On labor day weekend before school started in full swing, we took one last family summer hike, up Pomola peak in Baxter state park. Reid had a fever but he did it nonetheless!

Lunch at the peak.

And Liam played piano on the way out.

The same set of gentlemen (those being Liam, Reid, Wesley, Alden, and I) also created another derivation of Rock, Paper, Scissors, creatively entitled “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tissue, Porch.” Unlike Salsa, Octopus, Train, which features a sub-game, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tissue, Porch features a meta-game. Specifically, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tissue, Porch, is a regular game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, within a larger game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. This is how it goes:

1. Players start as usual by saying “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” before throwing their choice of any of the five options including Tissue and Porch.

1. Rock, Paper, and Scissors (RPS) work as usual. R->S->P->R

1. Porch beats all RPS (because none of those affect a porch). Tissue looses to all RPS (because each of them destroys a tissue). But Tissue beats Porch (because no one wants a gross tissue on a porch).
2. This means that Tissue (T) and Porch (P), combined with RPS form another RPS system, in which each beats one and it’s beaten by one, in what is called a transitive cycle. T->P->[RPS]->T. So this is a meta game of Rock, Paper, Scissors wrapped around a regular game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Goodbye summer, the days without end goodbye summer, you’ve been a good friend. Goodbye summer and hello to fall the days will now move at a strenuous crawl, say “hey there” to school and all of the kids “did this summer make you happy?” Yes it really did.

Rhode Island was or very last state license plate to find in our month-long license plate game. We had even found Hawaii, on the road Glacier National Park in Montana. But no Rhode Island. Our last chance to find a Rhode Island plate was on our final trip to pick up the kids in Boston. And luckily, we did!

First, we thought a V of geese looked somewhat odd. Then later we saw a flotilla of white swans. “Look at the swans!” Katie said, then “Oh, no!” They were not swans at all, but pure white pelicans. We saw yet more on a third occasion. Does anyone know about this? White pelicans in North Dakota?