Thanksgiving Weekend

We hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. Axel made a Native American hat at school on Monday and he wore it all week long. He even wore it to bed one night. It was the funniest sight ever....his hat, blue goggles, and white gloves Grandma Susan bought him a year or two ago. The amazing thing is the gloves were still on in the morning, even though the hat and goggles fell off while he was sleeping.

The goggles have been a hit for a couple of weeks now, but the gloves and hat are his latest accessories that he can't leave home without.


On Thanksgiving morning we woke up early to see what the day had in store. If the weather was good we had plans to race up Mt. Hamilton, which is a local 19 mile climb to the observatories overlooking San Jose where mommy and daddy got engaged. Luckily, for Keith's sake the weather was looking better than expected and the race/low key hill climb was still on. I was a bit bummed because I was hoping to go to Sacramento to see family if it rained, but I was on board for the hour and half of suffering we had planned since I was given the okay to ride my bike again 4 weeks ago.

We had one of our friends/teammate's fiance drive Axel to the top. He had so much fun with Lovorka that he didn't really notice the horrible fog or cold weather. He was really excited to see all of our cycling friends and play on the top of the mountain. He knows when he's going to see the 'top of the mountain' now.

Here he is playing in the car/eating a snack. When I told him it was time to go he asked me to put the seat belt on. Poor guy was more than disappointed he not only had to get in his car seat, but that we were headed down the mountain and eventually home. You can see the gloves I was talking about above if you look closely in the picture below.


On Saturday our new neighbor that moved in a few weeks ago asked if we would like to go to a local sports restaurant for brunch and to watch the Michigan game. Axel and I went and we had a blast. Luckily, there was a couple of arcade games that kept Rishaan and Axel entertained because the place was packed and the food took forever to arrive. The food was well worth the wait and Axel and I had a delicious breakfast calzone!

After we ate we went to the Los Gatos "park". The boys had fun playing in the fountain while us mom's chatted.

We all hope that Rishaan and Axel become great friends over the years to come.

Last night we ventured to Bed Bath and Beyond for some quick shopping. Axel was absolutely amazed at the remote control helicopter that was flying in the store. He sat down with his pet pillow (although we had to leave his pet pillow at the store) in the middle of the isle and watched for about 10 minutes while we waited for a price check.

Axel continues to blossom and become more assertive. As one of our friends said, "I had to teach him about sharing, since he was bossing me around all morning as to what and how we were playing." It is nice to see his imagination blossom and to see he knows what he wants, but I hope he continues to learn how to play nicely with others.

Over the past few weeks Axel has only wanted to use the big boy potty. This is good because there is less clean up, but bad because he needs help getting onto and off of the toilet. He is afraid to use the step stool and he refuses to sit on anything on top of the toilet. Hopefully, by the time he is three he will be able to do everything on his own. We will have to see.

Axel is still wearing 18 month clothing. It is finally the perfect height as far as leg length, but the waste on most of them is still too big. It is funny how all of his pants seem to slip down. He doesn't really seem to mind. He will walk or run holding them up.

Although Axel is still small, he seems to be growing because I can hardly carry him like I use to. His coordination is light years better than before. He runs, jumps, does somersaults, and can handle his two wheel, no pedal bike now. He also puts on his shoes without assistance for the past couple of weeks.

He is becoming more and more a boy and less and less a baby/toddler. The one thing he has not yet grown out of is his affection and cuddle time. I hope he continues to enjoy being hugged and loved because I will really miss that when the time comes.

Ok, have a great week!

Szolusha Family Thanksgiving meal!

Happy Thanksgiving! We are in full holiday mode after the completion of our big feast last night. It has been a tradition for the 5 years that I have been with Keith to get together with his close friends for a pre-Thanksgiving meal. Tyler and Cynthia were initially the hosts, but Keith and I took over last year. It has grown from a gathering of 6 to a gathering of 16 adults and 5 kids!

