4th of July, Keith bday and summer vacation

Get ready for the longest blog thus far. I will start with the 4th of July. We had a lovely day and enjoyed the visit with Touis and his new family. The Swedish couple he is with are extremely loving and caring not only to all of their pugs, but to their friends and family as well. There were 8 pugs at the celebration and all of their owners were dog lovers. A couple of the owners started dancing with their pugs so Keith, Touis and Axel joined in on the fun. 

 I got to enjoy about 30 minutes or so of lap time from Touis. I got choked up thinking about all of the good memories with Touis and was glad that he is happy and doing well with his new family.

Keith asked for a mellow birthday because he wasn't ultra excited about turning 37. He went to a race and I made him a nice meal. We then went for ice cream because he didn't want a cake. Luckily, when we arrived the next day at his sister's house she had a cake waiting for him. His sister, dad and niece and nephew were there to sing him happy birthday, along with Axel and I, of course.

The next day we spent the morning in Boston. Hannah and Axel had fun playing in the 'Duck pond' and sitting on the fake ducks that were in a beautiful park across the street. I can't recollect the name right now, but it was filled with people lounging and eating lunch, along with several groups of kids from day cares and summer camp programs.

The next several pictures are all of Hannah and Axel.

They got along extremely well. They were absolutely adorable together.

It didn't matter where we were or what they were doing, they were always having fun together.

The only thing that is a bummer about how great they get along is the fact that we only see them every 1 to 1.5 years because they live across the country. We will just have to concentrate on the time that they do get to spend together and be grateful for their instant friendship.

Here is a cute picture of Alex and Grandpa Paul having a good time. It was great to have Grandpa Paul spend the week with us. All three kids enjoyed his company.

Almost every night we met up with one of Keith's high school or college buddies. On Tuesday night we met up with a college buddy, Brett, who had 6 year old twins and a 4 year old. They were a bit intimidating for Axel, but he joined right in on the fun. By the end of dinner he was punching them back (in a nice and playful way of course).

We went to a local farm that Josie is a member of. Here are the lovely siblings having fun pretending to ride horses. We saw a gigantic pig, learned how to comb horses hair and saw several rescued animals.

One of the highlights of the trip was playing candle pin bowling.

I look forward to this every time we go to Massachusetts. They have 10 narrow pins and a ball a little larger than a softball that weighs about a pound or so.

You get 3 balls per frame. We all enjoyed ourselves. This was Axel's first time and he caught on right away.

On Thursday night we managed to see our favorite couple and Keith's best buddy since 5 years old, the McCues. Their daughter is a month younger than Axel and they were instant friends, after a 20 minute warm up phase.

On Friday night Keith and I went out with a few of his friends. It happened to be the birthday of his friend 'Thompy' who deejays karaoke in his spare time. It had been a long time since we have been to a bar, but it was great sitting around chatting with his friends.

On Saturday, Keith got to catch up with most of his close friends from high school at the local brewery, Highlands. It was scorching hot and humid for us, but a good time was had by all. Here are a couple of pictures of him with his buddies and their children.

We ended the trip back at Brookline for Alex's 9th birthday. Keith was really happy to be able to spend the day with him.

Out of the 350 pictures, I unfortunately did not get any good photos of Keith's Aunt Lois and Uncle Paul, or Grandma Carol and Grandpa Kevin. Over half the pictures were blurry or had too much light from the sun. We had a wonderful time with everyone and were so glad to be able to see Lois, Paul, Carol, Kevin and all of Keith's wonderful friends! As far as the what is new with Axel. He has been through a huge growth spurt and grew over 1.5 inches and gained 2 lbs in 3 months. He is officially 3 feet tall and almost 27 lbs. He is still wearing 24 month clothing, but I think if he continues to grow as he has the first half of the year that we will be in 3T by the end of the year.

He continues to be Mr. Funny guy. He recently told me that he was born funny and that it is just in his bones. This is soooo true because he truly cracks me up. He continues to blow us away with his maturity, vocabulary and now his physical skills. He picked up hockey in just a few days watching Alex play. Ok, that is enough for now. Thanks for reading and check back soon!

Birthday, BBQ, Bikes and more

The summer is flying by. We continue to have a non stop busy schedule. I believe the day after I posted last time Axel and Rishaan beat the heat by playing in the slip n slide that Axel received for his birthday. They didn't quite use it for slipping and sliding, but they had fun running through it as if it were a sprinkler system. 

