Deborah Halverson's Blog

Brussels, Belgium, was city #4 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; and London, England.

“Think of something,” I begged my husband. Our vacation was sliding into the dumper—fast—and we had to save it. Our worries about my sister-in-law had not been dispelled by chocolate or by strawberry waffles; every time we did something fun or saw something interesting we said, “Grandma would’ve loved this”; and we missed having a one-to-one adult/triplet ratio immensely. Above all, the fluctuating nap schedule and overall lack of consistent routine for twelve days was taking its toll on our almost-four-year-old triplets. We needed something kid-friendly to keep them happy and we weren’t finding it in Brussels.

“I’ve got one word for you,” my husband responded to my pleas. “Atomium.”

Ah, Atomium…. Read More…

Brussels, Belgium, was city #4 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; and London, England.

Lest you think that we were permanently distracted from our chocolate quest by Belgian waffles, let me set you straight—we weren’t. Not by a long shot. On the way back to our hotel that first morning, our tummies still gloriously waffle-stuffed, we stopped at the first chocolatier on the block—a Godiva shop, one of many in the vicinity. After much consideration, a lengthy discussion about a new word called ‘liquer’ and its appropriateness for almost-four-year-old human bodies, the boys each picked a chocolate. Two chocolate-filled seashells and a raspberry thing. (Please don’t ask about that ‘thing’, as I prefer not to think about it too much. Buy a raspberry candy from a chocolatier? *shudder*) Oddly, I did not get any chocolate myself. Read More…

Brussels, Belgium, was city #4 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; and London, England.

Could you eat waffles for every meal of the day, seven days a week? If you lived in Brussels near the waffle place we found, you would. (I wish I’d written down the name of the waffle place, but I was too hungry to set aside my food for a pen.) The waffles we found there, made right in front of us and capped with four mountainous puffs of cream and the fruit of our choice, were enough to deter my two Mini-Me chocolate fans from their Hunt for the Perfect Chocolate. And that’s not easy to do, at all. We’d promised the two early in the trip that when they got to Brussels they could have Belgian chocolate. (Remember that they rarely get candy, so this promise packed a lot of oomph.) Our first morning out of the hotel, they wanted a piece. “Absolutely!” I said. “A promise is a promise.” And being a mom who will sacrifice anything for her children, I agreed to join them in their mission. What a mom I am. We headed to Grand Square to begin our search.

But the Hunt for the Perfect Chocolate did not go as we’d envisioned. Read More…

Brussels, Belgium, was city #4 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

Auschwitz . . . my sister-in-law’s Leukemia battle . . . Grandma’s departure . . . I was ready to leave Krakow. The city was beautiful, the people kind and friendly, the Christmas bizarre and Dessert Night top notch. But I was ready to push our worries aside for a few more days and let myself be enveloped in the adventurous energy of my three almost-four-year-olds. The young keep us younger, they say.

Day One in Brussels, then: Read More…

Krakow, Poland, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

Grandma S. flew home in the middle of our stay in Krakow—not home as in our temporary house in Lowestoft, England, home as in home, to San Diego. She was being called back to her greatest role—that of Mom. Her daughter, my sister-in-law, was at a tough moment in her second battle against Leukemia.

Despite all our planning before we left Read More…

Krakow, Poland, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

The Halversons have a collective yen to crawl underground. During our Prague vacation in November, we took the boys 70 meters below ground in the 400-million-year-old Konepruské Caves in Central Bohemia. In Krakow, we took the boys and Grandma S. 150 meters underground into Krakow’s 900-year-old Wieliczka Salt Mine. In the Konepruské Caves our boys fell in love with being worms. In Wieliczka, they fell in love with a woman named Kate. Read More…

Krakow, Poland, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

The first Top 40 hit for the Halverson Brothers boy band will probably be their personally composed diddy “At the Ibis.” They sing this song regularly now, after sixteen days and nights at Ibis hotels in Berlin, Munich, Krakow, Brussels, and London. A stay at the White House couldn’t be more enticing to these boys.

The Ibis is basic—bed, bath, some soap, and occasionally a hair dryer, if you ask. No frills here. But the service, you can’t beat it. Every single staff member we’ve ever met at an Ibis has been extremely kind and helpful beyond expectation. We get a tasty, solid breakfast as part of our stay, and usually the boys have charmed the staff enough Read More…

Krakow, Poland, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

Sometime about fifth or sixth grade, I discovered a shelf in the Mira Mesa Public Library with Holocaust survivor memoirs. I’d just finished plowing through my parents’ spy books, many of which featured German WWII-era spies (example: the legendary Eye of the Needle), and the segue into real-life stories of that time period seemed natural. This discovery informed my earliest efforts in my lifelong quest to understand humanity. And impossible goal, I know. My bedroom was a safe place to begin these young explorations. In my teen years I moved on to more general WWII nonfiction, and in college I spent time with powerful books like Eli Wiesel’s soul-jarring Night. Still, I felt no closer to understanding humanity.

