Sweet 16

 Caitlyn turned 16. Happy Birthday Caitlyn!

Caitlyn only had school for a couple of hours online today. Grandpa Terry and Marian came for her birthday luncheon. We had to wait until Christian was done with his classes at 12:30 though.

She chose skillet potatoes for breakfast and carne asada fries for lunch. She went with a carrot cake this year.

We had lunch and opened presents. She got a very generous Amazon gift card from Grandpa.

A strange selection of gifts from Marian.

We got her some camera accessories that she has been heavily hinting at. 

Plus a little something for Grandpa's birthday as well. His birthday is about a week before Caitlyn's.

Afterwards, Christian took his dad home because he was leaving his Trooper here again for more repairs. This time Christian is replacing his entire air conditioning system. 

Marian took us out for Boba. We tried to get her to think of something else she wanted to do but she couldn't think of anything so we returned home again. We chatted for a while and then Caitlyn decided that she wanted to go out for a walk to try out her new zoom lens. Marian decided to head home but we ended up chatting in the driveway some more until there was no light left for poor Caitlyn to take pictures.

Emily tried to get a hold of Caitlyn several times to wish her a Happy Birthday but they kept missing each other. She finally got a hold of her late that evening before bed. Before Emily left for school, she made a duvet for Caitlyn's weighted blanket that we got her for Christmas out of a sheet. She also got this cute candy making kit for her.

I think it was overall more fun and cute than tasty. The "salmon roe" was super neat though and quite tasty. It was the strangest thing watching them being made and having them pop in your mouth.

She was supposed to get chicken flautas for dinner but nobody was hungry still as our lunch was to filling. She will have to wait for another night soon to get it.

April

We started out the month going back down to San Diego for another bbq with Christian's family to celebrate Easter. 

The next weekend we headed over to see my family for Tomb Sweeping Day. We had lunch afterwards at my sister's house. Her in-laws were also there after doing tomb sweeping for their ancestors. They ordered a ton of food so Emily got lots of Chinese food.

The girls finally got to play the new organ at church. They played for the whole service. Well, Caitlyn played for almost the whole service. Emily played during the sacrament portion. They both did a great job. There are still some issues with the organ but they just played through it.

Emily started packing to go back to Idaho. She was pretty excited to be back with her roommate. She changed her transmission oil with the help of her Dad to get ready for the long drive back up. She has been breaking up the drive into three sections. The first day, she stops in to visit her cousin Austin. The next day, she heads up to her roommate's home. They got up really early the next morning to finish the shortest leg up to Rexburg. They want to make sure they register early so that they can get a choice of rooms or at least to make sure that they get a room together so that they don't get stuck with someone they don't get along with. It was a hard drive but she made it with no problems. 

Caitlyn and I continued sanding on the XJ. It is so much work! Christian painted the roof, back and the back quarter panels. It was really stressful. We are maybe about halfway done. We plan to take a bit of a break from it for a while as Christian is going to be fixing the a/c system on his Dad's Trooper next. He is replacing the whole system, so it is going to take a while. We are currently waiting for all the parts to come in. Some of the parts have been really difficult to get as we have been waiting on the compressor now for months.

The cursed neighbors have been having parties every weekend. If it is not one, it is another. In between, they are still out there blasting the music from their cars or garages and it has been miserable. We have not had any peace around here for quite some time. The neighbor right next to us was obviously planning a huge party again since they were putting up speakers and tables full of beer in the morning. We decided to skip town for a while to try to keep some sanity. 

We headed out to explore some different roads out near Death Valley.

It was a pretty nice drive. We didn't run into any problems on the road but we were out driving a long time. We didn't get back until two in the morning. As we passed our neighbors house to park in our driveway, we saw that some of them were still out there. The music was still going with idiots talking loudly over the music and lights flashing all over. One of the younger kids (under the age of 5) was out there too just wandering around in the front lawn at 2:am! We were so pissed. I was exhausted though and just turned on my white noise machine to try to sleep. Christian said they continued until three in the morning!

Of course, the neighbor across from us thought it was a fine idea and had a party of their own the next two weekends consecutively. 

