Cross Country, swim and soccer season are underway!

 Over Labor Day weekend, the extra time allowed for many social gatherings. Phoenix invited Helen and Rubix invited Stephen to the pool for dinner and playtime. Here is a cute picture of Helen and Phoenix in the hot tub. 

I made pizza and the girls made smores for dessert. It took them a few tries to get the melting of the chocolate and marshmallow to their exact liking, but eventually they found the perfect microwave time.  

 

They had fun being 11 year old kids, playing in the pool, which was a pleasure to see.

 

Rubix, Stephen, Phoenix and Helen managed to play together for a short bit before Rubix became frustrated with Phoenix taking his football. 

Stephen and Rubix get along splendidly and Stephen managed to have similar ping pong skills which allowed the boys to volley the ball several times.  We also learned that Stephen lives very close to us, they are practically neighbors!

We managed to go to my friend Tiffany's house on Sunday for a BBQ and pool play. The kids had fun playing together, although they did not play as much with Avery and Charlotte as before. 

Rubix joined Avery and Charlotte in the sun while eating dinner to warm up.

Avery made cotton candy for dessert, which the kids happily ate. 

On Sunday, we went back up to Belmont to run at Crystal Springs with Axel's team. We had a good showing and the day was beautiful with a view of San Francisco. 

Rubix had another friend get together at a new kid, Ryan's house. Apparently, he has a full size basketball court in his backyard, which you can see to the left in the picture below. 

Besides basketball and ping pong the kids also played in their pool. 

 The long weekend of socializing was exactly the break everyone needed because we have been super busy with back to school days/nights and all of the kids sports! I spent the entire day on Saturday Sept. 7th at Back to school events at the high school and middle school. Keith was able to join me for the afternoon at the middle school, which made it almost like a date. 

He had a soccer game in the morning with Rubix so I dropped off Phoenix super early for swim practice and he managed to pick her up after Rubix's game and then get Rubix to swim practice. I was able to get Phoenix from the pool after my 9 -12pm morning at the high school. Rubix's team, The Wolverines tied for their first game of the season. 

Here is a picture of Phoenix's Advisory, but you can't see her because her head is covered. 

You can see her in the middle jumping in this picture. This is also from her Advisory. She seems to have a good group of student sin her Advisory class, which meets once a week all three years of middle school together. It is a nice program where they work on growing their communication and life skills together in small groups. 

On Thursday night, the following week, I attended Rubix's Back to School night, while Keith managed soccer practice and Phoenix pick up.  You might wonder about Axel, and luckily, if I cannot pick him up, we have help from one of his teammates, which is almost always once a week. He practices at 3 different state/ county parks and his practices end anywhere from 5:30-6:15 pm at night, which make for an interesting schedule. He was a little upset with me on September 12th because he really wanted to do the contrast baths after practice and I needed to get him home by 6pm so I could turn around and make Rubix's home room which started at 6:20pm. He wanted to do the contrast baths because he had his first cross country meet the following afternoon. 

Before we get to that, I have some photos from Rubix's Back to school night. This is a bad photo of a photo of Rubix's homeroom class where they are being silly. 

This is also a photo of a photo from home room. His home room teacher had a photo or video of every child in his homeroom on his Power point, which made his Power point that much more entertaining. 

In Language arts they had several projects on the wall. 

I love the photos and artwork that they do in grade school!

His word art!

All three of the kids have excellent teachers who obviously love to teach. I really enjoy meeting them all in order to put a face to a name when the kids are talking about their teachers and school. It is a little crazy to think that we now have over 21 teachers that we have to know with all 3 kids changing classes for every subject. Rubix said it only took him a couple of days to get down his class schedule. 

Bellarmine hosted an invitational at Bayland Park and had each year race against each other instead of having JV and Varsity teams. Axel had over 150 sophmores in his race. Here he is between the two boys in red, with only 2 Bellarmine boys ahead of him (the first guy is out of the picture here). 

He ran a great race, although, he was a bit frustrated that he maxed out at a 5:20 pace because he has ran faster in practice. He ended up 6th place in his race and top 40 out of the 600 kids who raced in all four boys races. 

We managed to pick up Rubix so he could watch and cheer on Axel too. Phoenix was at her own cross country practice so she wasn't able to make it. I stayed and cheered on the rest of the races, while Keith left with Rubix to get Phoenix and take them to swim practice. 

I forgot to mention that Wednesday the 11th, Phoenix had her first cross country meet at Crystal Springs. She ran a bit conservatively to begin the race, but managed to pull ahead of several girls to get 3rd place! I was not able to go because I had another stomach flare and was in bed from Monday afterwork until Thursday morning. I recovered just in time for Axel's meet. 

Rubix had his second soccer game last Saturday on the 14th and they won 3-2, which was very exciting for him. 

After his soccer game he rushed over to the swim meet that Phoenix and I were at. He was a bit more tired than he anticipated from his soccer game, but still managed to drop in his 100 breast stroke, although his 50 Free and 100 fly were about the same times as the spring. He is just a second away from the age group time cut for the 100 Breast, so hopefully he will be able to get it next time. The kids also swam on Sunday. Rubix finally got the 100 free Age group time cut and Phoenix dropped in her 100 Free, 50 Free, 50 Fly and 200 free. She was flat for the 100 breast and the 50 back, but she had a great attitude and was a wonderful teammate. I was so proud of her awesome attitude. She tried really hard in the short events and will hopefully continue to learn to push herself in the sprints. 

I don't have any photos from the swim meet, but here is a cute one of Phoenix before swim practice with a sun screen smiley face. 

Keith came down with Covid last week and tested negative today. It came out of nowhere and he was the only one sick, since I think the rest of us had it this summer, despite me being the only one who tested positive in July. 

This weekend Axel has another cross country invitational in Concord and Rubix has a soccer game. Axel has a birthday party on Sunday, at his friend, Ava's house again, and I hope to do a thorough house cleaning!

Next time, I might share on our house repairs and woodchip fiasco, but for now I will say goodnight. I will also try to post the link to the videos of the kids swimming and running on YouTube. Until next time.....

Oh, I forgot about Phoenix's second xc meet at Bedwell Park. I was able to attend by switching around my schedule and seeing my last patient during my lunch (who ended up cancelling last minute anyway). Here she is at the start line as the teams started lining up. 

She managed to get 4th with a girl passing her at the very end. She ran hard and I think was happy with her effort. We left fairly quickly afterwards so she could make it to swim practice. Instead of going to her normal swim practice she went to a second swim practice tryout with Alto at Stanford. There are many things that are positive about the Alto swim team, but logistically, it is looking like it will be better for us to stay with Santa Clara Swim Club for the next year. The good news is we are educating ourselves on what other teams around us would be a good fit for the kids, if something changes and SCSC is no longer a viable option. 

The 6th grade girls team is only 5, but Katie and Nishka finished in the top 5 both meets so far, along with Phoenix! If the girls continue running and improving they may have a chance at League champs, although Sacred Heart will be tough to beat with their top two girls going 1, 2, the first two meets.