San Jose/San Francisco 2018

We recently visited the San Jose area on a tour of colleges.   A mother of twin boys on one of the college tour assumed Michael and Spencer were also twins.    

I'm not sure why people think they're twins.

We took an 8-mile hike at Castle Rock State Park.  Jon and I discovered that we walk "really slow."

We also visited San Francisco one morning to see the Golden Gate Bridge.  We stopped at Golden Gate Park before we went to see the bridge.  Unfortunately, Spencer hadn't packed a jacket and it was chilly.  We didn't stay long at the park.

"Can we go now?"

 We drove to Fort Point to view the Golden Gate Bridge.  Fort Point can be seen in the background of the first two pictures.

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Alcatraz

We also stopped over to view the new Apple headquarters which can be seen in the background.

Jon, Michael and I also walked around the Google campus.  

Jon and Michael in front of dinosaur skeleton on Google's campus

History Day 2018

Spencer has participated in the History Day competition for the past several years.  The competition begins at the school level, then goes to regional level, then state and finally national.  Spencer has made it to state for the past three years.  Every year has a theme.  This year's theme was "Conflict and Compromise."  Spencer opted to do a group performance with two of his friends.  Their topic was the expansion of interstate 94 through the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul.  The kids worked very hard and made it to state.

Spencer, Leela and Sarah at the University of Minnesota with "Goldie" before their performance

During the performance

Answering questions after the performance

Circus

Spencer continues to do acrobatics with the youth circus.  This year he began training on duo trapeze as well.   Pictures below are from the annual show.

Spencer and his partner on duo trapeze

Spencer and his partner are in the middle

Track and Field

Both Michael and Spencer ran varsity track in 2018.  Michael's events were the individual 400 meter dash, the 4 x 200 meter relay, and the triple jump.  Spencer tried a number of events including individual 300 meter hurdles, high jump, triple jump and individual 400 meter dash.  Both boys competed at sectionals with some success.  To the best of my recollection, Spencer's personal record (PR) for triple jump as a freshman is 40 feet 3.75 inches.  Michael's PR for triple jump is 40 feet 10 inches.  Michael's PR for the 400 meter dash is 53.2 seconds, and his 200 meter relay team's PR was 1:34.20

Michael competing in 4x200 meter relay

Spencer at the high jump

Post-race

Annual Track Banquet Awards

Prom 2018

Michael and his friend Jane went to prom this year with a group of their friends.  They took a bunch of pictures downtown before dinner. 

Week at the Cabin

We rented a cabin on a quiet lake for a week this summer.  The water was crystal clear.   We swam, kayaked, played cards,  and enjoyed seeing the family of bald eagles that was nesting nearby.  Kobe enjoyed exploring the woods and wading in the water.  Nobody got poison ivy.  It was a good trip. 

College Trips

Last year during Michael's junior year, we began thinking about colleges.  We should have started sooner.  We have toured a number of colleges, but have not exhausted the list of schools we would like to see, nor ventured at all into the East Coast.  At this point, we have toured very large campuses including University of Minnesota Twin Cities, University of Wisconsin Madison, Purdue University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.   We toured mid-sized schools including Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Santa Clara University, University of Notre Dame and Stanford University.  We also toured very small schools including Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College.

Michael at Purdue

Stanford Campus

Stanford Memorial Chapel

Michael and Spencer at the Santa Clara Visitor Center