Caitlyn decided to attend this year's youth conference. We are glad that she has been getting to know some of the other kids more and has been trying to get out and socialize more. She's been shut in far too long. It isn't good for anybody.

March

Spring Break this year was pretty messed up. Christian had the third week off and Caitlyn had the fourth week off. That pretty much made it all but impossible to really do anything. At the start of Christian's break, Emily and her dad decided to take off for a bit of an adventure. Their plan was to do Steel Pass in Death Valley with Caitlyn's Jeep. Of course, as usual, as soon as it starts, we get a weather system in.

Regardless, they said most of the towns they went through was super crowded. They got rained on which turned to snow at some point. A lot of the roads were messed up but apparently, it was beautiful out there.

They camped in the rain. The tent needs to be treated. Apparently the rain got in and some of their stuff got all wet. We've had the tent since way before the kids were born.

They got up in the morning and headed into the snow.

We don't have chains for the Jeep yet but luckily, the ones for my truck mostly fit on her tires. They certainly needed them.

At one point the road gave way and the Jeep ended up in a pretty precarious situation. As before, Christian ended up having to rebuild and redirect the road to get out. Emily tried to help him move some rocks and broke our camping shovel. We always bring a full sized shovel for these situations and that's what Christian uses to literally dig himself out of these situations.

The pictures never really show quite how bad the terrain really is. It is really hard to capture. Luckily, they didn't roll over and the only thing that got damaged was a hanger for the exhaust pipe. Hopefully Christian will be able to weld it back to something useable. 

Because their camping gear got wet the night before, they decided to cut the trip short and head home after their long ordeal. 

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Christian spent the rest of his break working out in the shop mostly. He has a bunch of welding projects lined up. Emily worked on and off. When Caitlyn finally got her Spring Break and Christian had to get back to work, we planned a few afternoons out. Emily only had a few days that week that she wasn't working. On one of the days, the girls and I drove out towards LA to do some shopping (and eating). Emily wanted a few things before heading back to Idaho. We planned to have lunch out there and the girls were excited but we had trouble with most of the places we picked out. Some of the restaurants were not even open that day. We wasted a lot of time driving around and around. 

We finally settled on a little Chinese restaurant. The food was pretty good and we were adequately hungry by then but we didn't want to stuff ourselves because the girls wanted boba afterwards. We did some shopping in between. We had actually intended to stop by to see my mom while we were out there but we took too long and decided to head back and come see her another time. We didn't want to run into the worst of the traffic going home. We had a good time though and it was nice to spend some time with both of the girls. Sometimes Emily and I would go out but Caitlyn was usually in class or home doing homework or whatever.

Emily and Caitlyn spent one of their free days going to the beach. They had a great time but came back fairly sunburned. Caitlyn put some sunscreen on but her coverage was not that great. Emily didn't put any on at all and got it the worst.

The girls spent a lot of time this past month trying to relearn their organ songs. Their teacher wanted them to play during church which we were supposed to start back up. The organ was mostly put together but they were still putting some finishing touches to it and we kept having problems. We had to keep pushing back the date for them to play because the organ just was not ready yet. It was very frustrating.

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We did manage to get together with what is left of Christian's family this past month in San Diego. It was nice to see everybody for the most part.

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We spent the rest of the month sanding the XJ down to bare metal so that we can paint it. It is a lot of work. We are starting with the roof as that is where there are the most rusty spots.

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The girls went to another youth dance. The youth are sick of being isolated and basically missing out on the last of their childhood and have decided to get together with others who aren't afraid to get out and live their lives. Before all this, I tried to get the girls to go out to official church dances but they scoffed and refused to go. They never did too much with the other kids from church except once in a blue moon or during special holiday get togethers. Now, they have a group chat going and they get together every few weeks or so for a dance or to play games or whatever. It's kind of nice.

After a full year of being away from school, Caitlyn's school started re-opening at the end of the month for in person classes a couple days a week. Of course, because of "social distancing," they have the kids who signed of to go back to school split into two groups. Group A goes Monday and Tuesday and Group B goes Thursday and Friday. They are still online on Wednesday which is a minimum day anyway so they really only check in to all their classes. But because the teachers are stretched so thin, they pretty much reduced the amount of work the kids had to do by half. It's all pretty pathetic. None of the kids are getting much of an education. It's all a joke and the teachers are tortured with all kinds of useless red tape.