I have been getting together with a friend for weekly walks and afterwards her daughter, Sadie, and Axel play together. Sadie is 6 months younger, but they get along quite well. They are super cute together. Here they are riding bikes. Axel was being shy and didn't want his picture taken so he turned away.

We met my friend Tiffany and her daughter at a park in Menlo Park the other day. I captured a few pictures of Axel playing before they arrived and then somehow forgot to take pictures the rest of the morning. He found new confidence in himself with this rocking toy. You can just see how much fun he is having and how proud he is of this new accomplishment.

Thursday was my birthday and the boys spoiled me with Sushi and Cake. For those of you who know Keith he loves to bake. This was the first cake in six years that he bought instead of make because I REALLY wanted an ice cream cake.

Axel loved the cake and has had a piece every night for the past 4 nights. I just asked him for a bite of the last piece and he said that he wasn't sharing. That is my boy......claim your ice cream :)

Today Axel played with the "other Axel", Axel Gabriel, who lives down the street. They had a blast playing in the sand and mud. Axel Keith was the dirtiest he has ever been, covered in mud and sand, which required a bath before nap time.

Keith raced today and had a blast. He pulled off a 4th place in the Master's field and managed a good pack finish in a very fast pro field. It was really nice to see him working hard because it has been a long time since he has been pushed in a race and felt satisfied with just finishing. His legs cramped the last lap of the pro race, but I think that was due to the bottle of port he drank the night before at our first BBQ with our beautiful new grill.

We had a dozen friends over for some good times and food. We were having so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures. I wish I would have gotten photos of Axel playing with Louis in the yard because it was quite a sight to see. We had a great time seeing our friends and Auntie and Uncle Ryan and want to thank everyone for coming. We hope this restarts our past BBQ tradition of frequent gatherings with friends and families.

Next up is Keith's birthday next Sunday and our trip to Boston. I hope to write a short post before leaving, but I may not post until we get back.

I will leave you with Axel and Keith singing me happy birthday. Boy, does Axel love birthdays! And don't worry, we blew the candle out together and he was very happy!

Video of Axel Riding his bike

I finally figured out how to download videos with the new blogger! Yeah!!!!

Axel's Big boy Bike

How much can one do in a week? That is the question. Well, apparently quite a lot in the Szolusha household. After seeing Axel pedal his tricycle with ease we decided it was time for him to get a big boy bike. Last Sunday we went to a couple of bike shops and came home with this 12" beauty. Axel rode evey night this week. He initially needed a gentle push to get started, especially uphill, but now he can start pedaling and continue pedaling all the way up our street, which is a slight incline for a few hundred feet. One night this week, Axel, Rishaan and Max all rode their bikes together. It was extremely fun to see. We hope the three of them continue to play together and outside like we did growing up. All of us parents are thankful for the friendships that have been forming between the boys. This week Axel also ate an entire sucker for the first time! He has had a few licks before, but never had the stamina to finish one. Well, Thursday was the day this happened. It was part of his morning eating craze. For 5 days Axel consumed more food each day than he usually does in two days. He asked for seconds every day he was at school this week for lunch. At home he ate cereal, yogurt, string cheese for breakfast alone, including the sucker on Thursday. He would then eat lunch, a snack and dinner. Unfortunately, this stopped today. He skipped lunch because he wasn't feeling well, but managed to eat his first ice cream cone from Baskin Robins, after his nap, in order to beat the 100 degree weather that we were having. On Thursday we went to a special evening story time with Max at the Los Gatos library. The boys has a great time. They were both laughing hesterically which is so much fun to see. The story teller did a great job of keeping the audience engaged with his great sound effects and funny facial expressions. Above you can see the two boys checking out the electrical socket after story time was over. Our cucumbers and tomatoes are coming in. This is the first time we have grown veggies in a pot :) Thursday morning I forgot to mention that our new refrigerator arrived. It was quite a challenge to get installed, but after an hour and twenty minutes and me crawling in the crawl space to find where our water source ended and me hooking up the new water line our new refrig was up and working. The big question of the day for me was how on earth are these workers suppose to install refrigerators when they are not allowed to go in crawl spaces or basements to connect water lines? Good thing is I managed to face my fears of dirty small places and I am still alive :) Yesterday was also a busy day. In the morning we met Julia and her daughter Sadie at Deer Hollow Farm. Axel really wanted to see how big the baby goats and lamb grew. To me the lamb grew faster than the goats. Here are the two of them looking for the baby goats. After a fun filled morning, Axel decided he didn't want to nap and after trying for a bit we decided to quickly go grocery shopping. After groceries we then headed over to Kaia's house so that Axel could have another play date with Mason. The two boys had fun enjoying home made popsicles. Axel is not a fan of juice so I was quite surprised when he consumed 80% of the cherry juice popsicle. Axel decided he wanted to play in Mason's turtle pool, but didn't want to wear the swim trunks I brought. I was surprised Kaia didn't mind. After about 5 minutes of splashing Axel was done. The funny thing, not more than 10 minutes later, Mason does the exact opposite of Axel and gets in the pool fully clothed as they played with the trucks. Apparently, Thursday and Friday were so action packed that Axel decided he wanted to stay home today. I worked in the morning while Keith rode. Axel told Annika and Marlena that he just wanted to stay home today and play. Good thing because he slept over 2.5 hours for his nap today. He did have a fun evening playing with Rishaan and is now fast asleep in dream land, rather than playing the potty game where he gets up and goes 3-5 times before deciding to actually stay in bed and fall asleep. Keith is busy painting right now. I am so proud of him and all of his hard work. In just a couple of hours our garage will be a calm blue! We want to wish a Happy Father's Day to all of the father's out there! Enjoy!