When our recent family vacation took us to Krakow, Poland, I left my husband, my boys, and Grandma S. in Krakow for a day so that I could Read More…

Krakow, Poland, was city #3 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

My husband taught our sons the fine art of throwing snowballs the first night we arrived in Krakow, Poland. He may have been born and raised in sunny San Diego, but the boy in him instinctively knew how to patiently scrabble together hefty aerodynamic munition from the merest of white dustings, to creep ever so slowly up to his target, to subtly indicate said target to the nearest photographer, and then LET FLY… Read More…

Munich, Germany, was city #2 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

There may be something inherently creepy about a puffy-bearded, ‘Ho Ho’ barking, overly-extroverted round man dressed all in red but for a lovely fur trim around the edges, but that doesn’t stop legions of children worldwide from praying with every ounce of their tiny beings that such a fellow will break into their house in the dead of night, outsmarting all locks and alarms systems, with a sack large enough to hold the wall-mounted plasma screen along with a small child or two. My triplet boys were no different. This was the first Christmas that they really got into the legends, songs, and hype. They were especially intrigued by Father Christmas, as the jolly old fellow is known here in England. A guy who gives you presents? Bring him on! However, my boys had a serious problem: Read More…

Munich, Germany, was city #2 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Berlin, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

Traveling in a foreign country with almost-four-year-olds isn’t as easy as it may sound. There’s this thing called ‘napping’, and this thing called ‘whining.’ Without the former, you’ll get the latter, guaranteed. On our non-travel, in-city days during our European holiday, we were careful to nap the boys each day, with one adult babysitting while the other adults were free to explore. But on travel days, with early wake-ups and long airport waits and rigid airplane confinements followed by subway and bus rides in foreign cities with foreign language signs and monies, we had no such luxury. Add in three little boys who discovered an especially fun game called ‘Making Really Loud Bus Noises and Not Stopping When Daddy Begs Us To,’ and you’ve got a potentially, uh, uncomfortable situation. Read More…

An aside in the blog account of the Halverson Family European Holiday, a sixteen-day winter vacation that included stops in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

When I was 18, I traveled the Soviet Union for a month with the U.S. State Department’s ‘People to People’ program. The State Department supplied the twenty teenagers in our group with business cards that had our names and program affiliation on them in Russian, along with the address and contact information for our hotel. We got a new card for each city and hotel, the idea being that if we somehow got separated from the group, we could climb into a taxi and hand the card the driver, easy as pie. In that spirit, for the Halversons recent European vacation, I put a business card for each of our hotels into my pocket, instructed my husband and mother-in-law to do the same, and then labeled each of my almost-four-year-olds. If we got separated, Read More…

Berlin, Germany, was city #1 on the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation, which also included stays in Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

I dare you to try to explain the Berlin Wall to three-year-olds. Go ahead, find some short humans who have just learned the evil joy and stunning pain of teasing and give it a whirl … I think you’ll be surprised. I know I was. My intention when we reached one of the most famous—or rather, infamous—landmarks in modern history was to distract my three sons with my jibber-jabber long enough for my husband and his mom to photograph a segment of the wall. Little did I know Read More…

Turning four is tough on the body—on Daddy’s body, that is. On Monday we celebrated our triplet sons’ fourth birthday at Mayhem, Lowestoft’s astounding indoor play gym. Several levels high, Mayhem is padded, netted, tunneled, and massively catacombed, so much of it requires crawling through metal cylinders and thick plastic tubes. Apparently young knees don’t notice this. Old knees whimper at the very sight of it. That night my husband reported that his knees felt like two huge bruises. Not Mommy’s, however—I’m too smart to crawl through the tubes. I Read More…

So, did you notice that I’ve been missing in action for a while, or did my four holiday posts from the road cover my tracks? Over two weeks ago, our family embarked on a marathon 16-day holiday adventure through London, Berlin, Munich, Krakow, Brussels, and London again, a journey made completely without the baggage that is my laptop. I felt quite disconnected . . . and quite in pain as I suffered severe hand-cramping due to having to scratch out my blog drafts with a pen and paper. How archaic! But thanks to my suffering, I’ve already got several blog posts ready covering the joys and mental seizures that come with lugging three suitcases, three stuffed adult backpacks, three miniature backpacks with plush animals peeking out the tops, one Grandma, and three almost-four-year-old triplet boys through five cities, four countries, countless subway rides, and a host of international adventures. But before I do that, I’ve got one important piece of business . . . Read More…