Caitlyn wanted to take the CHSPE and just test out of high school at the end of this school year but because of "COVID," they kept delaying the test date. Once it was finally announced, we found out that there were no test sites in the Inland Empire this year and the cost went up more than double. 

She only needs two classes to graduate and is trying to figure out some kind of loophole to get around it but it doesn't look good for her as her district won't let her take anything less than 5 classes so that they can be sure to get the funding for her attendance. They offer nothing in the way of electives that is worth taking so she is very frustrated.

Emily's Birthday

 Emily turned 18!

It's so crazy that it has been 18 years and she will be leaving again for Idaho next month.

Her birthday landed on a Friday this year, so we were just home by ourselves. She did not have to work. I guess it was a good and bad thing. She didn't really want to have to work on her birthday but they still have her working very minimal hours still. Every week she gets a little more so she might be working halfway decent hours by the time she has to quit and go back to school! We are happy she got a chance to earn a bit of money for school though and now she has a bit of job experience to help her get her next position.

As usual, we had some of her favorite foods she either doesn't get that often or missed. For breakfast she asked for some rice porridge. For lunch, we picked up some carne asada fries at our favorite taco shop. And for dinner, we made poke at home.

She also got to open/use some of her birthday gifts. her main gift was a couple of pairs of new Vans.

Some of her old shoes were pretty trashed so I got her some new ones on the condition that she throw away one of her old ones that she keeps saying is still "fine."

We had the usual suspects over for a big birthday luncheon on Saturday. We have not all gotten together in a long time. 

I always save her fancier cake for her party as I don't have the energy and time to do that twice. So if I know we are planning a bigger party, I will do something simpler for her actual birthday with just ourselves. She got more presents...well, sort of.

Apparently, Emily was in the doghouse with Marian again. It seems that they had another agreement that Emily did not follow up on. I don't know what it was and frankly, I don't think I want to know but Marian definitely wants Emily to know that that is not okay. So she got a shredded $20 bill and a bag of Idaho potatoes. Don't ask...I won't either. But in the end, Marian got her some gas so, they came to some kind of understanding about it all.

She also brought over the rest of our presents from Christmas since we didn't see her for the holidays this past year.

She got Comfy's for all the girls including myself. Evidently, a bunch of Emily's college friends had them so she knew what they were. Marian had described them to me before but I had never heard of them. They are very warm! Emily will definitely get lots of use out of hers in Idaho. Caitlyn has already gotten lots of use of hers since she gets up early for Seminary and just sits in front of her computer all day. Our house is kept fairly cool most of the time as Christian usually runs hot if he is not also sitting in front of his computer teaching.

Christian had to rotate Marian's tires as well. Seems like everyone needs it. That's the third set of tires he's rotated in the past month that doesn't actually belong to us. They were going to try to get her to get a new set of tires but Christian said that she doesn't need them yet and just rotated them so that they would wear a bit more evenly. Plus, she had one tire that was over inflated which seemed to be causing the problem. With that fixed, hopefully Marian will not need new tires for a while yet.

After Terry and Jackie had left, Marian got us some cap steaks for dinner and she played MahJong with the girls. Caitlyn has been wanting to play again since they learned to play over Christmas. I have forgotten completely how to play. Our set has not been used since college when we played with Marian!

Frustrating February

 Another month of busy nothings has passed us by. It's been nearly a year of covid shutdowns and I am so sick to death of all the bullshit. We seem to be just passing the time and waiting in limbo for something to happen.

The only significant thing we did this past month was celebrate Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Ox. We normally get together with my family and make and eat dumplings until we drop. This year, we did manage to get together with some of my family but we just had a big luncheon. We planned to go visit with my mom and she ended up inviting my brother and his family. Surprisingly, he agreed but we would eat outside in the yard. 

My sister did not expect that we would be getting together this year and did not make plans to come back, so it was a surprise that we kind of got together at all. She would probably do something with my mom in another week or two when she planned to return again.

