October Mega Blog

 What a wonderful full month is has been for the Szolusha family. I will start with our first trip to the pumpkin patch in mid October, before Keith left for Japan. We went to our usual Queen's Pumpkin Patch. It is close and still fun for the kids. Rubix was fascinated by the cow train and really wanted to go on it. He had a moment where he second guessed his decision but he calmed down once the train started and was happy for me to walk along side him.

Kristin joined us again this year and the kids had to paint pumpkins like usual. It doesn't seem to get old. 

 Rubix continues to love animals. He pet the cute little pig and the goat this year with Daddy's help.

 Rubix sat in this little train wagon during his contemplation to ride the cow train and afterwards as he watched others ride the cow train.

 Axel did the water bubble again this year, but this time he was able to stay up and run in place. He had trouble managing to stay up for more than a few seconds last year. It was really cool to see how much he has grown in strength.

 Phoenix was also a champ and was able to stay upright and run in place. The kids had a blast! Rubix, Daddy and I had fun watching them.

 We even managed to get a family photo!

 Daddy headed to Japan the Friday after our pumpkin patch excursion. Here are a few photos from Japan. Here he is having fun before one of his first meetings with a customer.

Mt. Fuji

Legoland Japan!

All dressed up at another customer in Osaka, I believe.

A picture of Tokyo from the hotel room.

Doing a little sight seeing before coming home :)

While Daddy was away, we were doing our best to get through our weekly school and work grind. I am not sure what was going on here, but after picking Axel up from a school music event on Sunday morning the boys were picking each others noses. I took a picture to send to Daddy to help him smile through his first work day in Japan, since he would be waking up on Monday soon after this picture was taken. 

 Rubix also finally decided he did want to dress up for Halloween and he really wanted to be an airplane. We lucked out and found this cute costume on Ebay and had it delivered a couple of days later.

 I have been treating one of Daddy's coworkers for her neck and arm pain at home. I am using her for a case presentation for my fellowship and she has brought over some Asian pastries a couple of times. On this particular day she brought over a pumpkin that had pumpkin inside. Phoenix was excited to try, but disappointed that it wasn't sweet at all.

We were all very excited when Daddy got home. He brought gifts back for everyone. Rubix's gift was AWESOME and exactly what I wanted to get him for Christmas. This airplane can roll forward on its own and when pressure is applied in a downward motion its lights flash on. 

He brought home a cool Barbie type doll for Phoenix whose hair changes color and these cool matching jerseys. He brought home cute Hello Kitty socks and an assortment of other gifts. He had a successful trip in terms of business and a little fun with his personal excursions as well!

 When Daddy arrived home from the airport, Phoenix and I headed to a classmate's birthday party. It was a costume party, but she took off her Red Riding Hood cap due to the 80 degree weather!

 On Sunday at our park we noticed our park had a couple of updates. This was one of them. Rubix could reach the "telephone" tube because a beautiful new platform was built and a nice cover was put on the mouth of the tube.

 Axel and Phoenix had Monday off of school so we went to Uesugi Farms to meet Selena and Kristin.

 We went through a really fun corn maze where we had to answer trivia questions to find our way out. It was so much fun!

 The kids had a blast playing with the pumpkins and just being kids.

 Phoenix had just been here the Friday before on a field trip with school. When she was here she wasn't allowed to do the Merry Go Round, so that was the number one request she had. Selena kindly went on with her which saved me from the potential of getting motion sickness.

 We did the hay ride as well and got to see the famous Marigold patch they plant every year. It was amazingly beautiful.

 We also got to see the winner for biggest pumpkin in the South Bay this year. I took a picture from this angle because I thought my lovely husband would get a good laugh!

 We made sure to carve pumpkins before Halloween. Axel continues to grow up and do things more and more on his own. He designed his own dragon and then proceeded to carve it out.

 I had to help a little with the carving, but he is becoming more and more of a young man doing more for himself.

