Happy Halloween!

Here is Phoenix school swim team pictures. It is hard to think she is only in 4th grade as she is looking older and older. Her face shape and size is starting to change and she is 5 feet now!

Axel's face is also starting to look more and more mature. Hard to believe we will have a high schooler in the house next year. I love this picture of him. 

Here is the cross country team.

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago after coming back from Rubix's soccer game. I wasn't feeling top notch so I was resting a bit in these two came over to cuddle!

I was proud of myself for purchasing pumpkins for the kids to carve. I was a bit sad we didn't grow them and hadn't really thought of purchasing them, but decided we needed to do something for Halloween. If you look closely you will see the spider that Rubix carefully "punched/poked" out. 

Phoenix decided to carve a witch since she planned to dress up as a witch this year. 

Axel was too busy to carve with us. He was actually at a math competition at Valley Christian high school. 

He went with his buddy Haofang and they ended up doing quite well. Haofang took 3rd overall for the 8th graders adn Axel took 5th overall. They qualified for the state rounds that will occur in March of 2023. Harker as a school took overall best school with participants from 4th through 8th grade. Keith and I are so incredibly proud of Axel. He has worked so hard the past year and a half to improve his math competition skills. He is hoping this is a stepping stone for him to make the state Mathcounts team this year as well. He has his first big math competition this coming week with the AMC10 on Thursday after school. I will be praying that he can concentrate and retrieve the information quickly as he is afraid he will be a bit distracted after getting let out of school late to attend the middle school play which happens to be the same day!

Axel appears to be a bit like his father and quite the procrastinator. He was up late on Sunday October 30th making his costume. We had to go with plan B and clue on his computer buttons as his sewing machine and him were not getting along (Axel was getting beyond frustrated!)

I was very lucky to be able to save the day and help him get to bed by 10pm!

Here are our bat, witch and TI-82xel.

Up close views of their costumes before school.

I was able to take the day off and spend the day with the kids. The first party and parade was with Rubix. 

I was able to help with the craft and hang out with him. 

I had to immediately run over to the middle school to make it for Axel's lunch time Halloween fun.

Only 6 parent volunteers were allowed to pass out candy. I managed to watch the  costume competition and get a quick selfie with my handsome son. 

After having a 30 minute break for lunch, I headed back to the lower school for Phoenix's party and parade. 

I helped with their crafts and enjoyed watching Phoenix hang out with one of her besties, Kylie. 

Kylie was so cute as a minion.

After bringing the kids home we decided to skip swim practice which allowed me to cook Mongolian beef and Brussel sprouts. Axel was a happy camper!

The other exciting news is that Rubix lost his second tooth right before going trick or treating!

Our scary pumpkins!

Trick or Treat!

Arna and Nyra, our neighbors joined for a bit. 

We also managed to get Dhruva, the new 6th grader to join for a bit. We also had the privilege of enjoying our neighbors big Halloween village and cool decorations. 

They had not put everything up for 8 years!

It was such a treat to enjoy their hard work. We also met 3 new neighbor families who moved in over the past few months, with one who just closed the week before and just starting their move in. One family has an 11 month old, another family has an 8 year old and the 3rd family has a 2 year old with one on the way! I had to convince Phoenix this was great news for her future babysitting!

Keith left for Japan on Friday the 4th of November. The race to the North Pole started on November 1st and every Friday the swim team is giving out hot cocoa. The kids were very excited to attend and get hot chocolate. Here is Rubix with his cup of yumminess. 

Here is Phoenix enjoying hers. 

There was a beautiful sunset. I was trying to capture it with a quick selfie of Rubix and I, but ended up just getting us without the beautiful sky. Oh well!

On Saturday was Rubix's last soccer game. He was so excited to get his first soccer trophy!

The team and crew of parents!

At lunch time Rubix was struggling to eat as another tooth started bleeding so we just took it out and now he has 3 missing teeth!

Phoenix starting to look more like Mommy!

On Sunday we enjoyed a fun afternoon in the park! The kids had such a great time running around playing hit ball and swinging. 