Busy times

On Sunday last week we went to our friends Mike and Vanessa for a BBQ. Axel played in the "kiddy" pool for almost an hour while their 10 month old twins were napping. When they woke he was super excited to play with them. He was extremely good at helping them and understanding they were babies that don't understand about sharing. I was really proud of him because he doesn't always relate very well to younger children. Dillinger and Josie are both super cute and happy babies which made them fun to play with and be around. Grandma Susan bought Axel new PJ's and gave them to us at GG's birthday. Axel absolutely loves his new Elmo and Car Pj's. Nap time has been very interesting the past month or so. It is difficult to know when a child is ready to give up a nap. Axel has shown signs off and on that maybe he doesn't need as much sleep as other kids. Yet, at other times, it seems like he does need a lot of sleep. I think it is more difficult right now because it is light out until 9pm. To make a long story short, he misses about 2 naps a week and often when he does nap it is only for an hour or hour and a half. This Thursday, was another day he really didn't want to nap. I set him up with a couple of puzzles in his room so he could do them during his quiet time/nap time. Well at 2:45pm he came out of his room after his quiet time and laid down with me on the couch. I was reading, but had to get up to use the restroom. By the time a got back a minute or two later he was out cold. I tried to wake him after 45 minutes, but he refused to get up, he proceeded to turn on his side and snore away for another 45 minutes. It was very cute, but frustrating because I knew he was tired and needed to sleep. Thursday morning we had new carpet installed in our only room that doesn't have hard wood floors. We went with the lowest profile carpet on the market. It is thinner than the previous loop carpet that we had and now we have a nice cap between our base boards and the new carpet, which means another fun project. You can see the new carpet is a little darker than the previous carpet, but almost looks the same. On Friday I had my best girl friend from high school, Tiffany, over with her 18 month old daughter, Avery. She moved to San Francisco in September and this is only the second time I have seen her. We are hoping to make a point to get together every couple of months. I believe the next play date will be at the San Francisco Zoo. We had fun, but I didn't manage to take any pictures, because we were too busy talking and catching up:) Saturday morning Axel went to the high school agricultural farm with the neighbors while I went on a short bike ride. He had a blast seeing the animals as usual. After he came home we jumped in the car and went to his friend's Alonso's birthday party. It was at a park and the kids were running around on the field, doing projects at a table and playing on the play structure. It was so spread out that I didn't manage to get any pictures, except one of Axel holding a frisbee. It is not a very good picture and almost not worth posting. Oh well! Yesterday afternoon Axel played with Max, Annika and Marlena, while Keith worked hard at priming the garage. He took the time to properly do the taping and trim. He was finally done when I put Axel to bed so I came in and spent the next three hours priming the walls and together we did the ceiling. I was extremely proud of us for pushing through again and working until 10:40pm. It was a very long day. I am really excited to get the garage painted next week. Hopefully, we will get most of it done on Saturday so Keith doesn't have to do hard labor on father's day :) Axel is growing by leaps and bounds. We have been running about a third of a mile every night while we walk Louis. Axel loves to get his "exercise" in and is becoming quite the fast runner. This week he also mastered riding his tricycle. He is now not only tall enough, but strong enough to push the pedals. Because his tricycles are hand me downs and somewhat falling apart, we decided it was time to go get Axel a "real" big boy bike. After trying out a few bikes and going to a couple of bike shops we found Axel's perfect 12 inch bike with training wheels on it. He hopped on and started riding like he was a pro. We are super excited for him. He rode about a third of a mile tonight, rather than running. Of course, I forgot to bring my phone and hence don't have pictures, but hope to have pictures for the next blog. Axel continues to be a funny man. He makes jokes and changes words to be silly and funny. Here he is wearing daddy's shoes, saying, "Is this funny?" Besides his new physical gains, Axel's vocabulary continues to grow. He almost knows the alphabet by himself. He still gets a few mixed up. His letter recognition is improving. I think he can pick out almost half of the alphabet and give a word that starts with each letter he recognizes. It is such a joy seeing him learn and grown and have fun doing it. We have more fun planned for this week so check back soon!

