Outside is Still The Best side.

So,
     The kids are doing well. They both graduated their respective swim lesson groups and are happy to be moving on to the next level up. Teresa is still in the 20's as far as how many kindergartners she has to control/ teach. Last week I had planned to do a super late season backpack trip up Mt Langley (9th tallest in CA) but the weather had other ideas. A day before we were supposed to leave we had an insane thunderstorm which resulted in snow in the Sierra. 6 ft mudslides on the highways up to the Sierra and tons of property damage.

Trip Canceled.

Since I already had my bags packed. I rerouted my trip and thought about bringing along Whitney on her first overnight. We went to Little Jimmy trail camp in the San Gabriels.

View to the South from Trailhead. Whitney ready to go.

View to the North (where we were headed.)

Man skills enough to make fire in wet weather with wet wood.

These clouds were blasting through that saddle.

Foggy 2nd morning.

Tired pup.

We made the summit of Mt Islip since we had extra time. Whitney did pretty well, she barked at people but was friendly when they actually wanted to meet her. She slept in the tent no problem. As you can see it was foggy most of the time but really lovely until right when I was packing up to hike out and we had a short downpour that soaked everything before I could throw on my pack cover.

    While I was gone Teresa took the kids to halloween at the zoo.

Aiden wore his Batman Cape. Some kids dressed up.

Teresa handed the camera to the kids and they came up with these shots of the animals.

They had a good time and Teresa purchased the annual passes again so I'm sure we'll be heading back there often.
   

Till next time-

RTSZAW

Hola,
      This past week was full of swim lessons, school, and an eventually good doctors office visit.
On Friday I took Whitney for her first hike. I picked a short easy trail that I had done before down to Switzer falls. She started out a bit unsure about things but soon warmed up to it. By the end of the 4 mile 650ft gain/loss trail she was pretty obviously tired but she is only 4 months old so that isn't surprising. I hadn't hiked with a dog in a long time and she is still a work in progress so I spent most of the hike working with her trying to teach her obvious things like follow the trail, don't jump off cliffs, don't drink the standing water etc...

On the hike back she didn't like the uphill and was really worn out. We got in the car and started driving home. I got about 10 miles from the trailhead and looked down to find my Low Fuel Light on. There was nowhere to turn around so I had to drive another few miles on a mountain road to find a picnic area where I tried to get cell reception.

The empty picnic area had no reception and the cars passing on the road didn't have time to see me so I figured we couldn't stay there. Since we were in the middle of nowhere at least 20 miles from the nearest gas station to the south and much further than that to the north I decided to turn around. We made it about 9 miles before the car sputtered out and I pulled off the road. I remembered a Forest Service fire station at Clear Creek so we walked less than a mile there. They managed to dig up some gasoline for me while I apologized profusely for being the moron who heads out into the mountains without checking his gas tank first. I walked back to the car put the gallon of spare gas in the tank and went to give the exhausted, hot Whitney a drink before we walked back to the fire station. I realized that I had left her dog bowl at the trailhead. I was not having a smart guy day. We walked the gas can back to the fire station then headed down hill away from home to the nearest gas station with the car in Neutral most of the way. We made it to LA and filled up the tank then headed home.
     Once we got home I had a 150lb package waiting for me on the porch. I got out my tools and set out to build a trampoline. People online in the reviews had said that the directions weren't great. They were right. I managed to get it almost all the way built only to realize that I had misplaced the door to the enclosure, so I had to take the thing almost all the way apart then rebuild it. Eventually I got it built and the kids jumped until dark.

That is all for now.

RTSZA

Aiden Turns 5

So,
     Aiden turned 5 yesterday. He is smart, sensitive, kind and 5 with all the rest that that entails. He is having a great year so far in Pre- kindergarten and loves going to school. He made out like and absolute bandit on his birthday and loves to play with all of his new toys.

In the morning he woke up and opened these presents.

5 YEARS OLD!!!

Obi-Wan Lightsaber!

Optimus Prime!

Halloween Pillowcase!

Switch n' GO dino!

Zoey used her school "bucks" to get him a green frog zipper animal for his backpack.

To celebrate his birthday he played with his toys. We also went to Chuck E Cheese for games at his request.  Then we went to Toys R Us and let him pick out a toy. He picked out a car that drives on the walls.



In the afternoon we played in the kiddy pool and went to get batteries for his light saber. We cooked his favorite meal for dinner, home made burritos. After dinner we ate cake and he opened a few more presents.

Family Tradition.

Oreo Ice cream Cake!!!

Lego Pirates!

Another dino (he loves these things and wants them all)

In the last week we also managed to finally get ourselves another shelter dog. We named her Whitney. She is at least part Collie, 4-ish months old and cute. Raising a puppy is a lot of work but hopefully she'll be worth it. The kids love her already, our carpet does not.

1st night home. She'd been spayed that day so she was exhausted.

Now she's much more active so she wears the cone of shame to keep from licking her surgery wound.

Other than that Teresas class size is down to 26. Zoey is doing well in school and is almost up to the 2nd grade reading list. I'm plugging along at work and itching to get back out on the trails but I suppose not until Whitney is up for it...



Till next time-

RTSZA and W.

MORE HIKING!!!!

So,
     Remember how I said that this blog would return to its normal form about our family occurrences and such? Those guys are boring...

I went for a hike up White Mountain on Saturday of last week. It is the 3rd tallest peak in California at 14, 242ft. We camped in the Ancient Bristlecone pine forest on Friday night and took a 4 mile hike to see the trees.

The loop was neat. I'm not sure I spotted the official oldest living non-clonal organism on the planet, the Methuselah tree. They don't point it out since they don't want it harmed or vandalized but the trees are incredible and the scenery is sparse, harsh and amazing.
    After a loud night in a party campground we woke up at 5:30 am, had breakfast, broke down camp and drove 16 miles on some pretty bad dirt roads in my Hyundai Accent 4cl 2 wheel drive. It was pretty slow going and kind of sketchy but we made it to the trailhead. We were the only non 4 wheel drive car there and it made us the butt of some jokes/ conversations about how we'd managed to pull that off.

The trail is actually a bad dirt/ rock road the whole way. The University of California has a research station 2 miles in and another one at the top. It is 15.5 miles long though and still you huff and puff over 12k ft.

I opted to take my big puffy coat up the mountain instead of my big camera so all of these shots are from Dylans (bearded dude) phone. Matt wasn't able to make it to the summit. Dylan managed but felt like he was going to die. He had never been above 13k ft before.

At the summit we were greeted by 30 UC Davis Graduate students who were "working" at the research station

The summit hut/ research station

Yours truly.

At the summit overlooking the Owens Valley 11k ft below

2 stamps one says 14,224 the other says 14,242

It started to snow/ sleet/ grapple on us on our way down.

White MT on the left.

It was a good trip. We made it home late Saturday night.


As for the rest of the family, the kids are doing well in school. Zoey is getting her talkative-ness under control and learning really quickly. Aiden is settled right in loves his classmates and teacher and looks forward to going to school every day. Teresa has 36 kindergarteners. The numbers are not in her favor. Hopefully they will add another class so she can get rid of 8-9 of those students. Aidens birthday is coming up so I'm sure there will be an actual blog update from that.

Till then-

RTSZA