June Gloom

Christian took his Physics CSET for his teaching credential at the beginning of the month. We didn't know how he did. He was pretty stressed out about it. He will not be able to find out the results for many weeks yet and we had to worry about whether he will have his job come fall. And to make things worse, there is currently a hiring freeze for teachers because of all this COVID crap. If he loses his job because he doesn't have his preliminary credential, he won't be able to get a job elsewhere either. His school district started to call him a couple of weeks later trying to find out the status. Luckily, they decided to get him another emergency credential so that he could keep his job. So that was a great relief, but we still worried about it. It causes all kinds of complications and uncertainty.

But by the end of the month, we finally got the results and he passed! Now we just have to hassle Brandman to forward all the necessary information to his district. Hopefully he will be working with his preliminary credential at the beginning of the fall instead of the emergency credential as he will still have a lot of work to do to proceed from there.
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After Christian's test, we had a small gathering for Emily's graduation. Terry, Jackie and Marian came by for a small celebration.

She got a giant toilet paper roll diploma from Marian! Emily also got a laptop for college.

It's pretty nice. She's pretty happy with it. Grandpa Terry gave her some money for her college fund.

We used it to open her checking account. Unfortunately, because she has no driver's license or California ID, I am still on the account with her. Hopefully we will be able to remedy that soon...one way or another.

Marian also brought some early Christmas presents for the girls. She said that they could open them if they cleaned her car...so they did!

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When Terry came for the party, he brought back his Trooper for Christian to continue working on it. He needed new wheel bearings in the back and some control arm bushings in the front and a few other minor things. Christian agreed to do it to help his dad and Terry got him a tool to do it that we also needed for the XJ wheel bearings which also needed.

The wheel bearings took at least a week of serious work but we got it in and we were pretty happy and relieved. We test drove it for a bit and the noise in the back seemed to be gone. We pretty much started the next maintenance issue on the Trooper right after we completed the bearings and everything became complicated and was pretty much a disaster. We found something wrong with everything that someone tried to fix. It was totally ridiculous. We got problems from stripped bolts to missing washers and just general shoddy and unsafe practice with the wiring. On top of that, the engine bay and the undercarriage was totally filthy. Christian easily used another 5 gallons of Purple Stuff and spent hours and hours spraying and washing off filth. 

We found that leaking oil and some unknown substance that was poured down the passenger side of the engine bay had corroded a lot of the wiring and disintegrated a lot of the bushings. We went in to replace the control arm bushings but we could not get them out with out taking out the entire front end. When the front axle came out we found those bushings were toast as well. We could not find replacements so Christian had to fabricate some himself. Everything was this complicated and we found some kind of obstacle every step of the way. We had to stop to research and order more parts during the whole process. Meanwhile, the rest of us helped out where we could. We scrubbed all the grime and some rust off the parts. Emily helped chase most of the threads on the bolts and tap all the holes. 

Every waking moment for the rest of the month was consumed with getting the Trooper out of our driveway. 

Putting the Trooper back together was almost just as complicated. Christian could not get some of the parts back in without removing even more parts. It was just ridiculous.

Just when we thought we would be close to completing the thing, we found out that Christian's youngest brother Garth was back in the hospital and the prognosis was not good. We planned to go down to San Diego without the Trooper to be with the family. Even Christian's mom drove back down from Oregon. He passed away the night before we had planned to go down. It was actually during the early morning hours of June 27th.

Emily is Gradumuated!

Well, it is official. Emily finished high school. She did manage to get one of her grades up during the whole distance learning thing. She had a high B+ and after completing all of two extra assignments, she managed to get an A- in Biology. Overall, she still probably got some of the best grades in high school this last year.

She and all the graduating class of 2020 got cheated of most of their senior experience though. No prom, no grad night, no real graduation at all. She doesn't miss most of that stuff because it also meant no senior exhibition and no final exams. There are a bunch of small stuff that was planned as well that never happened. Mostly she misses her friends.

They had a "drive-by" graduation. The senior class was divided up by alphabet over three days. We drove in, she got out and they called her name for her to walk, they took pictures and she got back into the car.