We went over early to help my mom in the kitchen. Apparently, my brother also went early to help. Maybe he wanted to prepare the food himself for his family...I don't know. But shortly after we got there, Christian went to look at my mom's car, as she was having problems with the check engine light coming on and my mom sent my brother out to take him to the auto parts store as we did not know the area. One of the possible problems was a vacuum leak from the gas cap. Since that was the easiest fix, they decided to address that problem and see if it would fix the issue. 

Afterwards, Christian noticed my mom's tires were not wearing evenly, so he wanted to rotate them but her car did not have a jack so they had to cobble together what they could find.

My brother's family arrived in time for lunch but stayed outside in the backyard. We ate but did not interact that much as we were all sitting at different tables. Plus his kids were sullen and not very social. It was all very sad. We tried to talk to them but they were not very responsive. The girls told us a little more about what was going on afterwards but I think their Covid isolation is getting to them in ways that my brother just doesn't understand.

Afterwards, Debbie and the kids left as the kids had homework and junk to do. The girls and I sat and visited with my mom while I helped her clean up. Christian sat out and chatted with my brother for quite a while before we all decided to call it a day and leave. Christian needed to come back to Riverside to help ordain a friend's son to be a Teacher in the Deacon's Quorum. Afterwards, we visited with their family for a bit as we had not seen them for at least several months.

Emily was disappointed that we were not doing dumplings this year. She had returned home from college excited for our normal traditions. We decided to make a small batch by ourselves at home. We have only done it once all by ourselves. We had to work out some details so we took some notes as we worked as we don't want the tradition to die off with my mom. But our family has been doing the majority of the work for years now at these get together's so it was not that difficult. 

The only problem we ran into was running out of wheat starch. We thought that we had more of a stock of it, but was only able to find one package. The girls and I made a run for the semi-local Chinese market but they didn't even carry it. When we got together with my family, my brother went for a run to the market to try to find it for us, but the store he went to did not carry it either. Emily was devastated, so we decided that we will have to continue some other time when we can make some time to go to the proper markets. 

Anyway, the small batch that we made turned out really well. It was delicious!

We basically celebrated Chinese New Year on Valentine's Day so we didn't do that much for Valentine's. 

The rest of the time was just spent slugging through school and work for Emily. She's doing okay but they don't give her that many hours. They have been increasing her hours slowly every week but it is just incremental at best. She's just biding her time and trying to earn as much money as they will allow her before returning to college in a month and a half. 

And unfortunately, the new gas cap did not fix my mom's check engine light as it came back a couple of days after we left.

Christian ended up back in the Emergency Room. Apparently, he got another kidney stone. Because of Covid, I could not go in with him. We did not know what the problem was initially, so I sat in the parking lot for over an hour, waiting for some kind of status update. By the time I was allowed to call in to find out what was going on, they had run a CT scan and were waiting for the results so I just went home to wait because in trying to call in to get an update, my call got dropped twice. It was very frustrating. Christian did not grab his phone so there was no way to contact him directly. 

After another hour or so, I called back in. They said that it was most likely a kidney stone but that the doctor had not reviewed it yet to say for certain. After the third hour, the doctor finally called to confirm that it was a kidney stone and was getting ready to release him with an order of drugs.

Christian was pretty doped up on pain killers which made him a bit groggy and very nauseous but they had already released him and he was waiting in line at the Pharmacy. Now that place was a freaking nightmare. We waited in line for about 30 minutes to get to move on to the line in the actual Pharmacy. Once we checked in, they made us go back outside to wait in line to get back in all over again. The line was even longer than before. There were so many pissed off irate people but they just treated us all like cattle. They didn't care if some could barely stand up. Anyway, the whole thing took nearly as long as his stay in Emergency. And they kept making us put hand sanitizer on every time we went in and out of the door so the skin on my hand was trashed for almost a week afterwards.

The whole hand sanitizer thing was such a joke anyway because Christian was telling me how filthy the Emergency room was.  There was trash all over the floor and the bathroom was covered in urine and feces. He tried to get someone to clean it but no one ever bothered to do it in the 3 or 4 hours that he was in there. Luckily, the doctor and technicians/nurses seemed fairly well competent and helpful though.