Happy 80th Birthday GG

Before we jump to my Grandma's 80th Birthday and Party I will update you on our very fun and action packed Memorial Day weekend. The weekend started off by purchasing Axel a big boy, twin mattress. He was so excited to pick out his sheets at Target on Thursday. I let him pick out the color. It took over 10 minutes for him to decide. He finally decided on red. He also wanted pink and yellow, but I think he realized that his bed was red and he wanted to match it.

Once we had the sheets washed and the bed converted Axel was even more excited that he was finally a bigger boy, ready for a big boy mattress. He also figured out his little polka dotted blanket that he has been sleeping with for the past two years or more is just too small. He decided the Winnie the Pooh Blanket was okay for the first night, but he realized the big red blanket that I tried to convince him to get wasn't such a bad idea after all. So his bed currently has twin red sheets and a nice flannel red blanket on top.

All memorial day weekend Keith and I finished putting up the sheet rock, spackeled and taped the garage. We put in some long hours in order to finish Sunday night. I was really proud of Keith pushing through. It is not necessarily a trait of his to be type A like myself and stay up all night to get something done just for the sake of getting it done. We worked until 10:30pm Sunday night when we had the intention of stopping at 6pm for dinner. I actually cooked dinner and bathed Axel while Keith worked and then Keith came in and ate and put Axel to bed while I worked. When I was done at 10:00pm he went back out to find any areas I missed while I showered. It was great team work! Next phase is priming and painting. Our goal is to be done by the end of the month. It will take one weekend to prime and the following weekend we will paint. It is funny how long projects take when there is fun to be had, especially now that summer is here.

Speaking of fun, Memorial day started with Max's birthday party. We all had a blast. Axel and Max play extremely well together, despite being 10 months apart. I believe Max put his arm around Axel half a dozen time over the 3 hours that we were there. Of course, it was impossible to catch it on film. I had a hard enough time getting photos that were not blurry, let alone a cute moment.

Axel loves birthday cake. He announced to everyone at the party that he likes the frosting the best. :)

Axel has matured so much in the past few months. He is great at sharing and not being upset when others open gifts. He loves to help out and enjoys seeing others have fun.

This Thursday was my Grandma Millie's 80th birthday. She really wanted all of the Goldstein's/family to get together for her birthday. This is the first birthday party that we have every had for her that I can remember. We were all looking forward to making it a special day for her. Grandma Susan did all of the hard work. She prepared all of the food and bought the group gift of a new 1100 watt microwave. She also brought gifts for Axel. Here she is reading one of them :)

Because we hardly ever get together I wanted to include a picture of everyone that was there so that my Grandma could access them (minus two of Grandma's friends, because I didn't get a picture of them). Auntie and Uncle Ryan.

Aunt Cindy and Kaylee (Carrie's daughter) and Axel's "favorite cousin"

My cousin Carrie who we haven't seen in sometime. It was great seeing her and catching up.

Uncle David

My cousin James, his wife Denise and their little girl, Vanessa who is almost 7 months.

Grandpa Brian, tucked behind Axel eating GG's yummy birthday cake (brought by Aunt Cindy).

And the birthday girl herself!

Unfortunately, My Aunt Susan was unable to attend because she is still very ill and in the hospital. We were glad that she was doing well enough for Uncle David and James to attend though. We had such a great time and although it was a long day of driving it was well worth it.