Birthday boy and Caving girl

Our biggest focus while the boys were in VT was Oscar's 21st.  Not many of his friends came (2 from high school-one flew over from London) but lots of family friends came, so it was as much a celebration for us in our house as anything.

These two are getting married next week - our VT neighbours

 I was lucky enough to have my Norwegian friend and her family come up to stay.  Hilde moved to NYC the same day we moved to Singapore.  And while I've seen her a few times here, I'd never met her family.  Her 3 kids are roughly the same ages as my older ones, and we had such a blast with them.  Next year we plan on visiting them in Norway as they are moving back.

 There was masses of meat, cakes and embarrassing photos.

 It was a good party.
The next night (July 4) Oscar went down to CT with his friends and then Ella went off to camp for a week on the 5th.

 I drove Ella over to her camp in New Hampshire, which should only have been an hour away, but I got hopelessly lost and it took us 2 1/2 hours.  We had lunch there, and then I drove back to our house in VT checked with Matt who was picking up Oscar and then drove 45 minutes to Brattleboro to pick up Oscar off the train.

On the drive home again, we stopped so Oscar could take some photos.  We drive past this Jeep repair place all the time.  It's fabulous.  Oscar has been wanting to stop and take photos for ages, and as it was just the two of us, and the light was gorgeous, we did.

Then it was time to say goodbye to my boys.  I miss having these two around so much, but I'm so glad that they are really happy in their new house in Tassie.  

And before we knew it it was time to pick up Ella from camp.  She was doing a camp called caves, cliffs and waterfalls which was mostly caving (actually not far from us in VT).  Here's some pictures from her week away.

She had a fabulous time, met lots of new friends and just loved the caving.  Tiny dark spaces are her thing.  She now wants to do the Vermont semester that they offer where they spend part of the winter x country skiing up to the Canadian border and then spend the spring, canoeing, cycling and walking back down. 5 months long.  I'd love to find a way to make it work for her.

Oh, and the discovery of this summer: our new swimming hole in the river.  Literally right across the road.

That's our house in the distance there.  There used to be a house right by the river next to the blue one.  It was pretty basic; two rental flats.  But it got absolutely trashed in the Hurricane Irene floods a few years ago.  The town (with money from the govt) bought up the property and this year they demolished the house and have turned it into a small park area.  Which means we have direct access down to the river.  Nothing like being able to sit in cold river with a cold beverage washing away the dirt and sweat from a day's gardening.