Les Miserables red carpet & the after party!

Up until NOW the theater has been doing preview shows of Les Miserables, but once you have opening night you are in full swing. On opening night all the critics come to write reviews of the show. All the participants of the show give gifts to each other (Olivia came home with loads of cards and trinkets, one card was from Cameron mackintosh himself). I felt so embarrassed, we had NO IDEA so we didn't have cards for anyone!

On opening night there is a long red carpet for those watching the show to walk on. Media will line up outside the red carpet (as the red carpet is sectioned off) and take pictures of the cast or other notable people coming to watch. 

After opening night there is an after party! The after party is quite exclusive, and to get tickets is very tricky (I know, because they only let one parent accompany Olivia to the red carpet event). The town that hosts the very first opening night usually has the biggest red carpet/ after party. After Les Mis finishes in Melbourne it will tour to Perth, they will also have an opening night but their after party will be a much smaller. Since the kids don't usually tour with the production company (they will get new kids when they go to other parts of Australia), Olivia was super lucky to be part of the Melbourne cast and to have Melbourne be the opening city!

Below are some pictures from the red carpet and the after party.

Finding red carpet attire for a 10 year old was not as easy as you would think! We ended up hiring a friend named Polly King to sew Olivia's dress. We were smitten with the end result! She sewed it in just a couple days based on this picture: 

We got as close as we could (put more fabric on the back and went with a silver necklace instead of gold). But were very happy with the end result. Seriously, this woman is talented and she wasn't that expensive either!

Olivia Swinton & Stanford Swinton

Here is Olivia Swinton  with Patrice Tipoki

Here are the les mis kids!

Here is the Les Mis cast!

And here are some pictures of the party!

Crazy Chandelier!

Olivia was shown on TV for The Voice Kids on Sunday, and the following Thursday (4 days later) was on the red carpet for Les Mis. She was nervous to go to the party because she said she wouldn't know anyone. Instead it was the opposite, everyone was coming up to her to say "are you that little girl on TV?" She was on cloud 9, and had the TIME OF HER LIFE! The best part was, most people introduced themselves to Olivia- so Stan didn't have to try to place people! Thank goodness!

Here is Olivia with different people from The Voice 2013,  (Below she is with Harrison Craige, (the winner of The Voice 2013). He also approached Olivia after recognizing her from TV and to say she was smitten would be an understatement!!

Olivia Swinton and Harrison Craige at opening night of Les Miserables

Here is Harrison with some of the other kids from Les mis. He was SO NICE, and sat and talked to Stan for some time, offering any help he could to Olivia.

Olivia Swinton and Simon Gleeson

On our way out...2:00am? we bumped into Simon Gleeson (Jan val Jan). He had also seen Olivia on The Voice kids and told her that his daughter LOVED Olivia and he even got her autograph- all I can say is Simon Gleeson is the nicest guy ever! Thanks everyone for being so supportive of Olivia, I never expected or anticipated any of this. I just feel so happy for her!

Olivia's first performance with Les Mis!

So the teams for the kids have finally been decided. Up until now, Olivia has been paired with different Gavroches, Cossetts and at the very end she got paired with Jackson and then they didn't shuffle the teams anymore! Olivia was so happy! What are the chances that she would know another kid in Les mis AND that they would get paired together?!  The second kid in Olivia's group is called Cassidy. She plays cossett and is the only kid who has previously been in a musical (she played Molly in the musical Annie.) It's a good team to be in! 

Here are the kids before their very first show.  As a treat for the parents, the company gives the parents a couple of free tickets. There was one for Stan and I and Mary. Then a couple hours before the show I asked if they had any spares and we got one more for Mary's friend Paige. The girls dressed up and had a great time together.

Here is the list of cast members

After the show Olivia had flowers and gifts waiting for her. I didn't realize the first performance was such a big deal.  Olivia's and Jacksons voice teacher (Cherine Peck) gave them both a matching bathrobe with their name on it and the Les Mis logo. Olivia wears it over her costume to keep clean and to keep warm, as the theater can get cold.

Stan and I also sent flowers and got her a small necklace with cossets face on it!

Jack Lyall (Olivia's friend from The Voice- kids who is currently preforming in the Kind and I) sent a balloon bouquet- 

Crazy triangle. Here is Olivia with two of her voice teachers (1) Patrice- voice teacher from Sydney (2) Cherine- voice teacher from Melbourne. Patrice is playing fauntine in Les mis with Olivia.

and to top it off, it just so happens they know each other. Cherine and Patrice toured in Lion King together. Patrice played Nala and Cherine played Shenzi...it's a small world after all!

