Alaska trips and going away parties

In our final days before departure we're hunting passports down and finalizing first aid kits. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to ship our passports off to the Syrian Embassy at the beginning of August... according to other travelers they usually turn them around in about 10 working days we're at 12 and counting. . .

Any how...this post is mostly about the summer and the adventures we've had so far:

Mercy, Melinda Mueller, and I led a three week trip to the Alaskan homestead with eleven SAAS kids this July and August, wet-blueberry-stained-mosquito-bitten-bruised-and-abraded legs carried us through a great trip none will forget.

We caught greyling in abundance, enjoyed the fruits of the tundra and had a few moments of soggy survival and swollen river crossing that re-set the "hardometers" of many on the trip. Mercy excelled as a leader of teenagers and earned an appreciation of how my summer trips with school kids aren't always the "vacation" she insisted they were.

Mercy's knowledge of the area, patience with adolescent mood swings and skills with the smokey wood stove added grace and depth to the leader team.
Melinda's stamina and wisdom with kids and nature inspired us as always.

I enjoyed returning to the unique wilderness of the Kanuti Kilolitna and sharing it with interested, excited young people.

Lots more pics of the Kilo adventure can be seen by clicking here.

Our friends in Seattle have showered us with affection and food as we step out of their lives for the next year. In a previous post I talked about our party at Kim and Rob's with our Seattle friends. Donna hosted another party with more friends from the east side on the 26th at her house in Bellevue. Great food, lots of laughs, and too many goodbyes made our eyes wet and our hearts swell. We will be back!

August 29th- We've found the Passports! We get to go! The Syrian Embassy was holding our PP at the back of the stack because they noticed our arrival in country dates were in November....not that our leaving the US dates were in September. Mercy called and practiced her intentional willfulness and got the documents through the process and fedexed overnight to Seattle!