 On Halloween we were able to catch a family picture, although the quality is not great. Axel and Daddy decided we should all be In and Out workers, but just the three of us ended up being them. Phoenix wanted to be a cat princess and Rubix was happy with his airplane costume.

 Here are the final jack-o-laterns. Can you see the airplane, unicorn and dragon?

 Kristin and Selena jointed us along with Selena's niece, Zoe, who is a couple of months younger than Rubix. Selena's parents and her brother and his wife were there as well. We also ran into the other Axel and Arianna our neighbor joined for trick or treating fun as well.

 It was difficult to get a good photo of the kids trick or treating. Rubix really got it this year and was pleased to go door to door for candy!

 Phoenix and Axel had a great time as well!

 Oh, I forgot to mention when I picked up Axel from school, on Halloween, he had lost a tooth. When he got home he worked on the other tooth that was loose and before you know it he had two teeth missing on Halloween!

 This past Sunday Phoenix and I went to another birthday party. This was at Bricks for Kids again. She was tired from the time change because we had stayed up late at Eileen's and Luis' house celebrating Luis' birthday the night before. I thought it was funny her entire class showed up and she said it was boring! Axel loved the birthday party he attended here in June. Funny how different the kids are!

 Here are a few pictures from Eileen's. Alex and Axel continue to be about the same size and have the same interests, although Alex is about 18 months younger. Lily has adjusted so well and it is hard to believe she has been apart of their family for a year now. She turns 3 years old right after Thanksgiving. Phoenix had so much fun playing with her. She said the next day, "I do really well with babies. We should play more often with them."

 The boys being silly!

 The birthday boy and family.

 Mr. Rubix getting ready to sing Happy birthday. We are so blessed to have such great friends in close proximity.

I have been really busy working and doing work for my fellowship. I will likely not post again until after Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to more family fun with Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Sonia coming for Thanksgiving week. Until then..... God Bless!

125th Harker Picnic celebration and Gma Susan helping out while I was in St. Louis

Here is the picture I promised of Axel with his head gear on. I have been very impressed with Axel and his new found maturity. He initially brushed his teeth and tried to put it on by 7 pm every night so he could get in the 12 hours recommended by the orthodontist. Now he doesn't put it on until around 830 to 9 pm because he often has a before bed snack. I think 10 hours a night should be plenty. We have not had to tell him once to put it on. He has taken full responsibility. I am so proud of him!

What I forgot to mention during the last post is that we had a string of car break ins in our neighborhood and the surround neighborhoods. Her is a picture of Keith's car. Apparently he left his door unlocked. They didn't take anything, but rummaged around. I received a phone call from Keith while I was driving to work. He asked me if I went through his car. Can you believe after 10 years of marriage he would think that I would leave a mess? I had to tell myself he was in a stressful situation and obviously wasn't thinking straight. I am the least messy person I know! Anyways, the funny thing was a few days after this incident, when other neighborhoods were still getting their cars broken into, he not only left the car unlocked but left the back door open. He forgot to close it after taking out Axel's bike. Luckily, his car is still like new and nothing has been stolen. This is one great perk about never carrying cash! Since then we have a bike rack on the back of my car so we don't have to worry about putting any bikes inside our cars again :)

 A few weeks ago Axel went to Nico's 10th birthday and he made a really cute card. I wanted to share it because I thought it was creative. I am not sure how he comes up with these ideas.

 I left for St. Louis, Missouri on Sept 27th. The night before I picked up G'ma Susan as she was gracious enough to agree to help out Keith with the kiddos during the 6 days I was gone. She did an amazing job of entertaining the kids, organizing my cabinets, cooking meals, dropping and picking up the kids and most of all decorating my house. Apparently, the previous visit Axel, Phoenix and her worked on several of these decorations. Now they had the privilege of displaying their art work.

 I wasn't quite sure how I felt about spider webs, spiders, mummies and skulls all around my house, but boy everyone had fun.

 This is definitely a notch up from how the house normally looks around Halloween.