 Here are some pictures from the show-

The cast Olivia gets to preform with

Simon Gleeson (Jean Valjean)

All in all the kids did fantastic...here is to the beginning of 6 more months!

Talent begets talent- singing to cross country.

So this is a crazy concept.  Part of Olivia's training for The Voice- kids (8:00 am audition time) was to get up earlier in the mornings and go for a run. Her voice teacher said it would help her lungs, wake her up and get her ready for an early audition. So we ran...every day....for several months.  

Here we are running on a track at 9:00 am during school holidays- yes, I would time them around the track- I only had Mary and Thomas come along during the school holiday/ two week break.

Once The Voice- kids was over, we stopped running.  A few weeks later, Olivia's school had cross country qualifiers for districts. Olivia placed! We couldn't believe it- we didn't know Olivia could run. The truth is, she is tiny compared to her peers, but she had trained (albeit, she was training for voice and so this was icing on the cake, but she was in shape and used to running when it came time to qualify). Here are some picture-

First- qualifying at school- she came in the top 5 for her grade of about 100 kids.

Here she is about to take off- 

 She ran with a stitch (cramps) the whole time, but she still managed to lap a few of her peers. Her goal was to not walk.

Here she is holding her side-

 The course was a 3K

 

I love this picture she is so proud of herself!! About 6 weeks later was divisionals (so the top 5 kids from each school against each other going for districts) To get to Districts you needed to place in the top 8. 

Again, we didn't train :-) I told Olivia just to have fun since we were doing a sport we didn't know much about. Other schools had been training daily with their cross country kids and they were taking this pretty serious. 

Here is Olivia about half way- she is starting to pass people up.

She was 4th place the whole race and right at the end a group of 6 girls started to sprint to pass her. I was screaming for her to run faster but she kept a consistent pace the whole race.  

She ended up having this girl in the white shirt get in front of her, but she still got 7th overall and qualified for Districts! Wooohoooo! 

 Again, she was pretty proud of herself. This time she had no cramps and took almost 2 minutes off her original qualifying time- 2 minutes is a TON in cross country!  She told me the girls behind her kept yelling "slow down, or you will burn out!" she told me "mom I wasn't going to burn out- I felt good!"

My little runner!

The next section was Districts!  By now, Olivia was in the full swing of Les Miserables and I was having to email the show to see if she could continue with these comps. We were playing it by ear, but in the end they didn't need Olivia on the day of the race so we got to go. During districts they again take the top 8 (but the bottom two are alternates) for State!

To sum it up, it was a cold rainy day- Olivia was grumpy tired, and she got a cramp. She didn't qualify for state, but in the end we laughed about how far she got- who would have thought?? Go Olivia!

Three peaks challenge & Bright, Victoria

 Stan recently participated in a 3 Peaks Challenge, which involved climbing 3 mountains in 3 states in 33 hours. The mountains were some of the highest in Australia and they hiked day and night (one night it was poring rain!!) Once they were done they would get on a bus and drive to the next mountain. He was fundraising money for Whitelion, which is an organization that helps troubled youth from 12-18 yrs. At work Stan overseas a program called "Bain Cares." Stan facilitates opportunities for Bain employees to give back to the community through pro-bono consulting to non-profit organizations in trouble, clean up opportunities in the community, and even high adventure fundraising opportunities for interested employees. It is fun and Stan really enjoys doing this for other people. 

The final day of the three peaks challenge ended in Bright. Stan wanted to know if I would come and pick him up (it was a 4 hour drive each way); he was tired (hadn't slept more than a couple hours over the three days and two of the three days it was very bad weather.)  He said it was gorgeous, but I wasn't too keen on loading up the kids for an 8 hour drive so he came home on the bus! 

The next weekend Stan suggested we take the kids up to see the leaves. Most of Australia does not have deciduous trees, so bright is a bit of a spectacle. Bright gets snow and lots of rainfall. I think the reason it is called bright is because of the rainfall- everything is bright beautiful colors. It reminded me a lot of the east coast in the USA. Soooo-since it is officially autumn, we decided to come see Bright as our last weekend away trip!

We stayed in a holiday park and just relaxed. We took a long walk along the river and got pizza at a nearby playground- it was so nice to just let the kids run around!

Thomas throwing a footy with Stan.

I love the fall and all these leaves!

We were also lucky enough to show up during an autumn festival,

 Roasting chestnuts!

 Thomas smashing nuts.

The next day we went for a hike. Here is Olivia having breakfast before our hike!

Lucky in love

We wanted to go up to one of the highest points in bright- you can see into NSW...but once we got to the top there was a bunch of rain and fog, so we couldn't really see more than 10 meters :(