Deborah Halverson's Blog

Apparently I have a thing for nosebleeds: I bought tickets for a second Madonna concert in London. This month, Her Madgesty announced that she was extending her Sticky & Sweet Tour, adding another show in London before she jets on to Poland and Belgium, etc. You may recall the drama I had getting to her first concert in London, back in November, where I immensely enjoyed watching a blonde ant jump rope on stage to ‘Into the Groove’ while I battled the divine dizziness of vertigo caused by oxygen deprivation at high altitude. This time, the concert will be at the O2 Arena, not the immense Wembley Stadium. So I thought I’d give it another go. Two minutes after the new tickets went on sale, I had my seat. Yellow tower tier, front row, to the right of the stage. (See seating chart below.)

I am hoping for three things: Read More…

I spend much of my day trying to think like a four-year-old. I spend just as much of my day trying not to act like a four-year-old. It’s a tough balance (boy, can you get sucked into their world!), but one that’s worth mastering in order to exist successfully with four-year-olds triplets. And now I’ve decided that I want to see like a four-year-old: I’ve decided to buy the boys a child’s digital camera and then stand back to see what they deem worthy of photographing. My guess: buses and bus drivers.

I had a little fun with this very issue on our 16-day winter vacation, in addition to around town before we left. I told the boys to tell me when they saw something that needed photographing. Here are some of their requests: Read More…

Americans are fascinated with castles. Maybe Europeans see castles all the time and so don’t get so rhapsodic about them, I don’t know, but when we Yanks plan visits to the Mother Country and her neighbors, visions of castles dance in our heads. I am no exception. When we were making our plans to live in England for a year, touring castles was high on the To Do list. But apart from a brief duck inside Norwich Castle about 45 minutes from our Lowestoft, England, house (a visit cut brief by fussy little boys who cared not a wit about castles yet), I have not toured any castles during our seven months over here. So when we went to Dublin, Ireland, last week, I tried to sneak in a quick castle tour. Read More…

In this time of worldwide economic crisis, when it seems every individual around the globe fears for their economic future in a way not experienced for generations, we must use every excuse we can to spark a smile and focus on the things that really matter—like pancakes.

Yes, I’m talking about another Pancake Party, only this one involves more than six triplets and a 10-month-old; this one covers the whole world! Pretty ambitious of me, eh? Read More…

Hotel fire alarms are really loud. I should not know that. More importantly, my four-year-old triplets shouldn’t know that. But we do, thanks to our Dublin Hotel Ibis, where the fire alarm blasted us senseless four times in the course of ten minutes.

Now, you may recall that I don’t mess around when it comes to hotels and emergencies. In fact, I’ll scramble down the fire escape at the mere hint of towering inferno, as I proved last November in Prague, when three words from my husband’s lips had me nearly hurling my precious boys out the nearest window like some crazed Olympic shot-putter.

This time, though, the alarm was inside our hotel, not outside. Read More…

We went green last week—green as in Ireland. Dublin, to be exact. The Halversons spent England’s week-long ‘half term’ school break by spending four days in Dublin, bookended on each end by an overnight in London. I’m three quarters Irish and my husband has some Irish floating through his veins, so we’ve each had a life-long curiosity about Ireland. But that’s not why we went there, at least according to the firstborn of my triplets . . . if you ask that little guy, we went to Ireland because in Ireland everything is green, and my boy loves green. Read More…

We just returned from fabulous adventures in Dublin, Ireland, our holiday destination for England’s week-long ‘half term’ school break. And boy, did we have a ball! Now we’re back, and within forty-five minutes of our train pulling into Lowestoft’s train station today, we had our three four-year-olds down for a nap, my husband was on his computer planning our next family trip to Portugal, Spain, and France, and I’m here at the library doing some freelance editing to pay for our next family trip to Portugal, Spain, and France.

Or rather, I’ll be editing in a few minutes. For now, here’s a quick heads-up that we’re back in England and that I’ll begin posting about our adventures in the land of Guinness and green tomorrow. Stay tuned….

Say you’re a Daddy and you’ve got the chance to bring one of your triplets on a weekend trip away. Who do you chose, and how? And what are the triplets themselves going to think of the deal?

That was our dilemma in November when my husband had to go to York for a meeting related to the teacher exchange that landed us here in Lowestoft, England. Read More…

I’ve been sharing my house with a gray spider that weaves large, articulate webs. Her name is Charlotte, and she is the star of my four-year-old sons’ first Big Boy book, Charlotte’s Web.

In two weeks of nightly readings, my husband and the boys savored E.B. White’s amazing tale of Wilbur the pig and his friend Charlotte, the elegant gray spider who lives in the barn above Wilbur’s head. The boys were riveted by the tale, immediately incorporating it into their role-playing games, with one boy being Wilbur, one being Charlotte, and one being Templeton the rat. Read More…

Prior to moving our family to Lowestoft, England, for a year, I had many conversations with San Diegans about English pubs. We Americans are fascinated with them, it seems. Everyone had something to say about them—they have great food, they have cheap food, you can bring the whole family into them! But six months into our England stay, we still hadn’t done the family trip to the pub. Well, the parents of the British teacher living in my house in San Diego took care of that for us, treating me and the boys to lunch at The Waveney in Oulton Broad while my husband was in the U.S. for his sister’s memorial. Read More…

I think I just set a record for amount of groceries carried onto a public bus by one human being:

1 pint milk
1 12-pack toilet paper rolls
2 cans tropical fruit
2 cans peaches
5 yams
8 bananas
15 eggs
1 box cereal
1 package pull-up diapers Read More…

When we arrived home in Lowestoft after our 16-day winter holiday, we learned that my husband’s sister had lost her battle with Leukemia that morning. A few days later, my husband was on a San Diego-bound plane for her memorial and a week in our hometown. The boys and I would be alone in England for eight days…

…and we had a blast! Slumber parties with me in the boys’ room every night, morning jaunts to nearby towns, poking around charity shops to see what second-hand treasures lurked, and hanging out in pubs. Hey, if I would be unrelieved for eight days with three four-year-olds, I was going to make it fun… or exhaust us all in the process. Comatose kids can’t get into much trouble. Plus, Read More…

Balloons can be double-edged swords. They are colorful and thus appealing to kids, they can be batted around the house without the devastation of regular balls, they provide wonderful indoor exercise for snow- or rain-bound children, and their slow-mo floating makes everyone—even us old parents—feel like nimble athletes as we kick and swat and dive to keep them airborne. On the other hand, they pop. Read More…

This ends the travel saga of the Halverson’s sixteen-day winter vacation in Europe, which included stays in Berlin, Germany; Munich, Germany; Krakow, Poland; Brussels, Belgium; and London, England.

When our plane lifted off from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field bound for London, England, last August, I was harboring horrifying premonitions of the nightmare that would be three 3½-year-olds confined to their seats for 12 hours with no nap and no physical movement greater than stretching their legs. Knowing that the Terrifying Threes had recently begun coursing through their bodies, I was braced for the worst. That nightmare did not happen.

Well, it turns out my premonition hadn’t been wrong… just early. Read More…

Yesterday England was blasted with its worst snowstorm in eighteen years. Airports were shut down, citywide bus networks stilled, and schools closed all over the country. Today, England threw salt on the frozen streets and limped back into action. What did we displaced San Diegans do this Day After? Why, we went to the beach, of course! Read More…