ALOHA NIECES

Aloha! Thought you might enjoy this short clip. There are a few pics of my nieces arrival at the airport and a few clips of our snorkel at PK's. Jackie and I have been really bad about getting pictures. We have spent the time catching up with everyone and just haven't taken the time to snap many photos. We will try to do better but I won't make any promises...ok I will make one promise...I promise to turf the job of taking the pics to Jackie!

MOORISH IDOL AND BOXFISH

Aloha! The yard looks great today...of course it had better after all of mine and Jackie's hard work yesterday! It took us a little over 5 hours to get it all mowed and the clippings all spread out. We were so pooped afterwards that we drove into Kapa'a to get us a hamburger rather than trying to fix anything here! On our way into town I mentioned to Jackie that as much as I love it here sometimes I really miss being able to go to the 10-4...especially after a hard day. The 10-4 was always a place you could come dressed like you were, find a good hamburger and a friend willing to listen to how your day was going. Jackie and I keep looking for a place like that on Kauai but so far no luck. About as close as we have gotten has been Eggberts. They serve a good breakfast and keep your coffee cup filled but they close after lunch. Our trip to the beach happened a little earlier this morning thanks to Oceanic Cable. There was an outtage in our area so no cable or internet! Jackie and I have both become so conditioned to our morning routine which consist of checking on you guys via Facebook, getting our farms and other games caught up and then watching a little bit of the news while we eat breakfast. It felt so odd this morning not to be able to do any of that so we hurried our meal and headed to the beach for a bit of snorkeling hoping that things would be back in sync when we returned. We had a nice little snorkel and I was able to get some good pics of a moorish idol. We didn't go out as far as we normally do as I have been a little under the weather lately. Nothing serious...just been feeling a bit off. After we returned from the beach they had our cable up and going so this afternoon has been spent playing on the computers and watching a little tv and oh yeah I even found the time to take a much needed nap!

HANALEI AND ANINI

Aloha! Jackie and I enjoyed a very nice weekend. Most of Saturday was taken up by the Nascar race at Bristol. All in all it was a pretty enjoyable race to watch and one that was filled with excitement thru out most of it but that being said I still feel Nascar needs to shorten the races. I think if the races were about half as long as they are now it would make them a lot more exciting to watch. On Sunday Jackie and I went to Hanalei. We had lunch at Bubbas and browsed thru some of the shops afterwards. Hanalei is filled with shops selling everything from surf boards to antique toys but we have always found that people watching here is the most fun. Hanalei has all kinds...from the diehards of the sixtes to the jet setters of today. This morning Jackie and I went snorkeling at Anini. We saw our usual assortment of fish and got a nice little workout to boot. The weather today has been kind of hit and miss. It would be real nice then the wind would pickup and it would rain and then it would go back to being real nice again! This type of weather is not unusual for Hawaii but is more prevelant during the winter months. Not sure whats on the agenda for tomorrow but think it will more than likely be the lawn. We need to get it done as we have visitors arriving at the end of the week and we don't want to have anything standing in the way of spending as much time with them as we can!

50 YEARS FOR THE FIFTIETH STATE

Aloha! It was 50 years ago today that Hawaii became our 50th state. There wasn't a lot of celebrating on Kauai...at least not that I was aware of. On Oahu they had a celebration at the Convention Center with speeches by the governor and the rest of the dignitaries but I would have thought there would have been a bigger deal made out of it. The local stations did produce a special show about the 50 years of Hawaii's statehood and the clips they showed on the commercials looked interesting but I had to choose between watching the show or writing in my blog and as you can see the blog won! It was a beautiful day on Kauai with temps in the low 80's and a nice breeze. It was so nice Jackie and I just had to get out and enjoy it a little so of course we went to Anini snorkeling. The tide was pretty low so getting to some of our favorite spots was a little bit of a challenge. As a matter of fact at one spot Jackie swam right over an eel! It wasn't the one in the video but was the same size and type as that one. We were swimming over the top of the reef in water that couldn't have been more than a foot deep when I noticed this eel. I had slowed down and and was preparing to take a few pics of it when Jackie swam by. She couldn't have been more than 6 inches from the eel when she swam by it! I think it startled her a little when I pointed the eel out to her and she was able to see just how close she had come to it! After we got back to shore we got the biggest kick out of watching some of local keikis fishing. There were 4 of them with the oldest being about 8 or 9 and the other 3 being 4 or 5. These little guys were using open faced reels and casting into the wind. Not sure how they managed to keep their reels from looking like a rats nest but they did! The oldest even caught what looked like an eel. It was about a foot long. Of course Jackie and I sat there for about a 1/2 hour watching them play and neither one of us was smart enough to take any pictures!

