MelinUSA

Hello - I will be relocating on a permanent basis with my husband to New Hampshire, near the coastal area, in a few months along with my 4 children. My husband is American and I am English and all my children were born in the UK!! We have visas sorted so that is one less headache....

Although I have visited Maine, New Hampshire and Florida with my children this was only for a holiday. I have never lived in the USA before and obviously neither have my children. I feel excited, adventurous, overwhelmed, a little panicky - a mixture of emotions really. I will be leaving behind my parents and sisters all of whom I have a close relationship with. It is a move we are both behind 100% although I do wonder how will I cope, how will the children cope - they are all under 12 and I am in my early 40's.

If anyone has any pointers, guidance, experience, advice of what to bring over, what I may miss, what to do as a family to settle in better etc I am very open to reading about this. Thank you.

kins

Beautiful part of the world to be moving to - you are lucky! We go to Lovell Lake for a holiday once a year and it is gorgeous. Portsmouth is a great little city, and you're close to Portland in Maine.

Once winter arrives you need to get used to snow. Embrace it :-) Buy snow gear for your kids including snow pants, warm coats, ski gloves, hats, and proper snow boots. Life is better when everyone is warm.

You don't need a 4WD but you will want to get good snow tyres. Something like a Honda Odyssey or Toyota Sienna is great with four kids and with good tyres will do fine in snow. You'll find that they clear the snow really fast compared to the UK, so it's rare for everything to shut down for more than half a day to a day.

In summer you will experience beautiful weather and you're surrounded by forests and lakes. In North Conway there's loads of fun things to do summer and winter including a couple of amusement parks, then there's the whole of the White Mountains to explore.

School will be different but kids adapt quickly. For us it was easiest to keep them with their age group rather than their academic group (they start age 5-6 here compared to 4-5 UK).

We moved to Maine with kids age 6, 4 and 2 and have never regretted it. Life will be different so don't sit round missing the things you can't get any more - make the most of the things you have now.

Michael

Aren't snowmobiles common there also? The kids (plus the parents) will love them if they are.

Pulaski

Hi Melin

IMHO, based on my experience, and observing others posting here, you will miss what you want to miss, unless you are predisposed to homesickness. I came to the US with my USC wife almost 12 years ago, with no intention of ever returning to the UK to live, and with a reluctance to paying $5 for a packet of biscuits. I never got into the expat shopping "thing", and soon accepted American products, services, and habits in my new home.

SultanOfSwing

Snowmobiles are common wherever there is snow, as far as I can tell. They love them around here.

Michael

Some places have too much private property with fences or restrictions riding on other peoples private property making them difficult to use such as Tahoe but for many Midwestern states, you just point and go.

SultanOfSwing

Yeah, I suppose bigger towns and that make it difficult as well.

There's all the forest preserve trails around here, plus the frozen lakes to keep them all busy over the winter. Never been on one myself but I hear them all the time once we've got a good 6-8" of snow down. They like to bomb up my street when I'm shoveling the driveway

Bob

Exeter, Hampton, Portsmouth, Dover...all fantastic areas...and you're near the mountains which are nice. Can clear the state in a few minutes anyway and then you're about a hour from Portland, ME and Boston, MA which are both pretty decent visits.

No income or sales tax, but the property tax is horrendous if you're a home owner....but the booze and smokes are cheap.

The roads are crap out there too, really crap, so the advice of good snow tyres is important. On the plus side, if you don't plan on leaving the state, there's no requirement to have car insurance, nor wear a seat belt or a motorbike helmet.

As for snowmobiles, there are hundreds of snowmobile clubs out there, loads of public tracks and private tracks set out for snow mobiles and the mountains, so that's not a problem.

It is a nice little state though, but the politics can be a little kooky.

kins

Nice children's museum in Dover. Great outlet shopping in Kittery just over the border in Maine.

kins

'Live free or die' on your licence plates too :-)

mwdake

No state sales tax and virtually no state Income Tax.
Property taxes are probably high because of that.

Bob

Really cheap vanity plates too....the down side being that's it's so much harder to find something you'd want

Peachbythebeach

My British hubby and I currently live in NY and are seriously thinking about retiring to New Hampshire. You are really going to a beautiful state. Portsmouth is a fabulous little city and you're not too far from Boston either.

jackattack

Gorgeous in the summer but beware, the mosquitos are the size of small rodents.

AmerLisa

Really? Whoa... Learn something new every day...