Drama Class - Since the beginning of the year, Olivia has been going to a weekly drama class for 3-4 year olds. While Geoff and I can certainly argue the point that a three year old (particularly our 3 yr. old) doesn't need any help with being dramatic, the class consists of the kids playing pretend and using their creative imaginations which Olivia seems to enjoy. With all the schools around here being out, a special 4 hour class was offered so I signed Olivia up. She was encouraged to come dressed up so I had no problem convincing her to put on her princess dress. While I don't exactly know what they did the whole time (it's hard to get many details out of her), she told me she had fun which is the important thing.
Cooking Class - One of the moms in Olivia's preschool class arranged for some of her preschool classmates to take a cooking class together. They made personal pizzas followed by everyone's favorite part: eating them!
At the Symphony - We headed into central London one afternoon with my friend Julia and her little boy Charlie, who is Olivia's age. There was a children's festival of sorts going on and that particular afternoon at the festival, a youth orchestra was performing a symphony. To make it fun for kids, children were allowed to go find their favorite instrument (or in our case, an empty chair) and sit next to the person playing for the duration of the symphony. I think the expectation of this in my head and Julia's was better than the actually outcome. Olivia and Charlie were probably a bit young to appreciate the instruments and definitely did not have the attention span to sit there for a full symphony being performed. And of course, Ashton didn't want to sit on my lap but wanted to crawl around on the floor locating dirty food and dust bunnies to put in her mouth.
This is as close as she wanted to get to the French Horn, even though the nice lady would have let her touch it.
Despite the symphony being a bit of a bust, my highlight was walking right by the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles's wife Camilla, who happened to be at the festival with her entourage the same time we were. Pretty cool to have seen royalty!
The festival facility was right next door to the London Eye which sits on the Thames River and is almost directly across the river from Big Ben. This was the first time the girls have seen both in person. Olivia likes to point out both Big Ben and the Eye when she sees either of them on tv or printed on something, especially Big Ben after I took a tour to the top of the iconic landmark back in the fall. So seeing them in person and up close was pretty exciting for her. I spotted a big playground in front of the ferris wheel so maybe this summer when it's warmer out, we can go back for an outing.
It's difficult to get this one into the pictures when she's strapped in, but she was there too!
Taking a spin around on the carousel
Here are a few other miscellaneous pictures of the girls from last week:
It stopped raining long enough for us to get outside for a few minutes for play. While the winter has been relatively mild by winter standards, January was the wettest January in 250 years!
Waiting at the doctor's office for her 12 month check up
This is what she thinks about getting shots!
This baby was feverish for a couple days leading up to her birthday and those sick eyes just melt my heart.
Geoff set her in front of the tv watching Praise Baby while he and I attended to Olivia and this is how we found her when we came back out a few minutes later