 Grandma even took it upon herself to help Phoenix with her costume. She is going to be a cat princess? We will have to wait and see what the finished product looks like. I still need to make sure Axel and Rubix get their Halloween costumes situated as Keith leaves for Japan next Friday and we are solo until the 27th of October.

On Saturday the 24th Daddy drove the kids to Pescadero to meet up with Tyler, Cynthia and their kiddos Jade and Zoe who were camping. They invited us to camp with them, but Keith decided it was best to just go for the afternoon. The kids had a great time playing together and cooking dinner on an open fire. 

Here is Tyler and Axel sterilizing the end of a stick. 

After an afternoon and evening of fun Daddy and the kids headed home. Unfortunately, on the way home Phoenix threw up. It was a messy clean up for Daddy to do solo, but he managed quite well. Here is a picture Keith took of the kids sleeping after Phoenix had thrown up. 

On Sunday, Daddy took Rubix and Phoenix to the park while Axel stayed home with G'ma Susan. Here is our amazing 2 year old who can climb, jump and run like no other 2 year old we have ever known. 

It was great for the kids to be able to keep their normal routine despite me being away. Having G'ma their allowed the kids to swim during nap time and get to the park. As my mom said, "Keith is a great father and does so much with the kids." I almost felt a little sad that I wasn't missed, but I was so happy that everything went smoothly while I was away. 

I had the privilege of being with about 60 other clinicians and the entire Washington University faculty for 5 days. Here is a picture of me and Shirley Sahrmann, the founder of the movement system and an inspiration to hundreds of thousands of clinicians across the world. She is 82 years old now and still contributing. She teaches about 20 international continuing education courses per year! I even got to see her do kettle bell swings! I learned so much and had a ton of fun while doing so. Being apart of this Movement System Fellowship is such a blessing!

I finally made it out to Forest Park, while in St. Louis. It is one of the largest most beautiful parks in the country. 

Because Rubix is so into planes I captured a picture of the sunset from inside the plane on my way home. 

 I also took a picture of an airplane on my lay over. We were delayed a bit because of rain and a lighting storm. Luckily, it passed quickly and we made up time in the air so I arrived relatively on time at 11:20pm Tuesday night.

 This is a picture from inside Stanford Outpatient Orthopedic facility. I thought it was an interesting view of the bay and salt beds, which looks like snow. I never knew their were salt beds outside of Salt Lake City :)

 Last Friday, Rubix was so excited to go to the park. We were their for 2 hours and he didn't want to leave. He decided to get wet right before we headed home. It was only about 72 degrees out, but he still enjoyed the ice cold water.

On Friday after school, Rubix and I picked up Axel, Phoenix and Kiefer. Both Axel and Kiefer were very excited at having a play date. Here they are pushing down the cardboard that I made them rip up as they decided to destroy the fort that Axel and Phoenix so meticulously built while I was giving the two little ones a bath. I couldn't figure out what the banging could possibly be. When I saw the boys throwing Rubix's toys onto the cardboard I kindly asked them to take the fort outside. Thank goodness they didn't miss the fort and throw Rubix's lawnmower and other toys into the wall. Apparently, the boys had a blast and Kiefer can't wait for another play date!

On Saturday morning, Keith took the kids out to breakfast while I treated one of his coworkers. His coworker asked if I could look at her neck, shoulder and arm symptoms and I needed someone to do an upper quarter case report on so it worked out well. I saw her for the first time Wednesday afternoon and Saturday was her second visit. She is doing much better and is going to work out great for my case presentation. I am happy to be able to help her out and get some "school work" done at the same time. 

Keith had a blast with the three kiddos and Tyler with his two kiddos at breakfast. It worked out really well to have them out of the house so I could focus on treating Tami, his coworker. I saw her for the third yesterday (Friday) and she is doing much better! 

 On Sunday, Harker had their 125th year picnic celebration. The entire family had a blast. Here is Phoenix and Rubix on the pony ride.

