School's Out For Summer!

Yes, the old Alice Cooper adage comes to mind. Sidney and I are done for this school year, and the summer plans are about to become reality.

As a reward for doing a good job in school, I took her to McDonald's for lunch. First, a comment about McDonald's in Norway - it isn't like McDonald's in the U.S. at all. There are always a few menu items or ingredients they don't have. Yesterday, it was pickles. Now tell me, how can you make a Big Mac (two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun) WITHOUT PICKLES!?! What makes it worse is that fast food restaurants are the only place here we can get real dill pickles, so to not get them on the rare occasion we visit one of these places is almost devastating.


Okay, enough venting. The real reason I bring up lunch is because it offers proof that Sidney prefers free toys and trash to play with over expensive toys. Her Happy Meal toy was a Hot Wheels race car, and she used the plastic bag it came in to fashion herself this stylish hat. Yes, my child is wearing garbage with a feather taped to it on her head.

We are getting into the mindset of heading north to Svalbard. We leave Monday and will not be back until July 2nd. That means no sunsets for a week and a half. The weather up there is currently just above freezing, cloudy, but with only light wind. The ship we will be on has been there since the beginning of June, and they have reported polar bear sightings on all the trips so far. They have also seen walruses, lots of birds, and plenty of icebergs and pack ice. We will hopefully get well above the 80th parallel, and our distance to the North Pole will be less than 600 miles.

After our return, Sidney and I plan to start our driving trip through Scandinavia, the Baltics and Norther Europe, then we return to take Kimber to Denmark for her sailing trip aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl. We will pick her up in Bergen. She then goes offshore, during which time Sidney and I may go over to Scotland for a couple of days, then we will probably be doing our house-hunting trip to Houston. Sidney will then start school here for a few weeks until we return to the U.S.

The part about returning to the U.S. is very bittersweet for us at the moment, but more on that in a later post. Our next post will probably be just before we leave to go north, or just after we get there.