It took all of 30 seconds. One person was allowed to get out of the car to snap a picture as long as they were wearing a mask. The worst part was that she had to wear a mask for her pictures and the stupid "professional" photographer was standing in the way of mine. Caitlyn was in the car too but she was not even allowed to get out.

She got a nice cover for her diploma. A few days later, she had her senior "check-out" so that the seniors could return their books and any equipment or uniforms that were checked out to them and pay any fines so that they could pick up their actual diploma.

They will have a virtual graduation tonight. We had picked up her cap and gown earlier this month and took pictures to submit for her virtual graduation. They could also record a little ten second optional video moving their tassel over and giving a quick shout out. Emily declined. They were also supposed to write a few words that they would use with her picture.

Someone dropped off a quick seminary graduation gift for her which was nice. She completed the rest of her seminary by sending in pictures of her seminary journal and attending a zoom meeting once a week.

We are very proud of all Emily has accomplished. If everything re-opens, she will be attending BYU Idaho as a mechanical engineering major in the fall.

We are very excited for her to begin the next chapter of her life.

We love you Emily!

Mindless May

Another month of stay-at-home orders due to the CCP Virus and politicians drunk on their new found power. Staying at home is wearing pretty thin on all of us. We usually try to get out once a week but we probably only managed to get away once this month.

The kids are finishing up their "distance learning." They sit at their desks all day most of the time, but I can't tell if they are getting anything done or just mindlessly wasting time on their phones and computers. The teachers are so slow to input any grades. Some of the points for the work is so low that it wouldn't make much of a difference anyway. A few of their teachers (especially Emily's) hasn't posted any work for them since they stopped attending school physically...so mid-March. So as far as I can tell, the last quarter of school was a complete wash...nothing learned, nothing gained.

Christian is finishing up the work for his students and getting ready to post their final grades. Some of his kids don't do the work either but he has the highest percentage of kids actually doing work in his classes. Many of them have even been able to pick up their grades a level too.

The one time we went out for a drive this month, we went to the San Bernardino Mountains. We took Mill Creek Road. It would have been a really awesome trail if it were not for the people out there.

We actually went out on a Saturday, which was a big mistake. It was way too crowded. Lots of cars out there that did not have any business being on a 4x4 road, big groups out camping next to the river, people in dirt bikes and quads racing up and down tearing up the trails and getting in the way, but the worst was when we got to the end where there is apparently recreational shooting range. The shooting range itself wasn't necessarily a problem but the fact that people will then take the opportunity to line every nook and cranny near the range with spots to shoot whether it is safe or not because it opens up to where the road winds further along the trail is a problem. Add in all the trash they bring up there to shoot and do not bother to clean up after themselves and it is just an eyesore. There were people there that were shooting rifles to targets that were merely 10 paces away! We were mostly just afraid for our lives and was on edge until we were able to pull back out onto the main road. I'll tell you, we will not be driving that leg of the trail ever again!

The other "excitement" on our trail was when we took a detour up a steep hill. Christian was testing the ability of the Jeep and wanted to know how much he could push it. But we found out at the top of the hill that the trail went no-where. It was basically a steep drop on the other side, full of thick brush.  He tried to get the Jeep turned around to come back down but when the vehicle was perpendicular to the road, it started to teeter and we were afraid that he was going to roll it. Emily ran up and Christian had Emily hang off of the driver's side door to add some weight to keep it from tipping over. Caitlyn sat inside behind the driver (not that she adds that much weight!). Christian was able to maneuver it back down but it was intense.

So, yeah, there was probably a little too much excitement on that trip for my taste. 

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For mother's day, I got a new rice cooker. I had my old rice cooker since we got married. It was a wedding present from my sister but it has seen better days. The top doesn't lock on any more and it has a big dent in it. But the most irritating thing is that there was something wrong with the wiring so when you turned it on, some times it would go off while you were preparing the rest of the meal. Once you are done and ready to eat, we would find out that the rice was not cooked at all and we would have to restart it again and would not be able to eat for another 20 minutes.

Emily cleaned it up and took it apart. Christian found out the wire got a cut in it that we did not see because it was covered which was why sometimes it would not work. He cut it off and soldered on a new plug and it seems to work great now. Emily plans to take it with her to college even though it is a bit big for cooking for one!

