Meeting old friends...and a huge turtle

We drove to Laie today to meet up with a friend of mine from high school and her husband.  I met Jennifer when we were 11 years old.  Her birthday is the day before mine and we had a double slumber party together at my house when we both turned 12.  I don't really know when I met TJ, but we went to high school together too. =)  TJ served his mission here in Hawaii, and this was the first time he had been back to visit.  They were staying with Jennifer's sister Tara, who's husband is stationed here in Oahu with the Navy.  I love being able to see so many people who come here to visit Hawaii.

Jennifer and I in the visitors center at the Laie Temple

Jennifer and TJ

Laie Temple

The family.

After visiting with Jenn and TJ, we drove to Laniakea beach on the north shore of Oahu to see if any turtles were out basking in the sun.  We were luck enough to see one big turtle!  There are volunteers who keep watch over the turtles so people don't bother them.  They put a red rope around the turtles as a kind of safety zone for the sun-bathing turtles.

A Whale of a Time

On Wednesday, I went to my second day of orientation. We started off with two classes. The first was called Whet your appetite. A native Alaskan woman came in and told us stories from her tribes/houses. She also introduced herself in the Tlingit language. I guess it was kind of like a cultural awareness class, since we are in their area. Kind of fun. The other class was called Mythbusters. They had a panel of "real UAS students"...so funny that they introduced them that way... and we were supposed to ask them questions about what college was really like. It took awhile for that one to get started. Both the classes were an hour long. After that, they let us have a sort of free time. They had four activities for us to choose from: kayaking, hiking, climbing, and a group that was for procrastinators so they could finish registering and buying books and such. I went climbing on the rock wall in the gym. I got to climb on the wall twice and I also got to belay once. My first time up the wall, I slipped and crashed into the wall. Luckily, I only ended up getting two big bruises on my hiney...I crashed backside first into a hand hold. The guy belaying me let me down and thought I was gonna be done, but I went right back up and made it to the top. The second time I went up, I didn't go all the way to the pulley, because my arms gave out on me. I took a rest part way up, but my arms aren't used to that much of a workout, and my hands were too sweaty to hold on anymore, but I made it within four feet from the top.

When our free time was over, they fed us lunch and then we got on a school bus and went to Auke Bay Harbor to get on the whale watching boat. There were over 100 students that went on the whale watch. It was such a beautiful day. The sun was out and we had blue skies. The whales were very active and came close to the boat. We also got to see a little island covered with stellar sea lions. They were loud.

We were out for about 3 hours, and after the whale watch, I went home and got Darwin and the kids, and we went to Auke Rec and had a bbq with my classmates. They had a native prepare a salmon pit...which is VERY similar to how the hawaiians roast a pig in a pit. He told us another story (he told one on the whale watch boat as well) and then his group did a drum/dance demonstration. He then had the group pass out their drums to the audience and the volunteers got to learn the drum/dance routine. Isaish really wanted to do it, so they let him, and then one of the students gave me his drum, so Isaiah and I got to learn a native Alaskan drum dance. He, of course, was the star of the show. Darwin took pictures of us with his phone, but I don't have them yet, so I will put them up later.

One of my favorite whale pictures. The sun was out and there was a rainbow over the whale when it spouted.

In this one, you can see the whales bumpy nose.

Humpback Whale

Whale tail waterfall.

Dive, Dive, Dive

These two swam together for awhile.

Momma and baby

Covered with Stellar Sea Lions.

King of the Hill

This group was swimming in a pack and swirling all over. One was definatly ADHD...lol...he was going crazy.

A hard day at work!

I have often been accused of not working hard and playing all the time by my family members and I want you to know that it is just not true. So to show how hard I work I have decide to post today's efforts on this blog site. This should put to rest the unfounded rummer that I do things that are unrelated to my primary responsabilities during the work day. Now two Saturdays ago I worked the entire day talking to people about how to prepare for a hurricaine and conducting a harbor patrol in Kahului harbor. As a result today may not be the best example of a hard working day but I will do my best to put the right type of spin on it.

