We canoed 4 or 5 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night we just pulled the canoes out of the river and found a grassy area to camp in. The mosquitoes were outrageously active (BREAK POINT.....just gazed out my kitchen window and spotted a rainbow......cool). Back to the weekend story.......
Right after launching
Born to Paddle
Probably the most interesting portion of the weekend was the construction of a man-made sauna out of willow branches, rainproof tarp and spicy hot rocks that simmered under hot fire for about 7 hours.
This is a picture of the ingenious "fort" sauna (located on the left...the thing that looks like a tent).
Apparently, they tried this last year, but used a regular campfire instead of hot rocks when attempting the "steam" quality. When they threw water on the fire (to produce the steam) they all got cover in hot, black ash! This year, much emphasis went into learning the proper building and usage techniques from youtube. I am told it was a huge success! I am a bit of a party pooper and went to bed after finding out the sauna fun was still an hour away at 11:00pm.
Sitting around the dinner table
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NEXT................
Since I am too tired to write much tonight (spending 4 hours on the beach in the middle of the afternoon is REALLY tiring once you get home......hehehehehe......don't hate us!) I am going to just post a series of pictures of the boys.
P.S. For any NBA fanatics.......we met the General Manager of the New Orleans Hornets (former GM for the San Antonio Spurs). He is in town scouting talent at the 19U World Championship Basketball and we ended up swimming next to his family at the beach today.
Isaac's BF for a couple of days (don't worry, Jack, your position as BFF is secured as tightly as ever!)
American Embassy kid, Lincoln, who left Latvia last week (enroute to D.C. for 8 months then on to China for 4 years). Did I mention that this whole Embassy life really intrigues me?!!! Maybe I forgot to mention in past postings, I have been mingling with American Embassy families. However, Jekabs is much more reasonable then I am in the daydreaming arena, so we will be returning to Texas in a little less than a month.
We've eaten a 3 year supply of Happy Meals here in Latvia (which for us would be about 5 each)
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Upcoming Week
*Peteris and Naomi are in town for their weekend Latvian wedding celebration, followed by loads of British family and friends! Tons of fun expected Saturday evening!
*Headed to Tallin, Estonia (described to us as "Medieval Disney") sometime next week.
**And then........TOTALLY AMAZING 48 HOUR MYSTERY TRIP COMING UP ON JULY 17th!
Not a mystery to us.....we've booked tickets! Will let you know on July 20th!
Hope the highlight gives you assurance that the next posting will be put together a bit better than this evenings post!
Thinking our departure from Latvia in 21 days is waaaaay too soon,
Loving Living in Latvia,
April
A-MAZE-ING. That looks like so much fun! Just had to note that I think Isaac is looking so much like you right now. He looks a lot like Jekab too, but for some reason that caught my attention. =)
ReplyDeleteAnd I think Trav's dream post-forced-retirement job would be embassy work just to live abroad. I'm a little more skeptical...
ReplyDeleteSurely you would love it! Given the right location, though! I like the summer here, but the winter.......I don't know if I could handle that.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment about Isaac. It is nice to hear he has some reflection of me.