Well, I'm finally back online, after an all too brief "vacation" and a few weeks of recover time after returning home. We spent about 10 days in Seattle visiting my mom, while my brother and his wife -- both of whom are in the Army and preparing to return to Iraq for another one year tour -- took leave to visit at the same time.
It was a hectic week of rushing around and visiting various places around the Olympic Peninsula like a bunch of tourists. Then we went on a short "side trip" to Maine to visit Luna's grandmother (thank you, Joyce!). We stayed in her cabin on a small pond way out in the country, but more about that later.
In less than two weeks I ended up with hundreds of pictures -- enough to fill up three 1GB memory cards. That's a bunch of photos and another 512K on Kay's Sony Cybershot! As I sort through the collection, I'll be posting them here...I know, there's nothing worse than viewing people's vacation pictures -- but I don't think that you'll be disappointed. This will also break from the Japanese theme for a while, but my primary intent is to let everyone see where we've been and what we're doing...so on to the the vacation photos!
The first thing on the schedule once Joshua and Laura arrived was a hot air balloon ride at the Balloon Depot in Duvall, WA. It was the first time that any of us had done this, so we were all pretty excited.
The four of us (Joshua, Laura, Kay and I) had to wake around 5AM to make the trip to Duvall. It was chilly and clear in the city but along the way - after stopping off for some coffee and Red Bull, of course - we ran into fog. It made for some nice photos, but we were praying that we wouldn't cancelled for weather. As the sun rose, though, the thin layer of fog began to quickly burn off.
Joshua and I volunteered to help "inflate" the balloon, so Kay took some great pictures while we were helping. Finally, we were on our way up to about 4000 feet, with nothing but a wicker basket beneath our feet. We enjoyed views of the remaining wisps of fog, Mt. Ranier and the Cascades, cows from 2800 feet and the reflection of our balloon in a river below. One of our favorite parts of the flight was when we brushed the treetops - we were actually able to reach out and touch the leaves!
That's all for now, but much more to come!
