Phoenix had her 2nd cross country meet at Crystal Springs on September 24th. She ran great, coming in 1st on her team and 8th overall with a time of 12.30.97. She went out at a good pace The start
and was able to pass a few girls on the hill
The Hill and continue to move up with a good sprint finish The Finish. It was exciting to see her run so well.
Her swim teammate Annabelle, who is in 6th grade got 2nd in the 6th grade girls race. Rubix and Annabelle had P.E. together one year and had a lot of fun playing together. Annabelle and Phoenix are becoming better friends now that she has joined the middle school. They actually no longer swim together since Phoenix moved up to Pre-Senior 3 with Coach Nikita in August, but Annabelle will likely move up in December or in April.
She wanted a picture with her favorite person.....Axel before we headed to the dance! They luckily had a fall break day on Friday so she was able to sleep in until 8 am the next day.
We had to wake in time to meet Audrey in Palo Alto because Phoenix was hanging out with Audrey while Axel and I did the Stanford tour! Here Axel is next to the "community track".
The tour was a couple of hours around campus. We were able to see the school of Engineering, some of the housing options, one of 9 of their libraries and many other interesting parts of campus.
It was a great first tour and it helped set the stage for what Axel might be looking for. We are trying to help him make a list and plan a couple of trips for the Spring. It looks like Axel and I will go to Pasadena to check out Cal Tech during the Feb. break. We will likely do a day trip or an overnight. Keith will take Axel to Boston to see a few schools and say hello to family during Spring Break. Unfortunately, we all won't be able to go because Rubix and Phoenix have their big swim meet, Far Westerns the next week and they don't want to miss swim practice and besides, the tours might not be very entertaining for them just yet.
Rubix has been loving school. He is doing really well and has even taken to writing apparently. In science he learned coordinate art and on his own, decided to draw this picture applying his coordinate art skills. I love when the kids love to learn! He has actually received a 97 and 100% on his first two math tests!
Phoenix is also doing really well in school and has received a 91 and 99% on her first two math tests! She is trying to earn that A for her second ear piercing. The cool thing is, she is doing well in all of her classes and if Rubix and Phoenix keep it up they may both end up with straight A's (no A- or B+).
Phoenix and Rubix had their first full swim meet of the season at MAC September 27th and 28th. We ran into the Los Gatos Coach and thought this was a cute picture.
Phoenix even asked for a hug from Daddy-o!
The kids had a successful swim meet dropping in all of their races (except in Phoenix's 200 IM). They are trying to get used to short course yards again, where there is a lot more flip turns and under waters than the long course meter season.
Phoenix had her 3rd WBAL cross country meet at Bedwell Baylands Park on October 1st. Phoenix and her teammates warming up.
The girls at the start!
She PR'd from the first meet at Bedwell Baylands Park by 13 seconds finishing 8th overall in 9 minutes and 16 seconds, averaging a 6:49 pace. She was really happy with her improvement. I was not able to make it, but here are the videos that Keith was able to capture.
Rubix had free dress at school on Friday, October 3rd and wore the super cool warm up pants I purchased him on mega sale for $10 from Arena. He is embarrassed and didn't want me to take a picture of him, but I think he looks so cute!
Rubix was able to make one of the 2 goals. Here is his goal.
Rubix has quite the foot and he has learned to kick the ball really hard. He has made several goals this year. Here are a couple one of the moms posted on our WhatsApp Group.
On the evening of October 4th we had the Pacific Swim Award Ceremony and Dinner in Pleasant Hill. Rubix's relay was nominated for best relay of the year. He was on 3 of the 4 relays that were nominated. He should have also been nominated for top 3,10 and under boys because he had the 3rd most points during long course Age group champs and Far Westerns, but for some reason the number 5 boy was nominated over him. That is okay, because he likely would not have won the award over his buddy Robert Legg who won.
Here is Rubix with Anay. It is hard for me to believe that Anay is now 11 years old! Rubix and Anay have swam together since Rubix started on Santa Clara Swim Club. They are still buddies, despite Anay being in a different training group (Rubix gets to train with him 2x/week) and they swim in the same lane still.
The coolest thing about the Pac Awards night is the guest speaker which was Tori Huske!!!!! She is such a humble Olympian. We had so much fun meeting her!
Some of the Santa Clara boy swimmers.
Phoenix had her WBAL Final League XC meet on Monday October 6th. It was much warmer out than the previous meet, which made the race much more difficult for most of the girls. Phoenix was a trooper and managed to PR by a couple of seconds 12.28.59 and finished 10th overall.
Axel had a fundraiser 2 mile race that is apparently a tradition that many schools do to get a national and local ranking amongst other teams heading into the state championship meet. They take the time of their top 5 runners to compare them amongst other cross country teams. The race is call Hoka Postals and their coach had the team raise money for Komen, a breast cancer organization. Axel had an incredible race after a long stressful day/week of school. He had his spirit dance and homecoming pep rally today on top of an AP bio test and English presentation. He has 2 tests tomorrow and had 2 earlier in the week before the AP Bio test. Axel has basically been non stop studying/ doing homework when he is not running! At any rate, you get the idea. If you have time to watch the 10 minute video, Axel took off more than 35 seconds from the Spring, finishing in 10:16. He did a 5:17 first mile and a 4:59 second mile. He lead the entire race and the two boys from Gunn High school who drafted the entire time, had an incredible last lap/kick dropping Axel before he could start his own kick. I was really proud of Aiden, his teammate for coming up and leading the race for a lap and for Michael, the Sophmore for staying on the first mile+. It was also cool to see Robinson coming back from his injury getting a sub 11, considering he has only been running for three weeks.
Axel has his homecoming dance on Saturday and this is our last weekend of "rest" before we get into more swim meets, soccer and cross country all together.
Oh, the big news for me is that my Union UNAC/UHCP went on strike starting this Tuesday, October 14th. This strike is apparently the biggest strike in U.S. history covering Hawaii, Southern CA, Northern CA, Oregon, etc. Our goal is to have some control over our schedules and staffing, along with a pay raise, of course.
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