I arose a 0300 to begin an arduous day of work. I arrived in the harbor in time to assist in launching the vessel and getting underway in moderate to heavy seas where we could assist the Maui Fire Rescue vessel (who really did launch at the same time and went fishing in the same place) provide oversight to recreational activities happening about 12 miles outside of Kahului Harbor. When we arrive we found that there were Mahi Mahi (dolphin) and Ahi (tuna) that needed to be taken as sample specimens from the environment. We did the best that we could to take a sampling that were representative of the area: 2 dolphin and 4 tuna. When we completed the sampling we decided we should widen our search for other types of life. During our fishing (I mean searching) we collected a short billed spear fish. I will admit that it was a lot of fun to reel this one in.

OK, I have a really cool job and I had fun today. I hope all of you have as much fun as I do. Love what you do and do what you love.

This is the demonstrating my workout in the short billed spear fish lifting exercises.

This is me and Hunter Betts (the vessel owner).

This is a fish sample that we took. OK, they are a little small, but they were a lot of fun to catch.

The real spear fishing video

Sorry to any of you that watched the other 10 minute video of the ocean! This is the real spear fishing video!

Turtle video

Darwin took Gary (a friend from Juneau who is here visiting) out spear fishing today. No luck, but they got some good video of a turtle.

Baby Beach Video

This is Isaiah snorkeling...later in the video is Melissa, who didn't know she was being filmed.

This is London and Isaiah snorkeling. Don't you love how they "swim"!

Here is Caleb and a fish. We took a lot of video of the fish, but you would get seasick watching it, and it is hard to see the fish, because the water isn't as clear as it could be.

This is Darwin handing the video camera to Melissa

Here is Brooklin. She had already been snorkeling, and Melissa was using her mask and snorkel, so she was just playing in the water...and watching Isaiah for us. Later on in the video, you can see London, Brooklin, and Melissa

Weekend update

This weekend was so busy it was a blur. It started (for me) bright and early on Friday morning. I had to be out the door at 6 am...showered, dressed, and hair done, for an hour long drive to the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, to do a geoteaming event. For those that don't know what that is, it is a lot like geocaching, only with a different purpose. The short explaination is: it is a team building activity for corporations using GPS technology and aspects of geocaching. I am hired as a geotech for the events here on Maui, and I teach people how to use their GPS units, and assist them in locating caches hidden in a specific area. The course is designed specifically for the event, and when the event is over, we clean up the course of all the caches. If you want to know the long explanation visit: http://www.geoteaming.com/ I have done six geoteaming events since last April. They are really a lot of fun. So anyway, I spent the day out in the sun, trying to keep up with a group of 9 people on a mission to collect the most caches and win the prize at the end. The hotel property is on a hill, and we ran (actually they technically aren't allowed to run) so we were speed walking for two hours...on the beach, up hills, and all around the resort.

Friday night, we took my geoteaming friend, Tanya, from Austin, TX out to dinner. She is a course designer, and I have worked for her for four of the six events I have done. She is really fun. We took her to our favorite local restaurant...Da Kitchen. They have the best local food. Saturday we took Tanya and Andrew (the other employee here for the geoteaming event) out to our favorite snorkeling beach in Lahaina for most of the day. I even went snorkeling for a good 30 min with Caleb and London. I actually had a really good time, and didn't have such a hard time putting my face in the water. At about 2pm, we finally got out of the water and went to eat at a little outdoor beach grill, and then went to Cold Stone for dessert. We said good bye to my friends...I probably won't be doing any more events, because we are moving, and headed home. We had one hour to be showered and dressed in nicer clothes, because Darwin and I were asked to teach dance at a Stake Priest/Laurel (kids 16 - 18 yr. old from church, for the island of Maui) etiquette dinner and dance. We taught them an easy group dance and then a few swing moves, and then they turned on some music and had the dance.

Sunday, after church, Darwin and I were asked to speak at the Stake Adpotion fireside. We both spoke for about 20 minutes, and we had our children sing "I Am a Child of God" (and I played the piano for them.) Darwin did really good on his talk, and I bawled through most of mine. They also had another lady speak who had adopted two children at birth, who are now teenagers, and also her daughter spoke about growing up as an adopted child. Another lady sang a song, and then the LDS Family Services representative for Maui spoke to us. It was a really good fireside.