I also got some new gardening clogs as my old one from Marian has a crack on the bottom and water gets in at the bottom of my right foot. I got a new potato masher too.

Christian made me Chicken Dai Bao with the help of the kids for dinner. He actually did not realize that it was Sunday initially and had planned to make me homemade english muffins the next morning. So I still got english muffins the next morning, it was just a little delayed. Plus,  I didn't have to make lunch the next day either as we had plenty of leftovers!

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Christian still spent a lot of time working on the Jeep. The biggest thing we are tackling right now is the heat soak problem. When we turn off the engine, it gets super hot in the engine bay. If we start the car back up, the heat causes a misfire code and sometimes the engine runs rough. We ordered new fuel injectors and got some fancy heat shields for it. It ran a lot better but did not solve the heat soak problem. So next, we ordered some louvers for the hood. There's a local place in El Cajon that makes nice ones.

We had to take the hood off and cut holes into it. That was a little worrisome but it came out really nice. Plus, it cools the engine bay by 20 or 30 degrees. However, it does not completely fix the heat soak problem. Even if it makes a big difference, we are still able to get the misfire. So the last step is to put in a relay that will turn the electric fan on for a few minutes after the engine turns off. This is only really effective since we put in the louvers for the heat to escape. We are really hoping that this will fix the problem once and for all.

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When Christian isn't working on the cars or his class, he is studying for his Physics CSET. He needs it to be able to continue teaching next year so he is pretty stressed about it. He was supposed to take it earlier but it got cancelled because of the coronavirus debacle.
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Emily's behind the wheel driving instruction had also been postponed several times. At this point, I think we have wasted hundreds of dollars and Emily will still not be able to get her license in time to go off to college. We tried to get our money back from he company and they relented to take her out. Well, I guess the manager or owner is going to do it himself. The DMV is still not fully operational. Who knows when we will be able to get an appointment for something like that. To top it all off, Emily has misplaced her permit!
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Caitlyn took her AP US History test. It was probably a waste of time as she didn't even finish it. Instead of the 3 or 4 hour test they normally took which had a mixture of multiple choice as well as open ended questions, it was only a 45 minutes online writing prompt. So after filling her notebook with 3 or 4 inches of notes, she has to prove her knowledge with one question. She was pretty upset about it.
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They are very slowly starting to let businesses open up a bit, but I don't know if it will be enough to save some of these small businesses. Many are still forced to be closed and some will never open back up again. Even some of the bigger businesses that were struggling will be closing some doors and unemployment is through the roof. We have been fortunate through most of this so far but it is still very stressful.

Caitlyn's Birthday and more...

When Christian's dad came by to get his Trooper worked on, he dropped off presents for the girls since he missed Emily's birthday and Caitlyn's birthday was around the corner.

They got some cashola and some fancy chocolates.

We were not planning for anything much on Caitlyn's birthday with all the craziness going on. Caitlyn requested a skillet potato dish for breakfast. One of her best friend's grandmother lives around the corner from us. She dropped off a present at our door from Aubrey. That was a nice surprise from her, especially since neither of the girls have had much contact with their friends since this all started.

Christian worked outside on the XJ for a while and had a staff meeting. We got to open presents afterwards.

Aubrey got her a fun game that the girls got to play.

The bulk of Caitlyn's presents were little odds and ends for her Jeep. Emily restored her signal lights for her with the headlight restoration kit she got for her truck. She also got some additional (mostly cosmetic) replacements for some damaged parts to make it nicer: fender liners, OS handles, the bracket for her lights.

Then she got a couple of non-Jeep gifts. She got a trench coat style jacket that she likes and some bluetooth head phones.

She requested a lemon cake for her birthday, so I made a lemon chiffon layer cake.

We were planning to go out near the Mojave desert the next day to roam around in the 4x4s so I had to prepare food for the next day as well. Caitlyn picked the area. We want to take the Mojave Trail some time in the future, so we just went to explore and find the start of the trail. 

In addition, we got the girls to start their own blogs this month. They saw Christian's blog and decide to make once similar to his. Emily wanted to take a picture of a train track for hers, so Caitlyn wanted to go somewhere so that she could do that. Mostly, she wanted to drive around in her Jeep a bit more.