In the end, it was a small stone and he was able to pass it fairly quickly after all that. He had a phone appointment with his Urologist afterwards and he has ordered some additional tests. Apparently they were concerned as his kidney was a bit inflamed and his uric acids are a bit high.

Joyless January

Since we couldn't really go anywhere anymore, we settled down at home to take care of some things we've been wanting or needing to do. Christian worked on his stick welding and made his first project.

Rocket Stove

Emily had to hose down all the salt on her truck so that it doesn't rust and eat away the metal on her truck. They salt the roads like crazy in the snow there in Idaho and Utah too. She was also due for an oil change.

Christian also got her some new weather stripping for her window as they were getting old and brittle. Apparently, she broke off some parts of it when de-icing her windows with a ice-scraper in Idaho.

Caitlyn got some bits and pieces for her XJ for Christmas. Emily helped her put them on her car. Caitlyn worked on a few minor projects but didn't get a whole lot done. She had to get back to school a week before her dad.

Emily worked more in earnest in getting a job. Unfortunately, she found out that for a lot of the jobs, they required her to be 18. She applied for a ton of your typical fast food/retail jobs. She didn't hear from most of them. Some seemed to be taking applications but not really hiring. She ended up accepting a job to work at McDonalds but they dragged their feet in getting her started with having to do hours and hours of paperwork and sludge through redtape. Seemed kind of ridiculous. When she finally got some training in and received her schedule for the next week, she found out her boss scheduled her to work on Sundays and some late nights which she specifically stated that she could not do. Her manager disregarded the information she put on her application as well as what she stated in her orientation and what they entered into the computer system as her availability. She argued that that is not what she stated orally at her interview (which we doubt). She kept forgetting that Emily wasn't even 18 and was not currently going to school but insisted that Emily said that her schedule was completely open. Anyway, after a week of training and crap, she quit because of the grief the manager was giving her for "changing her availability."

Emily was super pissed because Wendy's had contacted her after she accepted the job to McDonalds and now she lost that position as well. She went and applied for a few part time jobs at the University Village and had an online interview but nothing became of it. 

First paycheck

After over a week of not being able to find another job, Emily called her manager to find out about getting her paycheck. Her manager offered for her to come back to work. Emily really didn't want to take it because her boss had been such a jerk to her and wasted so much of her time. Plus we spent something like a hundred dollars on clothing and her food handler's license for her to even get the job. Her first paycheck would barely be enough to offset what was spent. In the end, Emily decided to go back but keep her eyes open for anything else that might come through that was better. She is frankly running out of time. Of course, when she finally got her paycheck, it was missing a couple of hours so she still has to get that fixed.

They had her finish her training but she still hasn't gotten regular hours yet so she is only working part-time. More of her boss jerking her around because the job position she applied for was supposed to be full time. She would have been better off going to Wendy's but it is too late now and some hours is still better than none since so many jobs have been eliminated and so many business closed down due to the stupid coronavirus.

It will get her some money to be able to go back to school and give her job experience to be able to get better jobs later.

Snow on BoxSprings Mtn.

We got some super strange weather this month. Most of the time if felt more like June than January. We got epically hot days and when we finally got a few days of rain, it got so cold that we actually got some snow. But it didn't last and we are back to sunny clear days but thankfully not as hot as previously...yet.

We were supposed to get more rain but as usual, the chances of that happening shrunk to nil and we are back to warm dry weather. The sun is bad but the wind is the worst.

Emily and Caitlyn attended a winter formal with many of the youth in our stake. It was not official as we are not allowed to do anything like that, but a family in the stake with a large property decided to have a private one for the kids. The kids really needed to have something like this as they have all had their young lives disrupted this past year and have been isolated for too long. My kids would not even have wanted to go to something like this is the past because they were not comfortable going to dances but we encouraged them to go and they somewhat reluctantly agreed but they ended up having a really good time.

Depressing December

Emily finished her first semester (trimester?) of school. She finished earlier than Caitlyn and Christian, packed up and headed down to Syracuse with her roommate. We were a little worried about her driving back down on her own as the snow storms picked up right as she was getting ready to leave. We sent her some snow chains as an early Christmas present in case she needed it. She spent a couple of nights in Syracuse and then headed down to the St. George area of Utah where her cousin currently lives with his new wife.

