Annie wants to be an artist. She is obsessed with art - how things are made, the colours used, how the artist might have felt. It's wonderful to see her independently deciding what she wants to learn about.
She gets frustrated when she accidentally draws outside the lines, so I recently took her to meet a man who frequently drew outside the lines - Henri Matisse.
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| The Legion of Honor, San Francisco where 23 privately owned Matisse paintings are currently being exhibited. |
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| After wandering around the exhibitions and seeing several students sketching the paintings Annie settled herself down in front of her favourite Matisse, laid out her Crayola pens and started recreating some Chrysanthemums in a Chinese vase. |
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| The Matisse influence extended to Annie's choice of vibrant nail colours for our first manicure together! |
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| Annie and Tom at their art class making a space painting using tooth brushes and florescent paint. |
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| Home art lessons too! |
Annie wasn't the only artist in our family this month. My friend Lucy and I headed into the city last week to enjoy an art lesson in a wine bar. After ordering drinks we settled down to paint the Coit Tower, thankfully being instructed every brush mark of the way by a local artist. I was very encouraged by how much I enjoyed the lesson. Apparently, so the artist told me, by signing my work I added $50 to its value of - er, now $50!
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| Trying not to confuse the dirty brush water with her JD & coke, Lucy was a natural artist. |
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| I'm hoping that it was my cultured art lesson at the wine bar which prompted Annie to think of 'wine bar' as an appropriate word to rhyme with 'star' for her homework. Sadly, I doubt it because she later told me that she had drawn Daddy and I holding our wine glasses! |
It was Mother's Day seemingly everywhere in the world yesterday, except in the UK. We tried to ignore the commercial 'holiday' it has become in the US. I don't want my children ever feeling they need to spend money to thank me for being their Mum. I had the best home made cards, some beautiful craft creations and spent the afternoon at our apartment pool reading more than a paragraph of a book.
With temperatures this week due to peak at 35 degrees (yes, 35 degrees) the novelty of a third floor apartment without air conditioning is wearing off, although we have found some novel ways of keeping cool!
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| Throwing buckets of water onto screaming children from a great height - priceless! |
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| Annie lost her first tooth today. My grey hairs are testament to its debut appearance five years ago. She looks cute and enjoyed sucking spaghetti through the gap tonight over dinner. She is going to refrain from leaving it under her pillow until Christmas Eve because she wants the Tooth Fairy to meet Father Christmas and get married to him. |
Last weekend we explored Santa Cruz with our pals Lucy, Jimmy and Alma. We met up at the Mystery Spot, a gravitational anomaly where a circular area of the redwood forest appears to defy natural gravity, perspective and height. It first opened in 1940 and is a bit of a cult destination. All the way there we hardly passed another car, yet once we arrived the place was packed with visitors (like us) being bumped onto later tours to accommodate the demand. Some speculate that a spacecraft is hidden underground in this area, others speculate a magma vortex or biocosmic radiation (their words, not mine). I suspected a rigged spirt level. Take your own if you visit!
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Despite a seemingly level floor Jimmy appears to have shrunk having moved from one end of the row to the other. Seriously, he looks like fun size Jimmy!
Click here to get wonky |
I first visited Santa Cruz boardwalk in 1999, and have memories of a narrow wooden boardwalk with lots of t-shirt and tourist shops running down the centre. I'm not sure if my memory is just rusty, but the boardwalk is nothing like that now and is instead professionally run, safe, clean, fun and a great place to people watch.
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| This big wheel was petrifying. The small carriage we were in moved too much for my liking in the high winds. At one point it was so scary that I told Tom I was scared (great parenting Louise). He told me not to be silly and that it was fun (great parenting Tom) |
With 31 days to go until the World Cup kicks off Dan is battling the stress of tickets, transport and transactions. In three weeks time he leaves for a six week stint around Brazil, whilst the children and I fly in the opposite direction to spend the time without him in the UK.
It's been eighteen months since I was last in the UK and I'm very excited to visit friends and family. Yet we know from the last World Cup that time apart is not easy. This will be the second year running that Dan misses Tom's birthday and Father's Day, but we realize it's part of the job, and are very proud of how hard he is working for us.
Annie has her own reason for looking forward to our trip to the UK. In addition to wanting to see her family and friends she plans to visit the Matisse exhibition at the Tate Modern. She is especially excited about taking her Crayola pens and sitting down to sketch his famous 'Snail' cut out. She tells me that if you can't see a snail when you see his picture then you aren't a real artist.
Full time motherhood it is then!
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