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The Summer of Nothing Much

So as we said in an earlier post, we are moving to Saudi Arabia at the end of this summer.  (edit: I am here now but that is for a different post!) In the meantime, the summer has basically been spent waiting to move to Saudi Arabia.  I thought that we would give you a quick recap of our summer.

Quite possibly the best picture ever!

The (first) big move

The first bit of our summer was spent moving ourselves and our belongings from Florida up to Michigan (to stay with family).

The original plan was for Lindsey and Simon to fly up to Michigan while I drive the van up.  Of course plans don’t ever seem to work out.  Simon had really bad congestion for a few days before and we didn’t feel safe having hm fly with that congestion.  Hence, the Nielsen/Gish family roadtrip.  I would like to say everything went smoothly, but the best thing that I can say is that it took 2 days to get to Atlanta.

Travel tip with toddlers #1

We chose to pay a little bit of extra money to get a suite in hotels along the way. (separate bedroom and lounge)  This worked out very well for most of the trip.  The little guy has a hard time falling asleep if people around him seem to be doing cool stuff.

Where this suite doesn’t work out is when there is a lot of noise.  In Georgia, Simon got his crib in the bedroom (with the nice king bed) and we stayed on the pullout couch in the lounge because the lunge was closer to the atrium.  Those with kids understand that sacrifice for a good night’s sleep.

Summer in Michigan

I wish this post could be a post about all of the exciting things that we did.  But nothing really happened.

The biggest problem about not doing much is that not doing much can be a bit expensive.  And we let our guard down a bit.  We chose to buy a few things to make our lives easier:

• new iPhone 7 for both of us
• an ipad mini for Lindsey/Simon
• new luggage

We ate out a bit too much, and we basically got out of our normal routine.

We did enjoy the nice Michigan summer.  The weather was nice.

We took walks everyday and weren’t penned in by repressive heat.  We even had a chance to go to Frankenmuth.  For those of you not familiar with Michigan, Frankenmuth is a really kitchy, touristy place.  For example, they have the largest Christmas store in the world.  We stayed at a hotel with its own waterpark.  It was a nice day all around.

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Simon’s Second Birthday

One highlight of the summer was Simon’s birthday party.  I have a small family, but Lindsey has a huge one! We decided, because of a lot of kids, to rent a bounce house.  This was money well spent and Simon really loved it!

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So that’s about it.  The rest of the summer was spent getting ready for the move.  We got rid of our minivan and auto insurance.  Sold more things.  We basically decluttered our lives.

Very cathartic!