Olive Us: To The Sea





By Gabrielle.

Hooray! A new Olive Us episode!! The last Olive Us video I shared was our Goodbye to France (my eyes get teary every single time I watch it). Then we took the summer off. And now, we have brand new episodes to share. In fact, they are our first episodes filmed here in Oakland!

First up is To The Sea. We made it last November — smack in the middle of crabbing season — as we started settling in to our new surroundings and getting to know our new town. And the footage is beautiful. It makes me want to drop everything and get out on the water.

Betty on the Boat

Even though it was filmed 9 months ago, sharing it now feels just right to me, because now that we’ve been here for a whole year, Oakland (and the entire Bay Area) feels more and more like home. I think we all really felt it as we returned from our epic roadtrip this summer — the kids couldn’t wait to get “home”. Home to The Treehouse. Home to their friends and schools and life here.

For those of you who have moved your families, did you feel at home right away? If not, how long did it take you to start thinking of your new home as “home”?

I hope you enjoy the episode! Be sure to subscribe to the Olive Us Newsletter so you never miss an update.

P.S. — Today is the first day here in our home without Olive and Ralph. Such a strange morning making lunches and breakfast for only four. Making only four beds. I suppose this feeling of our family being incomplete will hover around until Christmas.

Also, would you like to know more about Olive Us? Here you go:

– Find the official Olive Us website here.
– Find all the posts I’ve written about Olive Us — including every episode — here.
– We’ve made 44 episodes so far and ulive commissioned 20 of them! You can find the Olive Us page on ulive here.

21 thoughts on “Olive Us: To The Sea”

  1. What a cute episode! We are contemplating a move next spring and we are really nervous. I moved quite often in my young life but my husband did not – we still live in the same neighborhood he grew up in and our kids go to his old elementary school! I find the familiarity of this area so comforting but I also think it’s not necessarily the right place for us so moving would be a huge, complicated decision. I can’t wait to read what experiences other readers have had!

  2. I think it all depends on the place and the person. I’ve moved around a lot and some places felt like home very quickly and others never really did. The absolute second we set foot in Pittsburgh, PA I was sure I was finally home despite never having even visited before. My husband, however, never really felt like he belonged. However, each of the times we’ve lived in the SF Bay area (10 years in the late 90’s/early 00’s and now in year 2 of attempt number 2), I’ve felt like a foreigner the entire time while he has loved every second of it. Sometimes you just connect to a place I guess.

    1. I know that feeling! I tried so hard to embrace the town we lived in when we started having babies, but despite buying a home and getting involved, it just never felt like the right fit to me.

  3. We lived abroad for a little over a year when the kids were little, but home was always home for everyone, and abroad was always “temporary”. Of course, we returned to the same home, which you didn’t, so I can see where that would be different.

    Just a quick question based on what you wrote — “Making only four beds” — do you make your kids’ beds, or do they make their own? I have four kids between the ages of 7 and 15 and thank goodness I haven’t made anyone’s bed for a few years now!

    1. I do make the beds. But it’s because I like too. After the kids head off to school, I do the breakfast dishes, make beds and do a little straightening in their bedrooms (while I oil pull!).

      Certainly it works differently in each family, but when I don’t keep to this habit, I find that I almost never go in their bedrooms at all, and I’m less likely to be aware of wear and tear on their belongings or the bedroom itself. Making the rounds in the morning is how I take “inventory” of the house. I still help with laundry — even of the older kids — for the same reason. It helps me keep track of stuff like who needs new underwear, and which clothes have impossible-to-remove stains.

      That said, there are housekeeping tasks I rarely if ever do anymore because the kids have taken them over — I pretty much never have to deal with the trash/compost/recycling at all. And I avoid emptying the dishwasher as much as possible. : )

  4. Lovely video. At first I thought that Hawaii advertisement was the beginning of the video and I was feeling so weird about the string bikini close ups hahaha…

    1. Hah! I got a Maui commercial when I watched it this morning — but no bikinis. Maybe the algorithm behind the ads has figured out Design Mom Readers aren’t into bikini closeups. : )

  5. Wow, watching all your kids interacting on the boat and knowing that Olive and Ralph aren’t there right now was bittersweet. I know they will have a grand time in England and France, but you will all miss each other too. I’ve both gone away myself on an exchange and had my kids do it and it certainly has the effect of making you appreciate what is important.

    1. Yay! I’m so glad to hear it. We work hard on them and feel proud of what we’ve created. There are 45 episodes so far (though we still haven’t shared 4 of them). Enjoy!

  6. Some places we’ve lived I ended up really liking but seemed “strange” to me at first (Chicago). Other places we’ve lived (ahem, Baltimore) never felt like home-despite living there the longest and having all of our kids there. San Diego (where we are now and I hope never to leave) felt “right” from the moment we got here.

  7. What a fun adventure! My big girls are super keen to go fishing so I’ll have to organise something like this one day when my baby is a little bigger. How did you organise the boat trip? Was it through a charter company or friends? Everyone I know who has done something like this has organised it through a friend of a friend of a friend…

    I love Oscar’s comment at the end: “I like our new home”. I like your new home too! The Bay Area felt like home to me as soon as we moved here almost three years ago – despite being half a world away from my “real” home in South Australia. Other places that we’ve lived have felt temporary. Five years in Sydney. One year in Zurich. Neither of those places ever really felt like home. There was an end in sight to our stay and we couldn’t wait to move back home to our friends and family. But then when we did move back home it didn’t feel right either despite buying a house, having two kids and being surrounded by friends and family. This time around though it just feels right even though the move was very sudden and not something we had ever planned. There’s no feeling of wanting to move back home. The Bay Area is home.

    1. Oh, and how awe inspiring is it sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge? We took a bay cruise when my parents visited a few months back and it was just magical as we went under the bridge. The whole boat was silent as everyone stared up in awe!

      Last week I took the Oakland/Alameda/SF ferry for the first time and felt the same way as we cruised under the Bay Bridge. Have you taken the ferry to San Francisco yet? So much nicer than BART!

      1. I just had to chime in-love the ferry! I worked in SF, and lived in Marin when I got out of college-and the ferry is how I commuted to work. And in a round-about-sort-of-way I met my husband because of the ferry: one of the men that I commuted with (you got to know everyone during the 45 min ride) fixed me up with his young cousin who was a “brilliant grad student at Cal”. 25 years later-just thinking about the ferry makes me smile!

      2. The ferry! I keep forgetting it’s there. When a friend was visiting we tried to take it in to the city, but missed it by a few minutes and didn’t want to wait for the next one. And I’ve never tried since. But I have taken the ferry to Sausalito a few times. I love the views of the city from the water!

  8. Another great one. Just love it. And love hearing the kids talk about the trip. The shot at the end of the Golden Gate is gorgeous!

  9. We finally watched this one and loved it, but the Bourbon ad before wasn’t exactly what I wanted my kids watching. Do you have any influence on what ads run with your videos?

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