Eating Fro-Yo at our neighborhood sweet shoppe. Climbing rocks at the playground with the fossilized ammonites. Listening to the wind chimes on our back patio. Winding up the butterfly music box. These are just some of the activities our daughters talked about when they longed for home during the four months we spent in London. […]
Believe it or not, my daughters keep their own version of a Bucket List—a running list of places they want to go (or go back to) over the course of their lives. The list has entries such as “Cats” (a make-believe land that L has created), and “HBG” (a local bar that R loves). It […]
Nearly three months have passed since our pod surfaced in Dublin, Ireland, as part of our 4-month stint in London. Thanks to scheduled delays in the publishing world, however, some of my articles about the experience were just published this week. The first story, for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts’ “Have Family Will Travel” blog, […]
For our family, travel is a mix of experiences, good and bad. We bond. We oooh. We aaah. We negotiate who sleeps where at bedtime. We fight over who gets to sit in the buggy. We weather meltdowns. And we never stop seeing new stuff. Inevitably, however, Powerwoman and I ask ourselves: How much of […]
The Internet has been abuzz this week with praise for a tear-jerking essay from Shanell Mouland, the woman behind Go Team Kate. The story was titled, “Dear ‘Daddy’ in Seat 16C,” and was published Jan. 9. In it, Mouland recounts an anecdote from a recent flight with her 3-year-old daughter, Kate, who has autism. Details […]
My friends warned me. They told me that after spending four months living with my family in London, I’d come back yearning to get the kids out on the road again ASAP. They joked that we’d all catch “the [travel] bug” and return to Wine Country, only to liquidate our assets and start a nomadic […]
No matter how many times I read the statistics about the dangers of distracted driving, no matter how many public service announcements I see and hear, I still occasionally am guilty of texting, status-updating, Tweeting and Instagramming behind the wheel of my moving vehicle. It doesn’t happen often. And it rarely, if ever, happens at […]
We’ve been home in the U.S. now for almost two weeks, and we’re just about settled back into the swing of things. We’re (almost) all unpacked. The kids have (just about) gotten over their jet lag. The lot of us has rediscovered our love for the true American pastime: Driving cars. All of this has […]
We contemplated bringing in some priests this week to save our older daughter from the mysterious entity that had possessed her. Then, after enduring L’s hitting and kicking and scratching and biting and screaming and writhing around like a maniac, Powerwoman and I realized it wasn’t a demon that possessed our girl, but instead just […]
By the time this post is published on Monday, our wandering pod will be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, well on our way back to California after four months in London. If you’ve read this blog during our visit, you know we’ve had some pretty spectacular experiences. If you haven’t read it, allow me to […]