A lot has happened since the last post.
Quentin’s ankle was hurting the week before Thanksgiving so Jennifer took him to the clinic to see what was wrong. They could not figure out what was happening so they told her to take him to the hospital. After going to the ER, they could not figure out what it was so they admitted him to the hospital. Long story short, after 3 days in the hospital, they figured it was a bone infection. They operated on his ankle to clean all the fluid out and put a tube in for 3 days. He was in the hospital for a total of 8 days and will be on crutches for the next 3 weeks. Jennifer spent all the nights and when I was in town, I would come and stay during the day so she could go home and get some rest and take a shower. He was released the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which by the way, hospital turkey is not so good, and is doing well and is getting around okay on crutches. He is expected to make a full recovery.
In other news the project I was working on is officially opened. We opened the bridge December 2nd with the mayor of Kauai present. It was a nice ceremony and the bridge was well received. I am not sure of my next assignment yet, but will keep everyone posted when I do find something out.

Pictures top to bottom:

Q in his hospital room.

Q's ankle surgery

Some pictures of Indie for you dog lovers

The final product - Kilauea Stream Bridge

Opening day - left to Right - Alex Pascual (County of Kauai Project Manager), Bernard Carvalho Jr. (Mayor of Kauai), Myself and Walter Sohl, my project engineer.

I AM A SLACKER!!
It has been a while since the last update. Things have been busy. Quentin is finishing up with soccer, Jennifer has been busy keeping the family running smoothly and training her new friend, and I have been bouncing between California and Oahu. I was gone to Cali last month for a superintendents meeting and have been on Oahu for the last week and a half in the area office helping out on a job estimate. I am now just getting back from a trip to the big island.
While I was in California, Jennifer and Quentin found and fell in love with a puppy. Her name is Indie and she is a 7 week old Yellow Lab. Jennifer definitely has her hands full training the new pup.
We are still on Kauai for now. The job I am on is winding down and we do not know where my we are going next. There are a couple big jobs coming down the pipeline here in Hawaii and hopefully we get a chance to stay. It is looking more and more like we are going to move to Oahu to be closer to the area office. As long as we stay in Hawaii, Jennifer and Q will be happy plus it will also allow me to keep spear fishing on a regular basis.
Jennifer is staying busy with the training of the puppy and is still working one day a week for our landlord. She is waiting till the beginning of the year to see where we end up, but is hoping we are still in Hawaii so she can attend school at the University of Hawaii.
One of my diving partners and I went out 2 weeks ago and had a close encounter with a shark. It was a gray reef shark and got up-close and personnel with us, chasing us out of the water and we last saw him in less than 3 feet of water, too close for my blood. He got within 2 feet of us and I was loaded and ready to shoot if I had too, doubting it would have done much damage. On the plus side however, I was able to land a beautiful parrotfish (which most likely attracted the shark due to the shot I got on him, lots of blood). We cooked him up that night and I still say he is the BEST tasting fish I have pulled from the Hawaii waters. This shark encounter has made me want to invest in a “bang stick” to be able to ward off the sharks if need be.
Quentin is wrapping up with soccer and they did very well this year. He plays defense and is a great goalie. He is one of the teams premiere goalies and the coach counts on him the most when he is in the goal. He is doing well in school and looks forward to the weekends when he can get in the water and hunt large fish with his hand sling, he is getting pretty darn good with it. I took him out a couple of weeks ago and he got his first fish with a spear gun, he was extremely excited, let me tell you. His fishing stories have already begun, the ones that have gotten away are getting pretty huge let me tell you.
We will update a lot sooner than 2 months. We will post some better puppy photos when we get them.

The end of summer has come and gone. It was a good 3 day weekend and as always, too short. It started with Quentin's first soccer game. He played very well and his team won, 3-2. He is now playing on the big field so there is a lot of running for him which wears him out very quickly. After the game, we decided to go fishing. I caught 3 Nenue which we had them for dinner that night, fresh fish is the only way to go. Jennifer cooked them on the grill and they were good eating as always.
Lobster season in Hawaii is any month with an "R" in it. So lobster season began Monday. Lobster catching is a night time sport and yo go out with a underwater light and look for them. When you find one, you pounce on it and grab it. They are spinney lobster and have no claws, but the spines on their back can cut you if not wearing gloves. I got 1 big one and 2 little, the little are still good size being around 6-8 oz tails. We pulled the tails and they are in our freezer waiting to be eaten. The weekend was good and we are looking forward to future lobster eating/hunting.
The bottom picture is an example of Quentin's Hawaiian Hand Sling. He has been doing a good job getting fish. He will swim with the sling loaded (in the picture it is loaded) and spear fish. It takes talent to get this down and Quentin has been doing a great job with it, getting fish every time he is out.

It has been awhile for a post. Things have been going pretty smooth to round out the end of the summer. Quentin has started soccer and his first game is the 30th of August, pictures will follow. We bought him his first Hawaiian hand sling (hand spear). He got to go out in the shallow reef and got the hang of it really quick. He got several small fish and I took them out and used them as chum so they didn't go to waste. Now he is just like dad, can't wait for the weekend to go fishing.

