The Camaras

The day after Christmas we left early in the morning to spend a few days on Kauai with Ross’ family there.  Unfortunately, they had been having lots of rain and it continued to rain while we where there.  It wasn’t nearly as fun with all the rain - but we still enjoyed the time with the family.  As always there was lots of good food — and it seems like all we did was eat.

Even though it was raining in Kalaheo, Ross and I escaped to Poipu beach for a few hours Friday afternoon.  It was certainly a ‘tourist’ beach –  but his Uncle thought it was the best bet for finding some sun.  The beach was busy and full of people.  The shoreline was kind of rocky, so we didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the water.  Ross noticed ( I wasn’t so observant at first) that there was a section of beach roped off.  We went to check it out and found that a Hawaiian Monk Seal (endangered species, and state marine mammal) had beached himself and was sunning on the beach. Having just read an article about the Monk Seals, I was excited to see one up close.

Hawaiian Monk Seal

Nicole in front of the seal

Saturday it continued to rain, rain, rain.  Ross’ family was playing a chinese card game, Mah Jong.  They taught me how to play, and we played for most of the afternoon.  It’s a game like rummy where you try and make runs or matches with your “cards” (really tiles).  I had a hard time with some of the chinese characters for the numbers - but once Phyllis made a cheat sheet for me,  I did okay. I still don’t get the complicated scoring system, but I can learn that on some other trip.  While I thought the game was fun, I thought it was way too long…it took us four hours to play.

Nicole learning to play Mah jong

Saturday night Ross’ family had a dinner to go to, so we went into Lihue to Hanamura’s for saimin. The place was BUSY since it was the weekend, and was cold and rainy. It was a small local owned saimin shop and very yummy.  It must have made some guidebooks since lots of tourists managed the find the place.  Ross, Scott and I all ordered the “special” saimin which included two wontons, meat, fish cake and a hard boiled egg.

Hanamura’ Saimen

Ross and Nicole at Hanamura’s

Most of our stay in Kauai was rainy…which was quite a bummer.  However, on  Sunday it stopped raining long enough for us to go with Ross’ family to some land they lease which they call “81″.  (I’m pretty sure it’s called 81 because its 81 acres).  Some of Ross’ family on Kauai are cattle ranchers on the side….and 81 is where they keep some of their cattle.

The land is quite beautiful…nice, green and lush. However, because of all the rain it was also MUDDY! Ross’ cousins had asked many friends to come help out for the day.  They were moving cattle from one pasture to another, getting cattle ready to be shipped out, and separating the young from their mothers and doing other un-fun things like branding and castrating the younger ones.

Traditionally most of the cattle herding had been on horseback, however it recent years they’ve been using more 4-wheelers (as they’re easier to manuever).  Ross’ cousin Kimo put me on one of his horses, Blossom, so that I could go along as they went around the pasture and herded the cattle.  Ross isn’t a big fan of horses, so he stuck to a 4-wheeler.  We were supposed to be helping herd the cattle — but I really didn’t have any clue what I was doing — so I just kind of followed behind people.  I did much better on the horse than last time in Kauai — at least this time I could get the horse to go.  (The last time I got a horse so mellow I couldn’t get it to go).  Ross’ cousins keep on giving me pointers on how to ride the horse….and by the end I was doing okay. Although, I still didn’t like going downhill or very fast.

It took all morning to do everything they needed with the cattle. Once the cattle were ready to go into the trailers, they had a hard time with the trucks pulling the trailers because there was so much mud.  It was kid of funny to watch the trucks play ’slip and slide’.   After that we had lunch down there with all kinds of leftovers from all the meals we had the past few days.

It was a great way to spend the day on Kauai.  However,I can say that Ross and I would never make it as cattle rachers.  It was fun to watch his family and their friends work though.

Gathering for the round up

Nicole on the 4 wheeler

Me on ‘Blosom’ where i spent several hours.

Uncle Mac getting the brands ready.

Some of the cousins getting a calf into position

Branding

See all the mud…

Ross got all wet on the way home…

One of the things my mother asked us to do when we were back at home for the holidays was to go and pickup a new dryer from costco. I figured this should be easy enough as all my mother needed was for us to physically load the thing into the van and bring it home.

We did that on Christmas eve thinking it would be a fast task. However when we got home and opened the thing up we realized that the dryer didn’t come with a power cable and that we were expected to buy our own and wire it into the machine. On top of that the dryer required a vent which wasn’t included. This required a quick trip out to home depot where we wandered around for a while looking for the vent until a nice lady there helped us out. More importantly while we were buying the vent she told us that although instructions call for a metal based vent we could get away with a plastic one.

Unpacked the dryer and checking out the instruction. Yes we actually read them before we started

Once we got our missing parts home we spent awhile trying to wire the new electrical cord to the dryer since the one we had didn’t quite match the pictures in the instruction manual. After a bit of guess work we think we got it setup right. The next step was to get the vent the installed and connected to the wall. Initially we started with the metal vent that the instructions suggested. Unfortunately due to the location of the existing exhaust pipe this didn’t work so we ended up having to swap to the plastic version.

Got the old dryer out and ready to put the new dryer in and connect the vent.

Scott installing the vent. Good thing he’s skinny

hmm did we get it right? Better switch to the plastic one

Once we finally had it installed we checked with mom that she had paid up her home owners insurance since we weren’t ‘certified’ electricians and when we turned it on it could very well catch fire . Thankfully it seemed to turn on correctly and not start a fire.

Ross doing his best to be kinda useful

Throughout this whole process nicole was laughing at the two of us and our amateur hour of home improvement. It was an interesting experience and thankfully we got the job done but at many points that $100 install fee was looking mighty good.

Pictures from yesterday when we went out to Ko Olina for a couple of hours before we met Keane and Kristyn for dinner.

Scott and Nicole at the beach.

View at Ko Olina

The beach.

A self portrait of the two of us at Ko Olina

Our second day in hawaii involved running errands and picking scott up from the airport. Originally we had planned on getting started around 9:30 in the morning but since we were up so early we ended up leaving the earlier in the morning. We grabbed a quickie breakfast from zippys and then went to Ala Moana so that nicole and mom could get a pedicure. They ended up getting their pedicures from the same place that they went to before the wedding. Mom treated nicole as part of her Christmas gift. I kinda just amused myself while they were in the spa by picking up dads gift and mailing a package for mom. It was nice to just wander around the mall and people watch.

At that point it was time to pick up scott from the airport. It was a bit of a disaster getting to the airport from the mall but we eventually got there. Once we picked scott up we headed back into the city to have lunch in chinatown. Since we don’t know any of the places in chinatown we ended up just going to the same place that we had the ching family reunion a couple of years ago. The food was ok but it was fun at least to eat local Chinese food. After lunch we picked up a bunch of stuff that aunty Donna asked us to get from chinatown.

Me in front of the duck place in chinatown

After lunch we headed back home to take it easy. Well I took it easy at least. Nicole decided to start baking up storm in mom’s kitchen. She baked 4 or 5 differnt types of cookies and double batches of some of the recipies. I swear mom’s oven saw more use that night than in the last 20 years combined.

Nicole baking

Just a few of the cookies that nicole baked that night.