Anyway, today I am just trying to get the quilt done and relaxing. It only has the binding left to do, so it should be done in the next day or two. I guess I should put a little in here about everyone else too. Darwin had fun in Florida with his parents and his brother's family. He has been busy with work and is trying to get our move stuff ironed out...when to ship the car, when to have the movers come, and all the other little stuff we have to do before we take off. Brooklin is in a free sewing class after school on Tue. & Thurs. and she came home with a pillow case last week that she had made. Caleb made "Wildcat" of the month at school, and got a certificate for perfect attendance this quarter...and I think he has gotten it for the whole year as well. London also got perfect attendance, and she is getting ready to be baptized in June. Isaiah has another mohawk, and we just got his acceptance for an IEP for speech...he is very hard to understand, and they are going to pull him out of class at school for 40 min a week to help him with his speech. I think that is all for now, and I will put up a video or two of us out snorkeling at baby beach...in another post, since I really need to get on the ball and get some stuff done today.

Flip Video Underwater

We finally got to use our flip video in the water.

This is Darwin diving to the bottom and coming back up. It was around 35 ft.

This is one of the kids in the water....Brooklin is trying to help London back into the boat by pushing on her hiney, and Caleb is at the end of the clip

This last clip is of a surgeon fish. The camera doesn't have good zoom, especially in the waterproof case, so this one actually let Dar get pretty close to it.

Video of Melissa snorkeling

Some of you know that I am not a snorkeler. I am always the one on the beach with the little people, while Darwin takes the older two out snorkeling. Two years ago, when Darwin and I went over to the Big Island to attend the Kona Temple for our ward temple week, I tried out snorkeling for the first time. It didn't go so well....I could not convince myself that I could put my face in the water and still breathe. Next, one of my contacts slid up under my eyelid, and I had to get out and fix it, and finally after about 30 min. I was able to put my face in the water and float. I looked like a dead person, and Darwin just held my hand and dragged me around in the water. After I got a little more comfortable, I started to kick my legs a little and was pulling him with me. Then I looked up and right in front of me was a turtle that was as big as my torso, and I lost it! I shoved Darwin under the water and was trying to scream through the snorkel tube while climbing Dar to get out of the water and swim backwards all at the same time. After Dar recovered from being half drowned, he laughed at me, and calmed me down. I decided to try again, and as I started to relax, another turtle showed up, and I decided that if I wanted Darwin to survive, I better get out of the water. Needless to say, I haven't tried snorkeling again since then.

Today, I decided to give it another try. We were at the Molokini Crater, which is the place where all the tour boats take people to snorkel. They pay anywhere from $50 to $100 per person to snorkel there, and we only had to pay $30 for the boat rental, and fuel up the boat afterwards....we spent less than $75 total for our trip today. I was a little nervous, but I really wanted to try it again. I had Darwin take some video of me, so I could prove that I did it and didn't freak out.....granted there weren't any turtles, but I am proud of myself for trying again.

Snorkel pictures

After watching the whales, we went out to Molokini Crater and went snorkeling. We were in 35 ft. of water, and from the boat, you could see clear to the bottom. There were some fish and coral to see, and luckily (for me) no sharks today. Darwin and Brooklin were praying to see sharks today!

Pictures of the whales

The video is really small, so here are some shots of the whales I took with the 300mm zoom lens. This one was really playing around, and slapped the water for several minutes.

Whale Watching

We took the Coast Guard morale boat out again this morning, and we saw plenty whales! This video is called "Tail Slap". Isaiah went on a whale watching field trip earlier this month where they taught the kids about whale behaviors, and as we were watching the whale today, every time the whale would slap it's tail, Isaiah would shout "Tail Slap!" It was pretty funny, and also very cool. The ocean was much calmer today, and we hardly got wet at all.

We only got wet

On Saturday, we took out the Coast Guard' s morale boat. We were going to try and see some whales, but we only got wet and cold. The ocean was choppy, and the wind was really blowing. I am glad we bought the water proof housing for the video camera. The kids would laugh their heads off every time we got hit with more water, Dar was grinning from ear to ear, and I never let go of the handle near where I was sitting. Darwin actually did see two whales, but none of the rest of us did. We might try and go out again....hopefully on a calmer day. I didn't think that we would be able to hear anything on the video, since the microphone was sealed tightly inside the waterproof housing, but some sound did get through. Enjoy watching us get soaked.