So, for dinner, Caitlyn wanted tempura again. I cheated and just bought some frozen pre-made shrimp tempura and just stir fried some veggies to go with it over rice. It seemed like the easiest thing to do with so much going on.

We took some pictures at the train tracks near the Amboy Crater.

We passed near Kelso Dunes. Emily wanted to stop to play in it but it was way too hot for that and we still wanted to make it out to the Mojave area.

We saw a golden eagle nesting on on of the electric lines. There was a baby that bobbed up and down to see what was going on. Caitlyn caught a picture with her super zoom.

The Mojave National Preserve was really beautiful and lush. Spring was definitely in full swing here. I only got pictures of a few of the many blooming flowers out there. We stopped for a little while here to have lunch.

We also stopped by the train tracks by the Kelso Depot Visitor Center.

That might have been a mistake since there are a lot of people in the area and we were told by the security that we were not allowed out there, even though the trains have not run there for years.

Anyway, we thought it was time to get off onto paths less taken. We aired down the vehicles and went exploring.

We must have missed the turnout for the Mojave Trail as we did not see it, but we were having fun exploring and so we continued down the trail we were on anyway. We found ourselves at the edge of Nevada, so we headed over to Primm to get an icy Coke. We hit a fork in the trail. The one on the left said that it was for authorized vehicles only, so we took the one on the right. All of a sudden we found ourselves speeding down a dry lake bed. We could not find how to get off until we got to the end. Sure enough, when we looked back on the sign for the entrance of the place we were exiting, it said that it was also for authorized vehicles only. So I don't really know what the deal is. There were no signs one way or the other when we got on the trail. Apparently, they do a lot of desert racing out there, so it's not like a protected area, but we were still not technically supposed to be on it.

After we got some Coke and fries, we got gas for the XJ and headed back on the freeway...it's too bad because the dry lake bed was super fun! 

On our way back, we did find the beginning of the Mojave Road that we were looking for, so our mission was accomplished. It was getting late though, so we did not start the trail. Instead, we explored some other trails nearby. Unfortunately, since the gas out there was not very cheap, even in Nevada, Christian did not gas up his truck and we were starting to get a little low. We had dinner and decided to head back home. We ended up having plenty of gas but we did not get back until midnight!

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On Saturday, Marian surprised everyone by coming over to see Caitlyn. She brought more presents.

She even brought an early graduation present for Emily.

She is actually helping Emily get a laptop for college...if college actually opens back up in the fall!

She played some games with the kids while I made real tempura for our dinner. And she got us some boba for afterwards. She stayed and we chatted until pretty late. I don't think it has been unusually long since we have seen her but with all the "social distancing" crap going on, it was nice to catch up in person with a friend.

Absurd April

We are still under the "stay-at-home" order because of the CCP Coronavirus. School is basically over for the year. They will not be physically returning to school. They are starting their "distance learning" which is just online work on google classroom mostly. Unless they already have an A, it is in their best interest to still do the work because it can only bring their grades up. Caitlyn will most likely do the work regardless of whether she has an A already or not. Luckily, neither of them have anything lower than a B in any of their classes.

Christian has "office hours" for his kids or their parents to communicate with him on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. He has staff or department meetings on Tuesday and Wednesdays and he has to assign review work for his kids to do during the week.

We have been trying to get out on a trail or something on Thursdays to get some fresh air and regain some sanity to our week or we will go crazy. Not very many people are out where we normally go and when we go driving on the 4x4 trails, we don't hardly even get out of our vehicles.

The weather was still super nice out on the first week so we went to chase down some snowy trail up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is very frustrating as most of the trails we find are closed off for one reason or another. We waste a lot of time and gas driving around to see what trails are still accessible to us.

Christian's truck just drives through the snow like it isn't even there. The Jeep struggles a bit when it gets deep and powdery. Emily and I were following Christian up this snowy trail and we got stuck. She backed up to try to get a bit more momentum going but we fish-tailed and ended up diagonally in the deep snow. Christian came back to check on us. We had not aired down the tires yet so he did that and backed up quite a bit and was able to get enough momentum to just drive through the spot we had trouble at.

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We sucked it up and spent a day filing our taxes for the year even though they have postponed the due date since we should be getting a tax return for last year. That's always a nightmare of an experience.

