Fun with the fam

I've had a fun time being back in the Seattle area with my family since Tuesday. I fly back to Houston next Tuesday.

I got to my parents' house on Tuesday and we unloaded all my trip stuff out of the truck then headed downtown to watch a Mariner's game. The field was pretty cool and I was glad to get this picture of my dad actually smiling!

We decided to get a family shot. We were just missing Adam and Sus.

The next day my mom and I went on a little excursion to Federal Way. She took me down to Redondo Beach. It was really pretty.

This is a shot down the boardwalk.

That night I had dinner with some friends from Houston who have moved to the Seattle area. Sadly, their little daughter had already gone to bed by the time I thought to get a picture of them.

Thursday we decided to catch the Sounder down to Seattle for the day.

Here's the train parked at King Station. It was a cool backdrop and a very smooth train ride.

We walked around a lot, but I didn't take too many pictures since we went to a lot of the same places as my last Seattle trip a few weeks ago and I've already posted those pictures. I had to put this one on of my dad riding this wooden whale. It was a pretty cool sculpture.

We did do something my mom and I have wanted to do for a long time - Ride the Duck! It was a really cool tour. Here we are about to get into the water. I loved that it was by land and water.

Here's a view of the Seattle skyline from the lake.

The Space Needle, of course!

Here's a video of a sea plane taking off. We saw a lot of that on our little tour.

This was the most famous part of the tour. This is the floating house from Sleepless in Seattle. Cool, eh?

I tried to get a shot of our duck, but couldn't get back far enough to get the whole thing unobstructed. Oh well!

My dad took two shots of me with this background, but my eyes are closed in both. You can't win them all!

We got tired and turned around so we headed back to our neck of the woods. We still had stuff we wanted to see so Friday we drove down to see the Locks. On the way, we saw two of these tank looking vehicles driving down the road. I thought it was pretty cool.

Here we are at the Locks. It was pretty interesting.

Also interesting there was the fact that they had a salmon ladder. Here's a view with a whole bunch of salmon.

This viewing area was indoor and pretty cool.

This is looking down at the ladder from the top. Every once and a while you could see one jump out of the top.

Back to the Locks. Here's a good picture of one of the locks and some boats behind it waiting for the water level to go down so they could head out from the lake to the Puget Sound.

We've caught some glimpses of Mt. Ranier lately. It's pretty spectacular. I got this one today at a service project we did with my parents' ward to clean headstones at a National Cemetery.

Here's a little zoom view for you. It's over 14,000 feet high and we're pretty close to sea level where we are.

The cemetery itself was pretty impressive. Here are my parents and some other people doing some scrubbing. We worked out there for almost 2 hours. It was pretty warm and sunny for Seattle.

We saw several LDS markers. Can you tell how we knew?

My dad snapped this one of me with Mt. Ranier in the background. It's hard to see because it was so light in color.

I've really loved the farmers markets out here. We got a bunch of stuff today after the service project and I had to get a picture of it because it makes me really happy! I'm not sure I'm ready to head back to the heat and humidity of Texas!

We've had a few visitors at their place already. We had some old Joseph City and Holbrook friends stop by today!