Keith took the day off on Friday so that we could prepare for our 21 guests. Because we don't have a big table or enough chairs we always rent tables and chairs for the occasion. We were able to get the dining room set and the pumpkin pies made. We also managed to prep the devilled eggs, the sweet potatoes, russet potatoes and all of the veggies for the dressing with the help of Tyler and Cynthia, on Friday night. They went back and forth with helping in the kitchen to playing with Axel. Without them, I don't think we could have done it stress free and with a smile on our faces so we want to give them a BIG THANK YOU!

They were also a huge help yesterday. They sacrificed sleep to get up early in order to watch Axel, while Keith and I raced to the top of King's Mountain. Pictured above is Axel helping me make our pre-Thanksgiving breakfast of pancakes.

The race ride up King's Mountain was the 8th out of the 9 low key hill climbs, that I mentioned last week. We had a huge team turnout with an honorary member for the day, Stiffler, (a.k.a Mike) who is father to a new pair of twins! We had a great time and couldn't have done it without the help of our great friends! We feel so blessed to have such gracious, giving friends!

Here is a picture of me holding one of the 3 month old twins, Josephine. If you look closely in the background you can see Cynthia holding the other twin, Dillinger.

I did not do a great job of taking pictures since I was so busy cooking and cleaning and visiting with our friends yesterday. Keith did managed to get a few pictures at the top of the mountain. Here is our tuckered out little Axel.

This is a picture of 12 members of our fun Low Key Hill Climb team, "The Brown Zone".

And since I haven't put up a "family" picture in awhile here is the best that we can do for now :) Too bad Axel refused to look at the camera.....poor sleepy child!

We want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving! May God Bless you and your families during this time we our extra grateful for all of our Blessings!

Fall is here!

It is hard to believe Thanksgiving is around the corner and that we are in 5th gear speeding to the end of the year. I try to live day by day, but this time of year always seems to speed by more quickly than I can keep up with.

Axel is loving the fall weather. He learned in one of his Winnie the Pooh books how fun chasing, crunching and falling onto a pile of leaves are, so when he found the opportunity to do so he had an absolute blast. We were getting my car smog tested, so please ignore the litter in the pile of leaves :)

Axel also loves the rain. He loves to watch it, sing about it and most of all he loves to use the umbrella or his hood on his jacket. I am glad he likes it so much, because I am only a fan when it is a full on storm. The day after day light rain gets old quickly, so I will feed off Axel's love for it when the winter weather really gets here.

Axel has also had a love for the moon the past month or two. He always asks where the moon is in the morning and in the evening, when I pick him up. This week the moon was close to full or full so he was really excited every night to see it "come out".

On a fun note Axel is getting better and better at pin ball. Here is a video of him playing.

Axel continues to mature emotionally. I feel incredibly blessed that I can talk to him like an equal and explain to him why we cannot do something or why we have to do something. Most of the time he responds by saying, "Oh". Of course, he still is a 2 year old and when tired is not as responsive, but for the most part it is really nice. A great example of this was when I picked him up an hour early from daycare this week. He really didn't want to go because he was having fun with his friends. I told him that it was almost dark and that we needed to get home because Louis is afraid of the dark and would start crying if we didn't make it home before dark. When we got home, Louis was crying, and he immediately asked to turn the light on and let Louis out because he was sad and afraid.

On a side note, I finally had the opportunity to join Keith for a low key hill climb. It is a series every fall that has a time trial up one of the local climbs, one each week for 9 weeks. Axel and I helped out by volunteering for the first four, so it was really fun to get to ride/race one of them. It was quite invigorating to ride as hard as I could, despite not having the fitness after being off the bike for a few months. This was surprisingly fun for me, because I am not someone who likes to compete without proper preparation :) I am really glad I did and plan on doing the last two in the series if the weather permits. Here is a picture of the four girl team members, who happen to be my close friends :)

Here is a picture of the "entire" team today. We were missing a few of Keith's buddies, but it was nice to have the ladies step it up and help the team out.

That is it for now. Have a great week!

Happy Halloween!

Daddy was so excited for us to arrive home Saturday night. We had a big day of Halloween festivities for Sunday. Daddy wanted to take Axel to the pumpkin patch since he hadn't had the chance to go with us yet. Axel, of course couldn't argue about another chance to pet the pigs and goats.

