Crab feast

Crab season is here! Yup, this weekend was the first weekend of crab season in Half Moon Bay. A great excuse to have people over for a crab feast (hopefully the first of many). Olivia, Monty and Carl bought crabs off the boat and Olivia remembered us eating lobster in Maine back in July (boy that girl has a good memory).
Part of the crab feast includes eating Carl's home made bread (recipe from Granny). Olivia was keen to help and even made a mini loaf all for herself.
Note that she discovered my pile of clothes for Miami and decided that even though it is mid November, cooking in little strappy t shirt and shorts (plus skirt) was appropriate.
The crab (and bread) was delicious and I'm looking to get some more friends over next weekend so we can eat some more. Mmmmmmm......

Peanut skier

Carl and I went to a ski show in San Jose on Saturday. We were hunting for good deals on lift passes and seeing if there was any last season's outerwear for Olivia. We managed to find a few helmets that Olivia liked, eventually we chose a white one with pink and purple spots. Very cute.
Finding salopettes was more of a challenge; she was ADAMANT that she was not wearing some nice pink ones that we found. Trying to shove a wriggling 2 year old into these to see if they fit was a challenge. She was shouting "No, no, no. I DON'T WANT THOSE" at the top of her voice. Instead she decided that there were some nice blue ones. She hopped right into them and would not take them off. I had to pass her over the counter for in order to scan them at the checkout! She then wore them for the next few hours (complete with helmet and goggles). Lets hope that she gets to use them in Tahoe. Being that she is a little cautious makes me wonder if we'll actually get her on the slopes. Lets hope so.

Hat and mitts

In anticipation of a winter in Tahoe, I bought Olivia a warm hat and mittens. They have pink, purple, and hearts on them. Individually that would be good but in combination that means that the present went down a treat and had to be worn immediately!
The mitts are actually gloves which also act as mitts, it does take a while to get each finger into the right place so that could be an issue. But right now it's all good.

Halloween frenzy

As Carl was somewhere in a hotel room in Asia, I decided to take Olivia to a friend's house for Halloween. We drove to Alameda which is near Oakland about 45 minutes from our house and Olivia decided that she was going to be a black cat. My friend, Jo, has an adorable 18 month old daughter and she had warned us that it might be a little crazy during the evening.
When we walked in the door to their house, Olivia's eyes nearly popped out of her head as there were SACKS of candy just inside the door. She (and I!) have never seen so much candy even in a supermarket. Jo mentioned that it probably wouldn't be enough for the kids who would come visiting! She was right; I've never seen anything like it. There probably were 400-500 kids who came visiting while we were there, and they were still lining up at the door when we left at around 8pm. Queue to get up to the front door and a queue to get back to the street. Jo even had to queue to get back into her own house having gone trick-or-treating round the block!
Olivia LOVED it. She spent all the time either loading candy from the sacks into her own little pumpkin or helping hand out the candy to the kids coming to the door. It was very cute to watch except that she was probably a little over generous and gave more than one candy per kid. I have a sneaky feeling that Jo ran out of candy before the night was over - oops, sorry Jo.
We did go to a few houses near Jo's and Olivia knocked on the door while I hid to one side. She said "Trick or Treat", held out her pumpkin for a candy, then said "Happy Halloween" and "Thank you" with only a little prompting. I was quite proud.
It was a fun evening, and should we be invited back near year, I'll have to make sure that we'll bring our own sacks of candy for them so they don't run out. The problem is now I'm having to hide it all as we have so much candy that Olivia will be on sugar overload for months.