Salon d'Olivia

Olivia's newest phase is being obsessed with nail polish. She LOVES it and demands new polish daily on fingers and twice a week on toes. It HAS to be purple on one hand and pink on the other. Luckily I make her sit down quietly for 10 minutes until it has dried so at least she gets 10 minutes of quiet time per day! Here she is working in our 'salon' on daddy. He is currently on a business trip in China, Hong Kong and Singapore and wanted to take the polish off before he left, was was VERY unamused when I hid the polish remover and told him we had run out. I personally think it would have been funny, especially when I know he is bound to have at least one foot rub while he is away!
Now, who else for pink and purple pedicure?

Diva? Surely not.

Who knew someone aged two could have so many opinions about what to wear? She's definitely a girl and goodness knows what will happen in a few years, let alone when she is a teenager. I'm already considering sending her to a school which only has a school uniform. We might need to move back to the UK just for that reason. Her pre-school here has already commented on the fact that she has such a fabulous extensive wardrobe.
Anyway, we're very lucky to have received so many hand-downs from the twins plus generous gifts from both sets of grandparents and all aunties. Here are some of Olivia's poses including Wimbledon tennis outfit (designed for 5 year olds!), hand knitted sweater from England, sheep backpack all the way from New Zealand plus many other outfits. Note that she picked ALL these outfits herself and generally we get through about 3 outfits on a school day and probably 8 on a non-school day! She could be a model for the Joules or John Lewis stores in England; at least I think so. Yesterday was portrait day at school and I put here in the pretty blue lighthouse dress, washed hair and everything was looking perfect; that is until I went to pick her up and school told me that she absolutely refused to have her photo taken (one of three kids in the whole school). Grrrr, that was going to be grandparents chistmas presents. Now I'll have to find something better. The school director was also disappointed because she likes to promote the fact that there are non-Chinese kids in the Chinese class and Olivia is the only blonde kid in the class. Never mind, there'll be another one in Spring.

School party

One of the highlights of school for Olivia is when one of her friends has a birthday. She always announces to us that she is 'sharing' the birthday with her friend. Anyway Diya was having a birthday and school was bringing in a singing magic fairy to celebrate. Since I wasn't working, I decided to hang around and watch the action.
Olivia took part in the singing games, and helped the fairy with her puppets. Then the fairy offered to paint the faces. Surprisingly Olivia offered to go first (I thought she would rather have let someone else try first but she is one of the oldest kids in her class). She had a butterfly with sparkles painted on her face and she loved it. She kept saying "I'm so pretty" and wouldn't let us wash it off until the next day (when most of it had rubbed off anyway).

Sonoma wine fest

Over the long weekend in September, Carl, Olivia and I rented a house in Sonoma with 8 other friends. We planned to do a some eating, a little wine tasting, and hanging out round the pool with the kids. Eventually we ended doing a lot more of all of the above!
We arrived on Friday evening and had a nice sociable evening, eased along by a very nice bottle of whiskey (yuk) from Bob. Saturday we hired a babysitter for the three small kids and headed up to Mac Murray Ranch in Healdsberg for the day where there was a fabulous wine festival. About 150 wineries, each with about 5-6 of their wines, plus caterers and delicious food vendors. The setting was perfect - around an old barn and field and surrounded by vines. Gorgeous weather. Great company and as much wine as we could drink! A great time was had by all (we took taxis so no-one had to drive - a sensible plan). After the event we partied at the house until only about 11pm but it felt like the early hours since wine tasting started at noon. A few dunks in the (cold) swimming pool were quite welcome.
Sunday we took the boat to Sonoma lake and some of the group tried wakeboarding and tubing while the rest of us picknicked on the stony beach. Windy but fun - Cam showed us that he's the boarding king. We've got our work cut out to keep up with him.
Apparently everyone loved the weekend and we plan to make this an annual trip. Hopefully Will and Meg (who had flown in from New York) can make it next year too, we don't see them enough. Olivia and Juliette were reunited as best friends, although 80% of the time we were trying to encourage sharing and taking turns; they were adorable together even sleeping in the corridor at night so they could be near each other.
I'll grab some of the event photos from our buddies but in the mean time here are some of Olivia and the lake.

