiet, she never wanted to leave.

July

July seemed to be an excruciatingly long month. The heat was unbearable most of the time.

Between the heat and dealing with our neighbors noisy dogs, we didn't get much rest. They had a couple of huskies, which was fine for the most part, except that they did't take very good care of them. Then they decided to breed them and they had 3 to 5 puppies...I'm not even sure exactly how many. The puppies mostly stayed inside of the house. They kept separating the dogs and they would whine and howl until they were let back in. The worst was when they were weaning the puppies and the mother would make noise for hours and hours until they came home again (sometimes late into the night). Once, it even broke the backdoor window trying to get in to her puppies. They lived in deplorable conditions. Most of the time they would lie in their own filth with little or no shade in temperatures over 100 degrees, sometimes with no water or food. The dogs looked mangy and half starved. They shed most of their fur...which was lying in clumps all over their yard.

We tried talking to the neighbors but that was useless. We tried getting help from animal control, but they were not much help either. They finally started getting rid of them one by one but this situation dragged on for a couple of months. The mother husky was the only one left in the end and then it just disappeared one day. Not sure if they finally managed to kill it off or if they got rid of it. But it was replaced with a new dog by the end of the month. What joy is ours.
--------
We spent Fourth of July with our friends the Dean's who has their annual firework viewing party downtown. They live on a hill in view of Mt. Rubidioux. It's always good to visit with old friends. The Christensen's put on an excellent bbq for it as usual. Christian took the opportunity of being around so many teens to interview some of them for a project for his adolescence psychology class this term.
--------
We spent a couple of weekends here and there helping my mom move. We had to sort through a lot of stuff to help her get rid of all necessary things that she's collected over the years. She's moving into my sister's house and she's going to rent out her house to help pay for my dad's care. It's going to be a long process.
--------
Emily finished her summer school to make up for the World Lit class she didn't do so well in this past year. She did pretty well in it and has picked up her gpa a bit. We still think their summer school is a bit of a cheat just to get kids not to fail or flunk out entirely. Still, Emily said that some kids flunked it a second time at the end.
--------
The girls continue their organ lessons and even got to take a small "field trip" to the stake center to check out the bigger organ there.

Their lessons are coming along nicely. They continue their piano practice along with practicing at the organ a couple times a week for a short period of time.

--------

Marian came over to visit with the girls. She does an annual Christmas in July kind of thing with us. She took them out to the movies and then we met up and she took us out for more sushi. The girls just love it.

She got them a ton of back to school supplies: backpacks, clothes, school supplies and a bunch of snacks. It was pretty insane.

--------

We didn't have much else going on. I worked on putting up our summer apples. The girls played occasionally with the neighborhood kids. Emily left for her trip to BYU Idaho, Yellowstone and Montana with her grandfather. More on that in my next post.

Caitlyn and Christian just did homework. We wanted to do a small weekend camping trip but in the end, decided that it was just too hot to do much of anything. The other places we considered going to was on fire so we stayed holed up in our house most of the time. The summer started off fairly well but in the end, it seemed to be the hottest summer in history. Even with us at home watering the plants all the time, a lot of them suffered and got damaged from the constant high temperatures. All our grapes shriveled up and turned into raisins before they could even fully develop. The guavas all dropped their fruit and many of the developing lemons did as well. Even our oak tree has damaged dried up leaves all over the tree.
--------
Christian and I did manage to take Caitlyn out bowling one night before Emily got back. She had never tried it before and Christian and I had not been bowling since some time in college. We played three games. The first one, Caitlyn and I did a lot of alley balls. Christian either did really well or just as badly as we were doing for a while. We started to get a hang of it during the second game. By the third, Caitlyn seemed to get too tired and gave up. I think Christian won the first two games and I won the last one but the overall score was also higher than theirs. We all managed to get a strike in there somewhere and a few spares to boot. Christian even got two strikes in a row but couldn't quite manage a third.

We had a pretty good time and was glad that we could get out of the house for a short while to take Caitlyn out for a little fun.