It has been such a long time since we had good old kid fun. It was a blessing to have a slower weekend. Axel's math got cancelled which allowed us to enjoy time together outside. We even had a fun short visit with the Gunnions and the boys played a game of 2 on 2 basketball. Apparently Joel and Rubix dominated Tyler and Axel. I was enjoying a hot drink with Tanya, so I did not get any pictures, but it was super fun to see Rubix fit right in with a 10 year old and two 13 year olds!

We have 1st trimester report cards coming out on Friday, a birthday party on Sunday, more rainy days and a big swim meet coming up the weekend before Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to seeing family and friends. 
 

Cross Country Champs and new swim personal bests!

Here are a couple of other photos of Rubix during soccer. Here he is kicking the ball in. You might guess, he has a pretty powerful kick for a 6 year old. 

Here he is with his buddy Reese after the game last weekend. 

We have had several swim meets over the past month. Here Axel is being silly with placing sunglasses over his goggles. 

Here is Rubix breaking 18 seconds in the 25 yard free style. 

I wanted to load in Phoenix's breast stroke where she got a personal best of 43.34 seconds. 41.69 is JO time so she is excited to see if she can break it. I also wanted to add Axel's 100 free PR of 1:02. He is trying really hard to get faster at the shorter races, but he has been running so much. I told him, you can't expect to be flying on land and in the water. 

We finally had the Gunions over again for dinner. The kids had a great time eating dinner and playing together. We are a bit sad as they have their tickets booked to return to Australia for Dec. 27th. Their 6+ years in the U.S. will be coming to an end. We were able to cheer on Joel at his last cross country race and Tanya and I have a hiked planned for next Friday. We hope to get together a couple more times before they move home!

Here is the crew of 7th/8th grade boys that made the league championship cross country race. You may notice there are only 6 boys, as the 7th boy unfortunately injured himself at school during lunch!

Axel, Haofang, Aiden, Ario, Liam and Jonathon. 

Axel coming around the bend for the last 1/3rd of a mile. 

He finished the race with a 6:11 pace for a 2nd place finish out of close to 80 kids. 

Here is the podium. Menlo's Henry got 1st (in the white), Stratford took 3rd and Axel in the green 2nd. 

The boys with their first place team metals!

 

Swimming, Soccer and Cross Country

Like I usually say, time flies and our lives our full. I will start way back to the last weekend in August. The family headed to Weston's 6th birthday party. His summer party was postponed due to covid, so he was celebrating now because it was the only time they had available. Weston has two older brothers and Phoenix is friends with the oldest brother, Brayden, who is her classmate. 

Rubix struggled to play with the kids his age, but did have fun playing with the older kids. Here he is playing with Weston's older brother Brayden. He was so excited he found someone to play battleship with him. I am afraid to say the game was not completed due to other party distractions. 

I love moments like these where the Szolushas embrace each other and enjoy each other's company.  

The party ended with a pinata that took a very long time to break. All of the kids had several turns at beating it with a bat. 

I was able to capture a moment where Axel was teaching Rubix how to solve the Rubik's cube. 

Here is Phoenix loving the ability to play and build for an hour or two. 

Over Labor Day weekend we tackled the pinball room and managed to paint it. It was quite the task at 400 square feet and ceilings that peak at 12 feet. The weekend ended with me falling sick to a bad bout of gastritis. I am still trying to heal my stomach 1 month later. Advil and I no longer are friends!

After the long weekend we had 3 back to school nights. The first was Rubix's. Here is a fun letter he wrote us, well Daddy Keith. Since I was the only one who attended, as Keith helped the kids get through homework and bed, I wrote Rubix back and signed in Brianne (Mommy). 

Here is the mouse he is referring to in the note to Keith.

The end of August soccer started and we have now completed 4 games and 5 practices. This was our walk to the first game. 

Rubix was beyond excited!

I captured several pictures during his first game. It was overcast and nice out. 

You may be able to tell, he has some amazing ball handling and kicking skills and is learning to be a team player. 

Keith is coaching the kids and they are starting to learn positions and passing drills. It is really fun to see how much they have improved over the past month. 

