Is it normal for a beach to have filmy yellow foam? The folks in Lowestoft, a town lauded for its “award-winning” beaches, have given me contradictory answers to that question. I’m asking because that’s what we found—and played with—on our first excursion to the shores of the North Sea last week. Yellow foam. Read More…
How do you spell heaven? My son spells it B-U-S. And he’s definitely in heaven in Lowestoft, because here, we ride buses. Double decker buses. Several times a day, every day.
As we drove into town from the airport, we decided we did NOT want to buy the car we’d arranged for. The streets in Lowestoft are Read More…
Yes, that’s blood on my son’s shirt. His blood. And yes, that’s a bandage on his chin. And of course that’s a chocolate ice cream bar in his mouth. Wouldn’t you want any story of yours that starts with blood and bandages to end with chocolate? This child most definitely has my genes.
Today, we visited a new park in Lowestoft. Then we visited another new place: Lowestoft’s “surgery,” which is British for medical clinic. The very graphic, bloody images that the term “surgery” calls to American minds would be appropo here, as it was a bloody wound that warranted our first visit to the surgery. 14 days “in country” before we landed there . . . not bad, actually.
Truth be told, the injury was my fault. Read More…
I may have been a tomboy, but I never splashed in puddles as a kid. It seemed like I was always on my way to somewhere—school, a girl scout meeting, the store—and I didn’t want to suffer through that Somewhere with soggy toes. I didn’t have rain boots—we lived in San Diego, after all, how often would we wear a pair before we’d grow out of it?—so I’d surely get my feet wet and cold if I gave in to that childhood urge to puddle stomp. I will on the way home, I reasoned. But I never did. I never stomped in a puddle for the sheer joy of stomping in a puddle. So when I was thirty years old, Read More…
Finally! Two weeks and one day into our Lowestoft stay, we have our home internet access up and running. I hadn’t realized just how dependent I’d become on the internet. Read More…
Lowestoft is Suffolk’s second largest town, and the most easterly settlement in the British Isles. Simply, it is different from other places. Or so I’m told by the Lowestoft tourist website. I’ve been studying up on Lowestoft’s sights and history, just as I’d promised myself I’d do as soon as I got here. No more packing and worrying about what to bring. We’re here and I can focus on what we’ll do. And Lowestoft sure has a lot to offer us. Read More…
We have a purple couch. Our walls are yellow, our curtains are yellow and pink, and kitchen is tiled in blue and teal and purple. It’s a cute little place, our rented Lowestoft house.
The back yard is from Heaven itself, as far as the boys are concerned. There’s a block of grass and a park bench and a patio area, but most important of all, a large portion of the back yard is filled with rocks. To boys with a deep love of dump trucks and excavators, life couldn’t get much better. Well, it could get better if those boys had a mom smart (or impractical) enough to pack their favorite Tonka dump trucks and excavators in their luggage.
They do. Read More…
New Zealand Air’s website states that each passenger is allowed two pieces of checked luggage, one carry-on, and one personal item. That put the Halversons’ allowed load at ten checked bags, five carry-ons, and five personal items. Twenty bags total. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?
It wasn’t enough. Read More…
We survived the 10+hour plane trip. We survived the 3ish hour drive to LAX, which included one about-face fifteen minutes in for a forgotten jacket, two potty breaks of about twenty minutes each, and one twenty-minute “lay-over” in a Macaroni Grill parking lot to meet up with my parents. We survived the 3-hour check-in/security/waiting/boarding in LAX and the 1-hour debarking/customs/immigration/luggage process in Heathrow airport. We even survived the 3+hour drive from Heathrow to our new home in Lowestoft. Indeed, we survived it all . . . but we are toast.
Toast is not a good state in which to start an adventure. Read More…
The vision was a frightening one—small humans melting down into crying globs of protest, little hands lashing out with pinching fingers at the ready, rubbery legs alternately flailing and sagging limp when told to stand or walk. Three three-year-old boys on a 10+ hour plane ride, with several hours of car travel on each end . . . the potential for this vision to come true was great. Read More…
I’m here in Lowestoft, England, safe and sound, I swear! But my Internet connection is not so stable. I won’t have solid, reliable access until the 27th. Right now, I’ll log on when I can steal some moments during the day to take a bus to Town Center where there’s an Internet Cafe and a library with online access. This small town shuts down early, so I my habit of working at nights doesn’t help me right now. More soon…
Here we go, off to the airport with three three-year-olds and 5000 pounds of luggage. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
I don’t know exactly when I’ll have internet access again, but I’ll blog about the 10+ hour flight to Heathrow airport and subsequent 2+ hour drive to Lowestoft as soon as I’m able. Not just technologically able, but physically and mentally, too. A 10+ hour trip with three three-year-olds . . . Success is an attitude, right?
Okay, this is it. Cheerio! Away we go!
The boys went hiking with Daddy recently, and about an hour into the adventure, one of the boys announced, “I have to go poopee!” In a typical example of the Power of Suggestion Among Triplets, one of his brothers immediately Read More…
While its true that my head may be spinning because I’m trying to pack a family of five’s luggage for a 1-year stay in England (which will commence in 31 hours!), it’s also entirely possible that my head is spinning because I’ve spent an extraordinary amount of time on merry-go-rounds lately.
Actually, the proper term might just be “carousels.” It’s certainly the more regal term. Regardless, my boys and I have been on, oh, say a dozen of them this summer, all around San Diego. If you come to San Diego or if you already live here, you must check out our favorites: Read More…
As much terror as my Terrifying Threes have struck in me the past few weeks, I’m feeling rather melancholy about the reality that they are graduating from toddlerhood once and for all. The truth is, they’ve been out of the toddler stage for some time now, landing pretty solidly in the “preschool” category. Yet they seem to be moving on from that, too.
First, we’ve ditched strollers completely. Our triplet jogger has gone to a family with 10 month old triplets. Truth is, pushing that stroller with my three forty-pounders Read More…