June

The kids are finally out of school, but there isn't that much of a change since Emily had to start summer school the following Monday. Not much time off. She has 6 hours of World Lit every day for   the next four weeks to make up her grade in that class. She is not loving it. But she is doing better, so that's good. I just don't see how they can genuinely get the same education in two weeks, even going to class for 6 hours a day as in a semester of high school. They don't even have any homework!
------
While Marian was over visiting for Caitlyn's promotion, we asked what the girls wanted to do for their dad for Father's Day. Christian had class that evening so we had a bit of time to run some errands if they wanted to. They decided to do a bunch of chores around the house for him. Marian made out a big list for them. They started that evening and every time their dad left to go study or class, they would work their little hoofies off doing chores around the house. They dusted, ironed a couple of his shirts, cleaned the windows, washed his car, swept the driveway, did some gardening, etc. And since it was a weekend, they did all of it on top of their normal chores of cleaning their bathroom and the floors. It was something to behold.

Of course, even though Christian left early and came back late, he couldn't help but notice some of the things around the house. Emily even made him dinner after church on Sunday.

It helped that Marian also gave them the incentive of taking them back out for sushi again if they actually accomplished everything on the list. I don't think that she actually thought that they would complete it. To be honest, knowing my kids, I didn't think they would either! We were pleasantly shocked.
--------
Caitlyn met up with her best friend Aubrey to swim shortly after school ended. Emily joined them at the pool.

It was really nice at the pool. It was not as crowded as usual. Unfortunately, Aubrey couldn't stay for the whole thing as her parents had other plans for them.

--------

Caitlyn and Aubrey then planned to go to Castle Park the next week. They tried to get their friends to join them but it didn't work out. They got in free with the good grades award program. Castle Park tried to say that they didn't have the incentive any longer but Aubrey is a really outgoing and outspoken kid and wouldn't take any of that. She had them call the manager over and showed them the program on their own website before they would let them in. So sad that they would try to cheat a couple of kids out of their hard earned award.

--------

The week after that, Caitlyn spent the week in a coding camp at UCR. We had high hopes for this program. We were really disappointed when we had to give up Emily's spot in the camp because of her summer school.

When we dropped her off for her first day, we were a little worried as they seemed a bit disorganized and unprepared. Then we found out that they did not teach the kids any actual coding using computer language but just used this MIT App Inventor that uses built in blocks of code to program. This is what I would have expected at some elementary school as an intro to programming. This is not what I expected from UCR. It was sad.

She still had a lot of fun I suppose. They were there for 8 hours a day for a whole week. They provided them with lunch at the dorms and at the Panda Express on campus so Caitlyn thought that was pretty neat. Plus they got to eat pretty well. They took some time to give the kids a tour of campus and they played a scavenger hunt around campus on different days. Being near the University means that Caitlyn has already had a half a dozen tours of campus already.

They did their "coding" on a desktop computer in one of the computer labs but they ran them on an android device...which means that they all got little Kindle Fires for camp which they got to take home. She's pretty happy about that. Plus she got to meet a new friend there.

--------

In addition, Caitlyn managed to pass off another level of Piano. She was going through Alfred's Basic Piano Prep Course Level C. She will start level D now. Caitlyn was ahead of Emily for a while, but a couple of months ago, Christian bribed Emily to put some effort into continuing her Piano. She has to play everyday for 3 months and she will get a cell phone out of the deal. She had been really dedicated to putting in her practice and is now ahead of Caitlyn again, if only by a little. But it's nice because she will do all her practice without us having to tell her or remind her (for the most part). She doesn't whine or complain about it at all (that was part of the deal as well).

The reason for the big piano push since they haven't put in very much effort to learn is because someone at church has offered to teach them to play the organ. Many of the people that actually know how to play the organ are getting older and will not be around forever. She wants to make sure that the future generations don't lose the ability and end up having to use pre-programmed organ music during service. Both girls are actually pretty excited to learn it.

