Summer

Are you ready for the story of our summer?

We left for Maine the day Scott finished his tests. The car was packed to the hilt.

We camped with some friends on the way.

We drove through a monsoon on bald tires, and stopped to see friends in Pennsylvania and family in New York.

We bought some tools and the plans for a tiny house, dug nine 3 1/2 foot holes, then found out there were problems with the permit that couldn't be fixed until it was too late to build. Bummer. I hope nobody falls in those holes.


Scott did some studying. Notice the swim shorts. He's ready to jump in his sailing kayak at any moment.


Sal played with Meme's toys, and swam in rain or shine, popped in on Pop, and visited with friends.

We spent two weeks at the beach house... life really doesn't get much better than that. Sal loved wading in the tidal pools, finding crabs, playing with cousins, and soaking up time with Pepe, Meme and Sam.











I finally caught some fish:

But the best part of the whole summer in Maine was the LaRiviere Olympics. We competed in ping pong (Sam knocked me out of the running in the first round):

check out my top... I borrowed it from my mother for intimidation factor. We LaRivieres always say, "if you're not going to win, at least look good on the blocks."



double hula hoop (the men were curiously inept):


jump rope (Dan was sure we counted his wrong):

hammer throw:
Just kidding. But we really did do the hammer throw (it's not fair having to compete against the National Master's 50-55 year old Hammer Champion, mine nearly landed on my foot):



waste basket throw (which was changed from target shooting since I forgot the bullets to my air gun):

swim race, bike race, rowing, Boggle, and kayak roll(Stu and Val both won with 9 rolls in 30 seconds.) (Katie's camera has all those pictures.) The competition was fierce. Points were taken very seriously. No one got second tries. Don't be fooled by these smiles. We're all planning revenge on Scott for winning the whole thing.

Then we loaded the car back up and drove back to Cleveland. (Sal managed to throw up at least a dozen times between Pennsylvania and Ohio.)

Then we unpacked as fast as we could, and packed as fast as we could and caught a plane to Utah.

First we spent a week in Montana at Scott's family's cabin. It was beautiful. I picked huckleberries for the first time (it was a little tricky figuring out which ones they were, I tried a small purple berry first that made my tongue numb.)

Scott and I left Sal with Laura (again) (thank you thank you thank you thank you!) and went backpacking in Death Hollow in Southern Utah. It was great, but you'll have to wait for pictures because this computer has no more space and I can't download those pictures yet.

Now if Scott can just pass his boards, the summer will have been a success.