We actually had the privilege of watching the pigs being caught and caged as the Pumpkin patch would be closing after sun down. The big lesson we learned is that pigs don't like to be picked up and boy can they squeal loudly!


once we got home from the pumpkin patch we immediately started carving the pumpkin. Axel was absolutely excited. He couldn't wait to draw the face and carve it out.

He was a little annoyed with all of the gutting of the pumpkin. I didn't realize how big our pumpkin was! Oops!

The next day I brought Axel to school with his Dalmatian costume and a vegan chocolate cake. His daycare does a great job of celebrating every holiday. The kids were going to the high school to trick or treat around the classrooms. I was really apprehensive at how Axel would do. Last year they went on a Friday so I was able to go with him and he didn't exactly have fun. Well when I arrived after work I was informed that he didn't go! What!! My poor child refused to go and thus stayed home with the baby, while the other kids went. I felt so bummed for him.

Somehow on the way home, whatever I said, helped change Axel's mind about getting dressed up and going trick or treating. He couldn't wait for daddy to get home so that we could go. He even ate dinner with his costume half on.

We went to our new neighbor's house, next door, to see if they were taking their son trick or treating. They moved in just a few days prior. We were in luck and they were just getting ready to head out. Axel and his new friend, Rashawn, were absolutely adorable.

They hit it off right away. Rashawn is 2 weeks older than Axel, so we are all hoping they become great friends over the years.

A funny side note is that Axel had so much fun trick or treating on Halloween night he woke up the next day and asked to put his costume on. He said he wanted to go trick or treating with his friends at school. It was a bit of a sad let down to tell him that he would have to wait until next year to go trick or treating with his school mates. Good thing is daddy convinced him that Thanksgiving was just around the corner which meant that the Grinch was coming back. That saved some tears and put a big smile on Axel's face. For those of you who don't know the Grinch is Axel's favorite movie. I think it is because that was the first TV/movie I let him watch, so he watched it almost every day for months! We had to say good bye to the Grinch in early March because I didn't want the Grinch to loose its charm.

Have a great weekend and make sure to check out the previous post I just did as well!

Prelude to Halloween

A week ago from Saturday the Szolusha's had an action packed day. Axel and I drove to the top of Bohlman where we waited for daddy to race to the top. After watching over a hundred cyclist reach the top we headed over to a teammates house for a BBQ. It was about 84 degrees out and a spectacular day so we had some good for and Axel and daddy even tried to go swimming. The pool was a bit cold, but they were true champs.

We tried to get home in time for Axel's nap, but unfortunately, we were 30 minutes late which meant that Axel was overly tired. This resulted in him playing in his bed for an hour and then asking to come out and play. We had some family fun and then Axel had an early bath and dinner because Annika was coming over to watch him while Keith and I headed to his company's 30th anniversary party.

Billy Idol was the entertainment of the night. We had amazing food and drinks and got to listen to some good old tunes. Here is a not so good picture of Billy Idol on stage.

At school the next week Axel had tons of different Halloween projects. By far Axel's favorite of the week was his very first Halloween mask. It was suppose to by a happy mask, but the more and more I looked at it, it was kind of scary like the joker mask :) Axel made sure to show it off to our neighbors when we arrived home as well as daddy when he finally got home for the evening as well.

On Thursday Axel and I headed to Sacramento to spend a couple of days with Grandma Susan. On Friday morning we headed to the Folsom Zoo Sanctuary. We arrived a bit early so we got to hand out at the park in front of the zoo.

This we our first time at the Folsom Zoo and it was quite different from a regular zoo. They had ducks, squirrels, bob cats, mountain lines, cats and lot of other animals that you don't think of seeing at a zoo. All of the animals were rescued for some reason or another.


You would think because we went to the zoo I would include pictures of Axel looking at the animals, but the two biggest highlights this time were not animals. The first big hit was making a souvenir penny with Grandma. He had so much fun he wanted to make another!

The second big hit was the train that ran outside the zoo. As soon as Axel heard it he couldn't wait to go see where it was. His face absolutely lit up as he watched the smoke release with every "cho, choo" bell that went off.