 Here is a couple of pictures of Axel performing. The 4th and 5th graders along with the middle and upper school dance and choirs performed in an hour long performance. Axel was suppose to perform in the afternoon with the Jazz ensemble, but Keith started to have his allergies act up from the smoke that blew in from a fire in Solano county. It was amazing at how quickly the smoke spread to us and how bad the air quality became over the course of just 30 minutes. As Rubix and I were leaving around 1 pm you could smell the smoke. By 2 pm you could hardly see the blue sky.

 I can't forget these pictures of Daddy and Rubix playing basketball.

 Although this picture is blurry I wanted to show Rubix's improved jump shot form. This kid continues to amaze me. He now can jump off a 3 foot ledge by himself and tried to convince me he could jump off a 4 foot ledge by himself. He is impressively coordinated and confident, yet he does have his senses and can be open to when things are dangerous.

 At 2.5 he is putting the bins away with the older kids. After figuring out the smallest garbage bin, he attempted to move the big recycle bin by himself and was successful! What a champ he is!

Axel just finished up his swim season at Harker. Here is a picture Keith took of his relay team on Thursday.


 I missed a meet while I was in St. Louis and then I missed the second and final meet on Thursday because Phoenix came down with a fever. I luckily got called on my way home from Stanford and drove right over. She stayed home Friday because of the 24 hour rule for fevers, but she appears to be her normal playful self.

Here she is showing me her new skill of the monkey bars at the park yesterday. She mastered this skill a couple of weeks ago and she has been practicing every time we go to the park. This was the fastest that she has completed the monkey bars and you can see how happy she is with herself by the smile on her face.

This weekend we hope to make it to a pumpkin patch, but we have a lot of preparations before Keith leaves for Japan. I hope to capture Keith with one of his new suits and shoes on! My man is growing up and ready to wear big boy clothes! He had to purchase new suits and business clothes for his Japan trip as the dress code is much different there than here. He goes to China 5 weeks after her comes home from Japan so he is going to be all set for international travel.  I am so proud of how hard he is working. He is really enjoying the new responsibilities and growth at work, just as much as I am enjoying my fellowship. We are all very blessed in the Szolusha household. I hope to post again after Halloween.

Moving on up!

We have had a very busy few weeks. The first weekend in September we had two fun festivals. One was at the YMCA and one was at Kaiser. Here is a picture of Phoenix with face painting from the Y. We went directly to the Kaiser festival and the face paintings were professional and not from volunteers. She really wanted to wait in line again, because the face paintings were so intricate, but there was no room left on her face!

 After the two festivals we had a play date at the pool. I had the privilege of getting some studying done while doing "gate watch", and the kids had fun playing with friends. I was able to capture one picture. If you look closely you can see Daddy, Rubix, Selena, Phoenix and Axel. I am not sure where Kristin is in this picture. They all had a great time.

 We had back to school night on Sept. 12th for Axel. Here is one of his projects that was displayed. We were surprised that he had so many misspelled words. Keith actually had a conference with his teacher, Mr. Murphy, at how we can help Axel learn how to edit and review his work. Axel can read and comprehend books at nearly a high school level, but then misspells words and has poor sentence structure. We think it is mostly out of laziness and we really want him to get out of these bad habits. His teacher says it is age appropriate and is willing to help Axel bridge the gap as many of his classmates appear to be checking their work and looking up words that they think might be misspelled. This is a big goal for Axel this year.

Over the past couple of months we have had a few orthodontist appointments for Axel. We finally decided which orthodontist we want to use and Axel has officially started phase 1 of his treatment. That means Axel will be wearing a head gear for the next 18 months! In about 12 months they will decide if he also needs the mouth widener, if the head gear is not making enough room for his permanent teeth to come in. Axel currently has 3 loose teeth and a permanent tooth that came in as a second row on the bottom again. Unfortunately, there is no permanent tooth that has a path to make that baby tooth become loose so that tooth may have to be pulled in the coming months. For now it will just hang out with the hopes that the cuspids will eventually push on the roots of that baby tooth. I forgot to get a picture of Axel in his head gear, but I will make sure to include it on my next post. 