Felicia Update

Aloha! Well Jackie and I are still in a holding pattern waiting to see what Felicia has in store for us. At the moment it looks like this should be a pretty mild event as the weather service have down graded Felicia to a tropical storm and they are prediciting her to weaken even more. On Sunday they were saying we should expect rain totals of close to 15 inches but tonight they have revised that to totals closer to 6 inches. The storms path has also shifted a little and now it looks like it will make landfall on either Maui or Oahu instead of the Big Island like they were prediciting earlier. We should feel the worst of the storm Tuesday afternoon thru Wednesday and things should be getting back to normal by Thursday. Today the weather was pretty nice...the skies were a bit over cast but not that bad. Having been warned about all the rain we should be getting Jackie and I decided that today would be a good day to mow the lawn. We have made the mistake before of letting it get too long and that really turns the lawn in to a huge job. The video I posted today was taken Saturday at Anini. It has a few still pics of a juvenile sailfin tang. There were two of them about the same size. This is the first sailfin tangs we have seen so we are hoping these guys will stay around for a while. I was also able to capture a short clip of a small cleaner wrasse. He was doing his little dance that he does to draw attention to himself so the fish will know that he is open for business. To me it looks like action I wanted to put on my crappie jig with the hopes of attracting a bite! Guess its lucky for the cleaner wrasse that there are no crappie in Hawaii!

IT'S NICE NOW but...

Aloha! Jackie and I have enjoyed another week of watching tv, napping, reading and playing on the computer. A very enjoyable way to spend the week but not a way that gives one much to blog about! This week we did take the time to make sure our hurricane kit was ready. Basically we just did an inventory of the supplies we have on hand as we wanted to make sure we had enough staples to get us thru a couple of weeks of no electricity or water service. Surprisingly we didn't need to purchase much...just a couple of 7 gallon water containers and a little more propane for the stove. Everything else we had on hand. According to the weather service there is only a very small chance that hurricane Felicia will remain a hurricane and will more than likely be down graded to a tropical storm by the time it makes landfall in Hawaii sometime around Monday if it even hits Hawaii at all. So the main threat we should be facing will be rain with the likely hood of it being heavy in places. Having lived here for almost three years now I know that it can rain here when it wants to! Seeing as how Jackie and I spent last week pretty close to the house no new pictures so I posted a short clip from February. Hope you don't mind the rerun!

CATCHING UP

Aloha! I know it has been a week since my last post and I don't have a good excuse for not writing in my blog other than the fact that the days just seem to have flown by. Not sure why that is because Jackie and I haven't really done anything. Our only real accomplishment was getting the grass cut! The weather has been overcast with just enough rain mixed in to keep us away from the beach and outside of a couple of trips to town to check the mail and pick up a few groceries our days have been spent here at home reading, playing on the computer, watching a little tv or napping. It was this type of week I used to stress over so much when I was thinking about retiring. I figured I would need something to do to keep me occupied and to help me pass the time. Boy was I mistaken! It seems I forgot to factor in that one ironic little twist that God has put into his plan...that the older one is the faster time passes! When I used to hear people tell me that youth was wasted on the young I always assumed that by youth they were refering to how you felt and your level of energy. Now I wonder if they might have been refering to your concept of time and how when your young and have a lot of it it passes so slowly and as you age it speeds up so dramatically! Ok thats all the philosophy for this post! Let me tell you what Jackie and I have really been thinking about and thats whats happening at the end of this month. We are going to have visitors. First will be Theresa and Tricia with their families and then Mary and Jose and most of the staff from Mary's clinic. We are going to have so much fun! It is a real treat to be able to experience Kauai with someone who is seeing it for the first time and being there when they discover the joy of snorkeling or to watch as they take in so many of Kauai's beautiful sights! Really drives home the fact that Jackie and I are so blessed to live in such a beautiful place and we are so lucky to be where we can enjoy it at our own pace. PS our trip home in October might have made it in to our thoughts a time or two as well...not that you guys and our grandsons are ever far from our thoughts but thinking about seeing you all in October has really started to build the excitement!