Bob and Claudia (Jennifer's folks) came and visited. We got to go on a helicopter tour and pretty much explored every last region of Kauai. We had a good time as always.

Jennifer has been busy getting Q ready for school and keeping on him about his homework (full time job let me tell you). She hasn't had a lot of chances to get to the beach during the week, but hopefully that will change. We are coming up on our year in Hawaii (instate resident) quickly and she is going to go back to school at the University of Hawaii satellite campus here on Kauai starting in January.
I have been busy at work flying back and forth between Oahu and Kauai, almost weekly. We finished our big milestone on the project, we got the girders set. This was stressful leading up to it but it went very smoothly, without a hitch. The girders weigh 100,000lbs each and are 112 feet long. We had to do a tandem pick which makes setting them extremely dangerous. You are 5 times more likely to have an accident doing a tandem pick over a one crane pick. I worked close to 36 hours straight without any sleep, but caught up the following Sunday, let me tell you. The job is still on track and will be complete in November. We are hoping to stay of Kauai but you never know.

Pictures Top to Bottom:

Quentin at his new school, Island School. It is the best private school on the island.

The Spouting Horn in Po'ipu

The Waimea Canyon (also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific). The red arrow is the helicopter tour we took, the exact copter and route.

Kalalau Valley from the top. This is the Na Pali Coast. We stayed at the bottom of this valley on the beach.

Waimea Canyon from the Helicopter

Jurassic Falls - this is the water fall in the beginning of Jurassic Park, hence the name

This is the sleeping giant in Kapaa. The red arrow is where we live.

Kalalau Beach - Na Pali Coast. Here is the beach we were at after 11 mile hike. The rock in the ocean at the bottom of the picture is in front of the sea cave we slept in.

Quentin showing his catch. The fish about to get his ear is one I got and we ate that night, it was good eating.

This is the barge we used to get our precast bridge girders from Oahu to Kauai. The cranes are inside the house (the white part that says Young Brothers on it).

The cranes set up picking girder 2 of 6. It took all day to get all 6 set.

Girder 6 waiting to go into place.

We made it out to the Na Pali Coast this last week. To see pictures and trip report, Click on the Na Pali Coast Trip to the right. Other than this trip, not much else has been going on. We have been spending as many weekends as we can at the beach. Jennifer and Quentin hang out at the beach and in the shallow waters, and I have been going spearfishing as much as possible. The following pictures were dinner Sunday night, a little taco (raw octopus) and a good size reef fish. It was a good day in the water, even though the white tip reef sharks were out and about feeding.

Another month has passed, and not a lot of excitement with that. Quentin is out of school, Jennifer is still busy taking care of our lives, and I am at work even more than ever.
Quentin had a graduation ceremony for their 6th grade and with Jennifer’s help, made a killer tea leaf hula skirt. He is now itching to get to the beach as much as possible. Jennifer has been staying busy with all the end of year activities for Quentin, getting him ready/enrolled in school next year. She is starting to look at continuing her schooling next year also.
As far as me, my job has been keeping me busy. In my free time, the family goes to the beach. I have gotten into spear fishing and try to do it as much as possible.
Other than that, not much exciting has happened in the last month. We will try to update in the next couple of weeks.
Oh by the way….BOSTON CELTICS WON!!!!

Finally I had a day off from work on a weekend. We wanted to do something adventurous so I did some research on the internet and found the “secret tunnels of Kauai”, also known as “Kaapoko Tunnels”. What I found out about them was they were old irrigation tunnels that were used to divert 28 million gallons of water a day which was used to water the sugar cane in the valleys below. The main tunnel is 1 mile long with 2 more tunnels that are ¼ mile, and 1/8 of a mile (these are considered tunnel 1). Supposedly there is a 2nd tunnel but we ran out of time to find it. We left the trail head at 10:30am and began down the muddy trail. We were prepared and brought the proper footwear for the hike (I had a pair of Merrell water shoes and the rest of the fam had tabis). We made it to the first tunnel after some extreme route finding, bamboo bushwacking and several stream crossings.
The first tunnel was tall enough that I could stand and wide enough to walk side by side. It did have shin deep water the whole way and the last ¼ of the tunnel had old rail track in the bottom. When you start you can see a faint pin hole at the other end which grows larger every step.
Approaching the other end of the tunnel there was a split, we headed up the 2nd tunnel and ran into the truss system. The trusses were placed at what looks like a collapse years ago. This tunnel winds around and eventually leads you to the irrigation canal. From here you get to the 3rd tunnel. This tunnel is a little more difficult, It has a low ceiling that you have to bend over the entire way and to make things worse, you are walking through shin deep mud. When you get to the end of the tunnel, you have to crawl through a small opening to get out. Once out, we were awarded by a river and waterfall all to ourselves.
This adventure was 4 miles one way and took 7 ½ hours from beginning to end. I am planning to go back some day to get to the last tunnel, one of these days.