Family Times

Towards the end of June and early July, the whole Lee family was in Washington for the first time since our wedding. I took two weeks off from work to be with everybody (and have another knee surgery). The first Sunday after Kevin, Robin and the girls arrived, Grandpa and Grandma took a bunch of the cousins out for lunch. On Monday, we took the ferry to Kingston,

then drove out to Point No Point.

Alayna was not at all impressed with the smell coming from the dead seal we found on the beach.
We then headed out the the Foulweather Bluff Nature Conservancy where we explored the beach,
and tried to squirt eachother with geoducks.

Kevin, Amanda, and Alayna tried to dig one out, but the geoduck won.
The following weekend we headed to Dad and Barbara's in Omak. We went on what started out as a great hike through the Okanogan National Forest. A fire had gone through there two years earlier.

We stopped for lunch at Tiffany Lake, where I was able to impress the small children with my fishing skills.

After lunch, the smarter members of our group went back to the cars, while the rest of us followed Kevin off into the wilderness.

Kevin lead us on a hike using a map he either got off a cereal box or downloaded from Wikipedia. His brother-in-law, Scott had a GPS unit with an altimeter, but that didn't do a whole lot for us when the map didn't show coordinates or land topography. At one point we came across a sign pointing to the trail we were supposed to be on, but Kevin didn't believe it and after much debate he somehow convinced us that his map was more accurate than the trail markers.

We blundered on through a marsh (we were supposed to be skirting a ridge) as the grumbling grew louder and the dissention grew stronger. We finally got so far off course that even Kevin had to admit that we were not where we were supposed to be. His proposition was that we turn around and go back the way we came, which was a couple miles back through the marsh and then uphill to the infamous sign pointing the way to the trail. From there it would still be a considerable hike to finish the originally planned course. At this point, about half the group decided to mutiny and head off for civilization on our own. We had descended quite aways and knew we should be coming up on a road before too long. Along the way we came to a stream that we needed to cross. Merlin sudied it hard

...as did Dad.

Merlin almost gave me a Kodak moment on his first attmept to cross.

After a little teamwork, the stream was behind us.

Before long we made it out to the road, where we had about a four hour wait for the rest of our hiking comrades to make it out of the woods and bring the cars. We came across this log alongside the road that made me do a serious double take.

After we all made it back safe and sound to our worried wives, who had expected us several hours earlier, all hard feelings were put aside and we were able to enjoy spending Sunday together.

Back in Seattle, we took in a beautiful evening at Safeco Field. As usual, the Mariners lost.

On July 4th, we helped Grandpa and Grandma celebrate their 68th anniversary at Anthony's.

We then got to go out on Glenn and Hazel's boat to watch the fireworks on Lake Union.

As we got out on the lake fairly early in the afternoon, we had time to play around on the lake a little. Shorly after this picture was taken, I was humiliated when a kayak passed me.