Caitlyn's 8th Grade Promotion

The school year has finally come to an end. Caitlyn has finished middle school. She managed to maintain a 4.0 throughout. We are very proud of her.

As usual, her school had the promotion ceremony at the local high school. They just piggy back off of the high school's setup which had their graduation ceremony the evening before. The middle school uses the same setup the next morning. They were supposedly cracking down and making sure that parents followed more strict guidelines. There was even a police presence there. We got a note in the mail detailing the rules and several phone calls with the same message.

Still, when arriving at the school, lots of people were trying to bring in balloons, which were banned. They did make most of them bring them back to their cars or leave them outside of the stadium. However, there were still lots of people with umbrellas, which were also banned. No one bothered making them put them away. Someone still had a noise maker, although, much less than usual, I didn't see any of the police men working their way over tho their direction to do anything about it.

People still brought snacks and drinks, which were also supposedly banned and they never bothered to do any of the bag checks they claimed were going to happen.

The only saving grace was that it wasn't too hot and it was a relatively short ceremony. You can only stand them blaring music at you at unreasonable volumes so long. It was so loud, you had to shout in the ear of the person next to you to be heard like some rock concert.

Marian made ribbon leis for Caitlyn and all her friends so we had to round them up to give them their leis and take pictures. We managed to find everyone except her best friend who apparently took off early with her parents shortly after the ceremony finished.

It is always crazy at the end and difficult to find everyone so she ended up with only one group picture and individual pictures with the rest of her friends, except for the one that obviously left!

Marian took most of the day off to come. She still had to work a bit remotely from our house. She also took everyone out to lunch for sushi. Well, the kids got normal lunch specials and were able to try some sushi with their normal California rolls and teriyaki chicken. Surprisingly, they both liked it.

She brought a bunch of gifts as well for Caitlyn.

Caitlyn's history teacher that she assists bought her yearbook for her and gave her an Amazon gift card to boot. A lot of the teachers and some of the administrators are going to really miss Caitlyn and her friends.

Caitlyn

The school year is almost over. Caitlyn had her 8th grade award ceremony the other night. It was more of an irritation that anything.

As usual, it was crowded and many of the families were badly behaved...so we were pretty irritated before it even began. A good quarter of the kids getting awards didn't even show up to get them. They spent an inordinate amount of time on little specialty awards that had little significance. Spending time on awards that were not really available to all the kids and spending time giving awards to adults that worked at the school or helped out. This assembly should be for the kids who worked hard all year. Isn't that the purpose of sending our kids there?

Caitlyn got an award for history. She also got called for some bilingual award which she didn't even go up for because she thought (and for good reason) that it must have been a mistake). We thought that they must have made a mistake as she had only taken one measly quarter of Spanish last year during this weird elective rotation they put the kids on and could barely remember any of it.

Then they sped through the last awards which was the President's Academic Awards. You had to have a high GPA all year for this since they were in actuality giving the award before the year was officially over. They called the names one after the other with no pause for the kids to even make their way up. It was in no kind of order and we thought that they were going to pass over Caitlyn entirely (who has had a 4.0 gpa during her entire middle school career)  but called her up at the very end. Before they finished calling her name, the stampede of ill behaved parents were already surging forward shaking the stands we were sitting on and blocking our view somewhat of Caitlyn receiving her award.

In fact, the school normally has an award ceremony after the first semester for the kids but didn't bother to acknowledge them then either. They did manage to arrange a weeklong string of activities for those with perfect attendance because that's all they care about. They claim it is because attendance matters because there is a correlation between attendance and performance, but in actuality, they only care about attendance because that is how the school gets their money. So, as long as you show up all the time, they bend over backwards to pat you on the back. Actual performance means very little to them.

Now that I think of it, the school didn't do anything for the kids who worked hard and performed well, since the award they received was from the President...not the school. The school did nothing but tack on the delivery of these awards at the end of their own award ceremony, spending as little time and energy on it as possible.