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Since the whole family is home all the time, it seems that I spend the majority of my day cooking and cleaning. Three square meals a day, seven days a week. Christian decided the girls need to help out and continue learning how to cook and so now, the girls each cook dinner once a week. Christian normally cooks our Sunday night dinner actually, so that's three dinners every week that I get to take a break from! It gets hard to think of what to make all the time, so this gives me a break so I don't get burnt out. 

Emily mostly chooses something I normally make for them that she likes so that she can make it for herself when she is out on her own. She is the most capable in the kitchen as she has had the most practice.

Caitlyn has had the least experience in the kitchen, yet she finds her own recipes off the internet to experiment with. Sometimes it is really good and sometimes it is a bit more than she has bargained for but it's all tasty. It's kind of fun having different things.

Caitlyn also made us some kimchi! This is actually her second batch. It's really good and nice to have on hand to make other dishes. She originally made it so that she can make us some bimbimbap.

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When Christian isn't doing school work, then he's in the garage working on one of the vehicles. He is catching up on a lot of maintenance that needed to be done. All of our vehicles have never run so well! But with four vehicles, three being pretty old, there is a lot of work that needs to be done, especially on the Jeep since it was previously owned by several people and Christian has found problems with all the work they've done on it. They have either not kept up with the maintenance or they "fixed" it but did a poor job of it. They either damaged something in the process or didn't torque down anything and it works itself loose.

He has basically flushed all of our radiators and brake lines. The Ranger is pretty much done. It hasn't run this well in years. It is essentially ready for Emily to take. There may be a few parts here and there that we may still replace for her but it will be trivial compared to the work they have already put into it. Emily has worked with Christian through most of it. She has learned so much about the vehicle itself and how to do most of the maintenance work to keep it going. She is very capable and mechanically inclined, so she has picked up on everything pretty well. 

She has also started to learn how to drive a manual transmission (since that is what is on the Ranger). She has been very discouraged. It has been quite difficult for her. Christian was taking her out on the streets since she is able to drive around very well now but she will stall out the vehicle at a stop and panic since other cars are waiting for her. Plus, when you are driving a stick-shift, the vehicle tends to slide back when you are on an incline. I've been taking her to the church parking lot to practice stop-and-go maneuvers. Plus there is a small hill that she can practice on and she has improved quite a bit. We will just go for 15 minutes here and there and she is getting more comfortable with it. At the beginning of the month, she thought it was hopeless. It is coming a lot more naturally for her now. Every now and then, she still gets frustrated, but with a little more practice, hopefully, she won't even have to think about it.

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Christian has been pretty frustrated working in the garage. There is very little room in there and a bit disorganized, so he's been trying to get that cleaned up as well. He had to put in a 220-volt outlet for his welder. He found that some of the existing outlets were not wired right. We have found similar problems inside the house throughout the years. The polarity is switched. Some are not grounded. It's just a mess.

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The next week, we took our mental health break out on Rattlesnake Canyon. This time, we took the Trooper out on our adventure. Most of the trail was relatively easy but there were a few challenging spots. My Trooper is fairly capable off-road but it does not have very good clearance. It has always been a problem. A few turns in the road were sharp and we would have had problems in Christian's longer truck. A couple spots were a bit narrow. We crossed some shallow water spots which were not a problem. Some of the crossings were a bit muddy but nothing too bad. The most troubling areas were the rocky areas that we don't have the clearance for. We had to gingerly maneuver the Trooper around them. We scraped the shield on the undercarriage a bit and Caitlyn put a dent in one of my rocker arms to match the one that she put on Christian's truck!

We passed some free-range cattle. Overall it was a pretty nice trail and the Jeep would have breezed through without a thought. It is definitely not one we should bring the truck on.

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The stores that are allowed to remain open during this so-called pandemic seems to have settled down a bit. There are not so many lines to get in any more...especially if you know when to go. Many items are still hard to come by including toilet paper and other paper goods, bleach and other disinfectants, bottled water, disposable masks and gloves, yeast, flour and pasta. We aren't allowed to go anywhere without masks on.