Lay day

Carl got one day break between the North American and the World Championships. He did some boat work in the morning and then in the afternoon we walked down to the grassy section near the boat park and enjoyed the views and people watching.
Olivia used her Hello Kitty ice pack to play doctor, she grabbed it out of her lunchbox and pulled up Carl's T shirt to put it on his tummy while he was dozing. He wasn't too amused at being woken with ice on his tummy but it was too cute to stop her. She then made her own tummy better by using it on herself.
A nice relaxing afternoon.

CA Academy

One day when Carl was sailing, I decided to take Olivia to the California Academy of Sciences. It's a museum in Golden Gate park and was on the drive home from SF back to El Granada. I picked a day in the middle of the week when I thought it wouldn't be too busy! Eek - i managed to choose the one day in the month when it was free. Nice in theory but terrible in practice. I had to line up for nearly 3 hours to get in!!! Yes, just to get in! Olivia had a wonderful time in the queue, just playing with the other kids and the mud. One of the photos shows her happily hanging out on her own having climbed up onto a statue near the museum.
The main features inside are a giant aquarium, a living rainforest and a penguin sanctuary. The aquarium was wonderful although she wasn't a big fan of the walk through tunnel (sharks were scary) and there was a queue for the rainforest. I wasn't going to stand in any more lines after 3 hours so we didn't get to see the rainforest but there was an "Africa hall" with tons of stuffed safari animals which proved rather popular. She wanted me to take a photo of her infront of every one!
I'd love to go back but honestly would rather pay the $25 entry fee and actually be able to get in and see the exhibits rather than spend all day in a line and then it be thronging inside. Olivia did great though.

SF Zoo

We're members of the San Francisco zoo. It's only about half an hour away and was well worth joining (plus it is starting to help me overcome my dislike of zoos). There is a great little kids section of the zoo which has sheep, goats, llamas, ducks and ponies which roam free in a little corral (except the llamas and ponies who are in pens) and you can brush and feed them. Some of the sheep stand right by the food dispenser and get pretty aggressive. One even butted Olivia hard enough to knock her over.
She insisted on going in her princess outfit. And I even treated her to a ride on the fabulous 1920s restored carousel; which was initially fun until she got a little scared.

Tiburon

So I've managed to get ahead of myself, but can't edit the chronology of posts on this blog. So going back a few weeks to before the Worlds, here are some photos from our Tiburon weekend.
We rented a house in beautiful Tiburon, just north of the Golden Gate bridge. It's gorgeous up there and reminds me of the south of France.
Carl was racing 505s in preparation for the World's and Olivia and I were having non-Daddy adventures.

More Worlds

Here some more photos of the Worlds and Olivia and my adventures while Carl was sailing.

505 Worlds

So it finally arrived - the 505 world championships! I was glad that they were finally here as although there was 2 weeks of constant sailing, at least I would get Carl back afterwards. To cut the long story short; Mike and Carl had an amazing regatta placing second in both the North American and the World Championships. They did have one chance at first place, but were thrilled with a second.
Olivia basically didn't go to school for 2 weeks and I spent the time split between El Granada (looking after Monty and watching the races on the computer) and up in the city where we had the use of a friend's apartment right next to the club.
It was a great two weeks and we now have a hand blown glass vase thing proudly on display.

4th July

Here are a random few photos of our fabulous trip to Duxbury for 4th July. Olivia spent the entire trip on West Coast time and was typically up partying well into the late night but she loved the cousins and the beach. For Carl and me, highlights were the Yacht Club party, late night sailing and having Granny and Grandpa babysit Olivia (even though they barely survived as she stayed up til midnight - oops.)
The boy twins belong to the Berman's and are only 6 weeks younger the Olivia (check out how big she is!).