On Saturday Auntie and Great Grandma Millie arrived. We were all going to head to Galt to our Cousin's baby shower. As I was in the shower, Axel watch Grandma get ready. He was so impressed with Grandma's rollers that he wanted to put them on too. I walked out of the shower to see him like this. Goodness, I thought, this is almost worse than the pony tail and bracelet I have come home to in the past.

We stopped by my Aunt Susan's house before heading to the baby shower. She absolutely loves Halloween and always does an amazing job decorating her house/yard. Axel was amazed by what he saw. He was initially timid, but after a few minutes of realizing nothing moved he couldn't wait to jump in the man made cobwebs.


our trip ended with Denise and James baby shower. We had so much fun visiting everyone. Axel was able to meet my cousin's child, Kaylee for the first time. We told Axel that Kaylee was his cousin and he immediately didn't leave Kaylee's side. He kept saying, "come on cousin" and "cousin, this and cousin that". The entire ride home he talked about his cousin. It was so precious!

We are excited for the arrival of Vanessa, which is expected for the 12th! Good luck Denise and James.

Halloween Festivities

On Sunday, Axel and I, along with his favorite person/babysitter, Annika, went to the pumpkin patch around the corner from us. It was so cool. It had almost everything Lemos Farm had, which we drove an hour to get to. This was almost better, even though it was smaller.

It had a little hay maze that the kids were able to climb up on. Here Axel is at the top.

Here Axel is peeking through a window in the maze.

Axel was able to pet pigs and goats this time. This was the first time that Axel has pet a pig. I think he loved it since he had just watched 30 minutes of the Spanish version of "Babe" the night before.


Axel also managed to pet baby chicks! He thought they were so cute. He stayed here the longest.

Although the chicks were a hit, I think Axel's favorite part of our little excursion was painting his own pumpkin. He picked out pumpkins for daddy, mommy and Annika. Mommy got a little one like Axel's, and Annika and daddy got big ones :)

Axel is really into building things. This week he has been stuck on his magnetic balls and sticks that he received for Christmas last year. Here is one of his creations (of course with mommy's assistance).

The other big news of the week is Axel is now fully participating in everything at daycare. For the past year or so he sits in a chair by himself in another room during circle time. He still sang, but he was always too afraid to be with the other kids. Starting last Thursday he was the first sitting and waiting for circle time to begin. He is also playing all of the time with his friends and never seems to want to leave daycare. It is such a nice change. Mornings are still occasionally tough, but for the most part he is easy to drop off, especially if other kids are already there.

Here is a look at one of the many songs they sing during circle time. He is saying open, shut them over and over. He just might have a career in entertainment in the future. What do you think?

Lemos Farm

Last Sunday, Keith and I, along with our friends, Tyler and Cynthia took Axel to Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay. Since the time that Keith and I first started riding past Lemos Farm together we knew that one day we wanted to take our children there. Well, Axel was finally old enough. We left bright and early, in order to get there right when it opened at 9am. We wanted to beat the horrible traffic and get back in time for Axel to take his nap.

There is a big pumpkin patch, a train ride, a hay ride, a pony ride, laser tag and a petting area. Axel was really excited to see the goats. No matter where we go, he loves animals.

He loves to feed them, pet them and watch them. It was by far where he spent the most time and where he had the most fun at Lemos Farm.

Axel was adventurous and tried the pony ride, but he got scared after going around a couple of times. Keith and I were scared that he might fall off anyways so we were relieved when he started to cry and wanted down. He seems just a bit too small for the saddle and was bouncing from side to side a little more than any of us liked.

We were just really proud of him for trying.

Axel and daddy rode the train around the entire farm. He seemed to really enjoy it.
Here is a our best try at a family photo. Unfortunately, it is not a great shot, but it was a nice try.

We are excited for Axel to experience Halloween this year. We think this is the first year that he will really get it. We already have his pumpkin to collect candy and his costume that was a hand me down. Now all we have to do is get pumpkins to carve and bake our first sugar pie pumpkin in order to make our first pumpkin pie of the year.

We love fall and the holidays because the entire Szolusha family loves pumpkin pie. Let the pumpkin pie season begin!

check back soon for Halloween pictures! Oh, make sure to check out the blog I did earlier today about the past three weeks!