Here is the bid Daddy/ coach hug after Rubix's first goal ever!

I got a big high five and smile when he was sent to the sidelines for a drink of water.

Axel's back to school night was next. We learned that Axel continues to be a natural leader. You can see him at the board working out a math problem. His teacher now calls him "Solution" as a nick name. He is having a blast in math elective again this year. 

The start of school also brought on the start of cross country for Axel.  The team did not participate in the first meet because it was 100 degrees out and the school nurse cancelled all sports for they day (they actually cancelled sports nearly all week that week as the temperatures soared above 100 degrees reaching 108, 109, 111 and higher than that in other parts of the valley. The team held time trials every couple of weeks. Axel is leading his crew here and took off on the last lap to get a 7:42 1.25 mile time with his friends coming in well after 8 minutes. 

To help Axel and his buddies train, we found maps to the courses that Axel would be competing on and visited one of them each weekend, every weekend for a month. 

This is Crystal Springs Cross Country course. It is used by many middle and high schools all over the bay area. It is an amazing course with quite a bit of elevation gain. 

Here is one weekend with his friends Jonathon, Liam, Haofang and Adrian.  

Here is another weekend, this time at Bayshore. We got momentarily poured on. The boys were troopers and ran despite the circumstances. 

Here is Axel racing at Bayshore Park. He fought hard from the gun to get a good position and was in a pack of 4 and then 3. He took off on the hill and was solo coming around with a quarter of a mile to go. Out of nowhere came the beast of the kid sprinting behind him. The kids kick was so incredible, there was nothing that Axel could do. 

Axel got snipped at the link to take an amazing 2nd place. As you can see there was no one insight behind these two amazing boys who finished the 1.4 miles averaging a 5:40 minute pace. 

Axel collapsed afterwards in complete exhaustion. I was so amazed at his efforts. 

Here is a fun picture of Daddy breaking the pinball record with a whopping 17 million points. 

Our neighbors texted me one evening saying they had an entire pizza the could not eat because it had meat on it. Rubix was beyond happy to eat a second dinner when they brought over the pizza. 

Our 3rd back to school night was for Phoenix. Here is a book review that was posted in her language arts room. 

Phoenix ran for class representative. Here is one of her posters that she made. "Flame of Knowledge, Lights are way", is from the school song. 

When I was waiting one day in the school office I came across this great art piece done by Rubix last year. I was so surprised to see it because it was not posted at the end of the year, but magically appeared at the start of this year. 

A couple of week ago, Keith and I made it out on our first "night time" date in years. We went to the Weird Al Yankovic concert at the Mountain Winery. 

It was fun to have a night together and I am impressed with how good of a musician weird Al is. 

Last week I was able to volunteer at school with a craft party for Phoenix's grade and I was able to go into Rubix's classroom as the parent reader. 

It is so nice to have these opportunities to be with the kids at school. I took Halloween off so I can spend most of the day volunteering in both of the kids classroom and watching their Halloween parades. 

 We have been busy with swim meets and soccer games the past couple of weekends and have a really big weekend again with both a swim meet and soccer game. Next week is Axel's cross country championship. He is hoping to get the win as it is an even more hilly course then the Bayshore course. We are hoping that he finishes strong and doesn't get hurt (that is me). It starts on a crazy steep downhill and is a bottleneck start. I am hoping that he doesn't slip or get pushed while going downhill. This weekend is the big swim meet that we are cohosting with nearly 100 swimmers from Los Gatos. This is a big deal as last winter we could hardly get 10 swimmers to go to the USA swim meets. 

Axel leaves for his Washington D.C. trip on the 15th. We have been hustling to purchase clothes and items needed for the trip. Axel has grown so much that he did not have any pants and hardly any shirts that fit him. I can now say he has 3 casual days of wear and 3 business days of clothing. I had to repeat to him several times that he needs to have winter clothes and we would have to buy clothes for the winter regardless. He is such a funny boy and says that he can get along with just shorts and a couple of sweatshirts!  Such a minimalist! 

I will likely post after all of the Halloween fun. Happy Fall!