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Christian's dad came up to visit. He was having some problems with his Trooper and wanted Christian to take a look at it for him. After checking a few things, Christian found that his ball joints were shot. They went off to the auto store for some parts and came back to get started. Christian smoked a brisket for us overnight. Since Terry's birthday is only a couple of days away, we had planned to have a small birthday celebration for him while he was here. I worked on the rest of lunch while they were gone so that we could have lunch after they got back.

After taking some of the wheel hub assembly apart, Christian also found that the bearings were bad. Caitlyn and I took Terry back to the auto store while Christian and Emily continued to take the Trooper apart.

The vehicle was somewhat of a mess. Everything was absolutely caked in years of grease and dirt. Caitlyn cleaned and treated the tires. Emily cleaned a lot of the parts. Terry had to go take a few naps in between as he still doesn't have the greatest stamina after his procedure. We had to go out on one more run to look for some screws that were stripped by whoever worked on the vehicle before. The tie rod ends also needed to be replaced but Christian knew that he just would not have enough time to work on everything. Also the steering stabilizer that was replaced didn't even fit the vehicle so it was essentially useless. Some of the pieces, as we found in Caitlyn's XJ, was not torqued down. 

Anyway, long story short, we bit off more than we could chew with this project. It was in worse shape than we had anticipated. We would not be able to finish in one day. Terry had to spend the night but he didn't bring his medicine or anything else so he had to leave first thing in the morning to get his medication. When the sun went down, the rest of us went in to wind down with a movie while Christian continued to work outside. After grandpa and the girls went to bed, I went back out to sit with Christian for a while while he worked.

I called it an evening some time after 11:pm. Christian continued through the night. He was finally able to finish putting the vehicle back together around 5:am and took it for a test drive. He didn't get to sleep until 5:30 am. He only managed to get a couple of hours sleep before Christian's dad got up to leave. 

Before leaving, Christian went on another drive with Terry to see if he could feel the difference. Apparently, it did wonders for his steering and for the smoothness of the ride but it did not completely fix the problem he was having when he came up. Christian has some idea of what it might be but there is just too much to tackle on one visit. They will have to continue on another time. 

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After Christian's dad left, Christian couldn't go back to sleep, so we had a quick breakfast and went on our sanity break for the week. We took another drive up near the San Bernardino Mountains. This trail goes over to the Seven Oaks Dam. The weather has taken a turn for the worst by now and we are going to have over 100 degree temperatures by this weekend. Christian had found out what was wrong with Caitlyn's air conditioning and was able to fix it so we thought we would take the XJ out to test it out on this warm day. Of course, almost all of the snow on the mountain is gone now except for a light powdering at the very tops.

The area by the dam was pretty fun. We got to drive up and down some of the sandy hills. We all took turns in the Jeep. It handled pretty well on everything we tried. With lockers, bigger tires and stronger axles, the vehicle would be unstoppable. As it is, it has some limitations, but it can do most things we would want to do.

We got to use the a/c on our way back for lunch and a nap. It works great!

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We went from snow earlier this month to over 100 degree temperatures...just waiting for the next earthquake now...

March Madness

The month started out pretty normal. Caitlyn finished her current piano level. She is doing the Alfred's Basic Piano Prep Course. She just finished level D and is moving on to level E. It has been a slow and somewhat painful process but she is slowly moving on ahead.

Emily is nearly done with her current level as well but seems to refuse to practice more often than not and has not bothered to pass off any songs in quite a while, so Caitlyn is ahead of her again.

Emily turned 17, which I covered in a previous post and started her official driving lessons.

We finally got to go back down to San Diego to visit with Christian's father after his ordeal in the hospital. He had to go back in after he was released for about a week after his initial surgery. After he had gotten some more rest and recovered a bit, we spontaneously decided to just go down to visit him on a Sunday. Church has been closed for a while with the outbreak of the CCP Virus so we went down to do the Sacrament with him and Jackie and visit for a short while. He is doing pretty good, all things considered. He lost a bunch of weight but it is starting to get better and he is figuring out what he can eat and not feel sick. He is still working some of the drugs out of his system from the hospital. I guess it is supposed to take quite a while, depending on how long you were under the anesthesia.
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Christian finished his third quarter of teaching and finalized the grades for his students right before his Spring break. Unfortunately, his Spring break will end right before our kids will begin, so while the girls went off to school, Christian and I took off to Yucca to take a 4x4 trail up to Big Bear. The trails were a bit more muddy than snow covered, so we were a little disappointed as we had hoped for more snow. We only hit snow when we got nearly to the top. It poured rain as we came back down out of Big Bear. We passed several schools on our way through Redlands and got grid-locked every time. It was pretty nuts.