Meanwhile, Caitlyn finished school Thursday afternoon and we packed a truck load of junk to donate/unload at Deseret Industries. She's been living with boxes piled up of all the extra stuff, out-grown clothes, books and toys that are no longer used since Emily left.

Christian finished school on Friday. It has been super stressful for him since over half of his students were failing. He managed to badger/cajole some of them into doing some work and got many of them to get passing grades; only a third of his students ended up still failing. It still sounds like a lot but considering how many more students in other classes actually failed, he did pretty good.

Early Saturday, Christian and I headed to St. George to meet Emily. We ended up asking Caitlyn to stay back to bring in packages that were en-route. We got into St. George pretty early. Emily said that her cousin went in to do some work that morning as he wasn't expecting us until noon. 

We decided to take a detour to Hurricane, UT to Matt's Off-Road Recovery and see if we can meet Matt and pick up some gear. His shop was actually closed but his truck was out front. We took some pictures like a couple of kids. Some other fans of his from California dropped by just after we did. As we were about to head out, Matt came up front to see what his dogs were barking about and we were able get him to sell us some gear and chat a while. Christian got an old Windor Towing hat and we picked up a t-shirt for Caitlyn as a consolation prize for leaving her behind.

We were pretty excited as he is so genuinely nice. Caitlyn made us give her all the details when we got home. 

Afterwards, we made it to Austin's house but found out all the kids took off for a bit of sight seeing. We were going to meet up with the kids but we ended up chatting with Natalie's mom for quite a while. They ended up coming back to meet us at the house. We had met Natalie's parents at the wedding but never really spoke to them. They seem like really good people. We chatted together for a while longer and went to take Austin and Natalie out to lunch with us.

We did get some good news and Natalie and Austin are actually expecting a baby! We are so excited for them. They also purchased some land near by and are working to build themselves their own home. They are actually currently living with Natalie's family while Natalie is going to school. 

We stayed quite a bit longer than we had intended but it was a good visit. After we dropped them back off, we headed back to Riverside. Caitlyn heated up dinner for us and we had a late dinner back at home with the whole family!

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We had a day to relax a bit and Emily started to unpack a bit but by Monday morning, we were off again. We decided to visit with my sister at her new home in Pacifica. She had visited about a week and a half and convinced my mom to go back up with her so we decided to go visit for the holidays. I have not seen them since the beginning of the year...probably for Chinese New Year. My mom is going nuts shut up all by herself for so many months. My brother is super paranoid about the whole Covid thing so he has been dropping off groceries to her and stopping by to fix something here and there but that's about it. He actually even just dropped off Thanksgiving dinner to her and she ate by herself in her big house. 

I have not tried to visit her since she seemed just about as paranoid as my brother but my sister said that she isn't really that bad. She occasionally freaks out when she watches too much news but my sister is usually able to calm her down. I think after so many months by herself, she got sick of it and took the chance to socialize. She seemed much happier with family around again and is even able to get better rest.

When we got to my sister's house, she was running errands and taking care of some things so we went for a walk on the beach.

It was really nice to be next to the ocean again. It wasn't very cold and the air was moist. I could have sat there listening to the ocean for hours but the tide was coming in and we were expected back for dinner. Christian started some bread for the next day. Tommy prepared the prime rib he got for dinner for the next day. They ran out of rosemary, so we made a run for some more. Other than that, we just chat for a while before calling it a night.

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We had too many plans for the next day and we could not quite decide what we would do. We ended up driving into San Francisco with just my sister. Our first stop was to the Ferry Building to visit the Acme Bread Bakery. Tommy requested some focaccia bread for the evening so Christian used his starter from the night before and we were talking about bread and Emily had heard us talking about Acme bread in Berkley for so long and wanted to taste what all the hubbub was about. Wendy told us that they had a little place in San Francisco as well, which is why we ended up going into San Francisco.

Since the girls have never been to San Francisco, Wendy decided to take them through a quick tour. After picking up some bread and some of their starter, we headed over to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 to see the sea lions.

Caitlyn wanted to stay longer but as the meter was running and we wanted to see some more things, we were off to see the Wave Organ.