 Phoenix and Rubix have grown closer over the past 6 months and can play together well, at times. Rubix gave Phoenix a hug and she asked me to quickly try to capture the moment. I love when I see her motherly instincts kick in.

 You can see how much fun they have together.

 Here she is being a bit bossy trying to trace his hand, but Rubix is so gentle and patient he doesn't seem to mind.

We finally purchased a bike rack for the Tuscon. It was a very long process to get the proper hitch installed and to find the proper bike rack as not many bike racks fit smaller bikes. The kids had fun helping Daddy put together the rack and install it. Afterwards, they had a great time building a fort from the boxes. I love the windows, door and shelves they installed. I also love how they made it look like a kitten. If you look closely you can see the black lines down the center of both windows and Rubix is looking at the nose that Phoenix drew. 

 I have only had Fridays to spend with Rubix as I have been working at Stanford on Thursdays for my movement fellowship. He looks forward to park time and makes the most of mommy/ me time regardless if other kids are around. Yesterday he started pumping his legs while swinging. You can see his legs are extended and he is about to bend them in the picture below.

 He continues to love to play ball. I love watching him play throw and catch, whether I am playing with him or if he is playing by himself, like he is doing in the picture below.

 Yesterday I had the privilege of going to Phoenix's classroom for a class party. I had a lot of fun meeting some of her new friends and watching her participate in class.

 She absolutely loves school.

 You can see her being her silly self in the picture below.

 We received really fun news this week about both children. First, we found out that Axel is getting moved up to P3 math. That means he is skipping 5th grade math and starting 6th grade math. He did really well on his ERB testing at the end of last year and kicked butt on his pretest at the beginning of this year. Because he demonstrated that he already knew most of the 5th grade material his teacher decided he really ought to be more challenged. Axel is the first student that Mrs. Torres has moved up in her 5 years of teaching at Harker. Monday Axel starts in Mrs. Vojvodic's class. He is very excited. Daddy has been getting him caught up on the first month of school concepts. He has a test next week that he needs to be prepared for so they are doing a month of work in 3 days!

The other exciting news is that Phoenix was placed in P3 math and P3 language arts. She did really well in her 4 weeks of assessment. This means she will be doing 2nd grade work for these two subjects. She will have Mrs. Smith and Mrs Anderson for these classes. That means she will start multiplication soon! She was really excited to have her first homework assignment this weekend. We studied for her first spelling test which consisted of box, sock, duck, shut, sun, gum, pond and rock. I quizzed her yesterday and today. I believe she will have her first test this week! She also had to draw a picture of an ocean animal and write a few sentences about it. She drew a picture of a dolphin and wrote, "Dolphins can talk. Dolphins live in the ocean. Dolphins swim and play." I am so very proud of her embracing school and loving it so much. I am so proud of Axel for trying his hardest and checking his work in math as that was the most important thing he learned last year. Now, if we can only get him to check his grammar and spelling in English!

The kids hardly ever take a bath together as Axel usually showers. He wanted to use one of his oatmeal bath bombs for his skin and the other two wanted to take their baths at the same time. We ended up with some fun laughter and tears. Here is a picture of the fun laughter that occurred after the tears of learning to share tub space with big brother Axel.

We will continue to be busy over the coming weeks. I will be in Sacramento tomorrow attending Kendra's memorial service, Axel will be at a birthday party. We have Phoenix's back to school night on Tuesday. My mom arrives late Wednesday night. I take off for St. Louis Thursday. Axel has his first Harker swim meet on Thursday and they have a weekend full of fun plans. I arrive back very late Tuesday night. We have Harker's annual family picnic on the 7th and then Keith leaves for Japan for 8 days. The coming month should bring loads of fun and growing. I will try to post in a few weeks!