We had planned to be back in plenty of time to pick up the girls, but with all the traffic we ran into, we barely made it back in time. Right before getting to the back of the school where we pick the girls up, the police were there, closing off the road. Apparently, the road flooded again and we had to find our way around the closure. It was total chaos.

Later that evening, the rain started to flood our backyard. We have always had some flooding issues on the porch when it rains hard but we have not had it this bad since the year we moved in. The entire porch was flooded and the water level was rising up to the house. The water was seeping into the garage from both the back door and the front garage door. Christian ended up going out there in the pouring rain to dig a trench around the porch and had to continue the trench out to the back of our property so that it had somewhere to go. The yard is a mess. It looks like it has been hit with a tornado.

I'm thinking that this might be a good time to redo the yard and just get rid of the grass but I have not been able to come up with any ideas yet.

I think that it will remain a muddy disheveled mess for a while.

The next day, the girls went to school as normal but we got notice that afternoon that the Board of Education would be closing the schools due to the Coronavirus risk until after what should have been their Spring break.

I had gone to the market that morning and all hell had broken loose. For some reason, the market parking lot was filled to the brim. I could not find a shopping cart anywhere. Normally, they have a whole entryway filled with carts waiting for customers but that morning, it was empty. I had to walk back out halfway down the parking lot in order to retrieve a cart. There were only a couple more available. The store was packed with shoppers, the shelves were empty. The line to the register went all the way to the back of the store. It was scary. I got what I could and waited in line with the rest of the mob. I figured that I must have missed something because I had just shopped there the week before and all was perfectly normal.

When I finally got back and found out about the school closures, we knew we were in for it. Had I known the girls would be home for three weeks, I would have shopped a little differently as well.

They were going to let us know before the end of the month, what was going to happen with the schools, but not two days had gone by before they extended the closures until the end of April!

Christian did not know for a while whether he was supposed to return after his Spring break or not as his district did not say anything for a while, but it became a statewide closure at this point.

Amid all the craziness, Marian sent us some pizza for Pi Day. Apparently Domino's had a special, so she ordered them for us and we just had to swing by and pick it up. That was a fun and unexpected surprise. We were mostly all just tinkering around in the garage. Christian had planned a ton of maintenance work on our vehicles while he had time over his break. Apparently, he will have more time than he thought, although, getting parts and supplies might be a problem at some point.

He replaced one of the U-joints on the XJ and some other things. There seems to be no shortage of parts to replace on that thing. Of course, in doing so, we ended up having to get a new tone ring for the ABS as well, as it was damaged in the process. Everything seems to be like that, or we end up having to get some new tool because you need a special tool or other to get it off. So a job that you think may take a day or two at the most, turns out to take two weeks.

Meanwhile, Christian changed some fluid in the F-150 and he started to take apart the Ranger with Emily. We need to change to gasket for the timing cover because it is leaking and apparently, you have to rip out a ton of stuff to get to it. Of course, Amazon send the wrong gasket for it and then we have to wait another week or so for them to send another one.

By the end of the first week, the kids were already getting a bit of cabin fever and Christian wanted to test out the repairs on the Jeep. We picked up their friend Lily whom, we have already had a lot of exposure to since I normally pick her up after school and took her out with us on the 4x4 trail (Burns Canyon) that Christian and I went on the prior week.

Emily drove the XJ and I sat with her until we got off the public roads. Then the girls got to take turns in the two vehicles. Lily got her license a month or two ago. Emily only has her permit now. When we got up to Big Bear, we drove up and around a bit to find more snow.

We had some sandwiches that I made for the road so we made pretty good time. On our way back, we took a little detour on 1N12 (the Santa Ana River Trail). We finally got into some good snow there. It was a beautiful drive.