The Wave Organ only works during high tide, so we did not get to hear anything. Afterwards, we headed into Chinatown to get some dim sum for lunch.

There was not much parking in Chinatown and there was a long line at the dim sum shop. It was pretty late by the time we hit all the shops we wanted to. We got a bit turned around and could not quite find the shop that had the lop cheong (Chinese sausage) we wanted to try. By the time we got back into the car, we were all starving and ended up eating most of it in the car. We managed to save a few things to bring back to the house! 

Back at their house, we finished our late lunch. Christian finished his focaccia bread while the roast was in the oven. Dinner was really good. For dessert, Wendy decided to do a bit of an ice cream tasting with some of the weird stuff she had and some weird ideas the boys through together. It was interesting. One was unexpectedly good and the others were....not so much. We ended up with just some regular ice cream with a berry sauce I through together!

Afterwards, they pulled out the MaJong set and taught Emily and Caitlyn how to play. Christian helped Wendy sharpen her fancy Japanese knives and taught Wendy and the boys how to sharpen a knife using sharpening stones.

We went to bed pretty late. Christian stayed up even later to finish up the knives.

In the morning, we planned to head out again to get back in time to visit with Christian's dad. Tommy took Christian out to pick up some baked buns for breakfast. He bought enough to send us back with a bunch as well, so we did not need to stop by to pick up any food along the way.

It was a short visit, but it was really good to see my family again. We, of course, did not see my brother's family. We were all too afraid to tell him we were up there visiting.

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The morning after we returned, we prepared for another feast, this time for Terry and his wife, Jackie. We had a rib roast aging in our curing chamber for about a week before we took off to S.F. It was Christmas Eve and Marian decided not to join us this year. Apparently she'd been sick with the flu or something and a bunch of people at her work had been testing positive for Covid so she did not come.

This whole year has been increasingly out of whack, so all the changes did not phase me that much. We did not get together for Thanksgiving and we did not take a family Christmas picture or send out cards. We got a bunch of new decorations that Christian's mom sent down from Oregon so I didn't even bother with the Christmas tree this year.

After Terry and Jackie left, we started opening presents that evening.

We kept back a few presents for the next morning, along with the stockings and some presents that Marian had left here over the summer. The only glitch was that Marian could not remember who most of the presents belonged to so we played musical presents as it was opened. Marian joined us via Zoom for most of that!

With all the Christmas festivities done, we prepared for our big winter trip to New Mexico. We were all packed up and ready to go but decided the evening before to double check the weather forecasts and maps for all the places we wanted to visit. 

We found out that we would be pretty much running from a storm most of the way. On top of that, we found out that a lot of the places we picked out to visit were actually on Indian Reservation land again. We knew from our experience from the previous month that all of those places would be closed to visitors and didn't want to deal with that fiasco again.  In the end, we decided that it just would not be worth the time and gas to drive two days to see only a few things that would be open to us. 

And unfortunately because of the weather, we would not be able to change our destination very easily to anywhere else. We thought that we could salvage our time a little by just doing some small semi-local day trips but that turned out to be a disaster as well.

We tried twice to go up to the mountains to drive up in the snow but found that it was just too crowded. We didn't want to get stuck on the mountain roads with all these people who really had no right to be there. They did not know how to drive in the snow. They all picked up snow chains but did not know how to put them on, much less when to put them on. It was a nightmare. We tried to go during that first rain and then earlier in the morning the next day but ended up turning back both times. 

On the third day, we decided to investigate a trail that went into the southern end of Death Valley. We figured that there would at least be less people out on the lesser known roads. There was still quite a few cars heading onto the main road into Death Valley. The road skimmed the edge of a military base so we were not sure that we could get through.

We did manage to get through but it ended at some communication tower. We did pass a few questionable people parked along side the road here and there and the only other people out in the area were some geologists. 

As the sun went down, we did go out onto a more traveled road to get out as we wanted a faster way home. We stopped to heat up some dinner and headed home.

We gave up after that. Christian spent the rest of his time working in his shop and Emily spent her time looking for a job. I just bounced around between them and worked on trying to get Caitlyn to work on some of her projects.