On the way home through Redlands, I noticed that there seemed to be some extra vibration on the XJ.  Christian checks it out and finds out that the pinion yoke nut was loose. While checking it out, he noticed that the drive shaft in the back was a little bent as well. Unfortunately, we also found out that no one really makes a drive shaft that directly fits into this model vehicle. There was one possibility but the company that makes it has contradictory information on it. We retightened the loose pinion nut and it drove as well as before but we recognized the smaller vibration we normally feel in the vehicle is probably the bent drive shaft. We still really love the Jeep and it feels better than it ever has but the constant problems on it is getting old fast. We find something new that needs to be fixed after most trips. Although, we are very grateful that we always make it home okay. 

There are also some other things we wanted to upgrade or just fix in the vehicle that we have just not yet been able to get to. It just feels like the XJ is a bit of a money pit at this point. 

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In the midst of all the madness going on around us, our oven stopped working again. It wouldn't light. Since we have already replaced the igniter before, we thought that it must be something else, but after Christian took half of it apart, we found out that it was indeed the igniter that has gone bad. Luckily we were able to order a new one on Amazon as the appliance store we bought it from last time is no doubt closed.
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A few weeks into our "self-isolation," Emily started getting bored or a little crazy and wanted to cut her hair. She's always just insisted on a straight cut. This time, she thought she would try a few layers and some long bangs. She figured it would grow back enough by the time she got to go back to school if she didn't like it anyway. It didn't quite come out exactly as I planned but it was still cute. I don't have a whole lot of experience cutting stylish haircuts...but I saw some people do it on YouTube!

She also heard from BYU-Idaho that she got a small Thomas E. Ricks Grant for the 2020-2021 school year. I believe it amounts to a quarter of her tuition. Now we just need the university to actually open in the Fall!

Emily's Birthday

We just celebrated Emily's seventeenth birthday. It seems so weird that she will be off to college shortly. I don't know if I had mentioned here that she got accepted to BYU Idaho. That was pretty exciting. She also got her drivers permit, so we can legally drive around the city now. She has to wait six months to take the behind the wheel test. She will have to get her DMV appointment and pass the test as soon as the waiting time is over because she will have to leave for college the next month.

Christian took her out for her first driving lesson with a manual transmission. Her Ranger from Christian has a stick shift. Christian said that she did pretty good but she didn't think so and was a bit daunted by the experience. Her behind the wheel instructor thinks that she is a natural though. She was a bit apprehensive when they first took off because she just had another student before coming to pick up Emily and apparently, he should not be behind the wheel. When they came back, she already made plans to take Emily on the freeway for her next lesson. We scheduled her next appointment to be at the end of her spring break.

Marian surprised Emily by coming out to visit her on her actual birthday. She came early while the girls were in Seminary and went to pick them up. When they got back, I had fresh cinnamon rolls ready for them. They were still hot out of the oven. After breakfast, Marian took the girls to school.

We had our breakfast and Marian did some work. She is currently able to work remotely, so that was really convenient. I finished wrapping a few gifts and prepped some things for dinner while she worked.

For lunch, Marian took me out for a poké bowl.

It was really good. After lunch, we came back for Marian to do some more work. I worked on Emily's cupcakes. Pretty soon, it was time to pick up the girls. Marian got us boba drinks. Christian came home but had a dentist appointment.

Emily's request for dinner was a Chinese soup for the winter solstice. We only get it once or twice a year usually, so it's somewhat special to have. Marian calls it 'gumball soup' because there are white chewy balls of glutinous rice in it. I can only assume that that is what she compared it to as a kid. The name kind of stuck. 

After dinner, we opened gifts.

Marian's main gift was a little something for her college fund. 

Afterwards, we had Emily's favorite angel food cupcakes with pomegranate whipped cream. It has become a regular request for her now. 

Marian mostly came over on her actual birthday so that we can go visit with Christian's dad over the weekend since he would not be able to make it over for the party but he wasn't quite up to having visitors just yet. He has a few local visitors that pop in for a few minutes. Some church members bring them meals every few days. He has to go out for check ups with his doctors and pick up more medicine, but those little outings just wipes him out. He doesn't want us to spend two hours driving down to visit with him for only a few minutes. So we will wait until he gets more of his strength back to have a better visit.