And yet another karate graduation

We officially have two certified black belts and a red/black belt in the house now. Carrie and Liam received their certificates on Saturday confirming that their six month probationary period is over and they are full-fledged karate black belts. Damon wrapped up his six month red belt cycle with honors and was promoted to red/black, the final six months before he earns his black belt, provided he passes all of his black belt testing this spring.  Naturally we have millions of pictures, but I shall take pity on you and try to limit myself to only some. We have been experiencing technical difficulties this morning, most likely user error, so please bear with me. 

These kiddos have worked their bums off. It's not always been pretty, and they haven't always wanted to go, but they have stuck with it for over three years and it was fantastic to see their hard work pay off. We are really proud of them physically being able to do it but more so the perseverance of sticking with it even when they didn't feel like it, when it would have been much easier on everyone to sit on the couch and watch Netflix and eat junk. But they practiced and showed up and tested and practiced some more, and now here they are! Great job, you guys! Enjoy your success!

Minimalist karate graduation post

Here is the promised karate graduation post. I'm trying to keep it short and sweet for those of you who are tired of getting on the blog and perpetually seeing karate pictures. It's been our life for three years now. I imagine soccer parents feel pretty similarly...

On we go!

Sorry this one is so blurry, hehe, but it's an excellent photo of the fun the instructors have during black belt testing. Above is our beloved Mr. Stanford making Carrie work hard despite her laughter. 

Below is our friend Ed, who is kinda built like offspring produced if a tank married a buffalo. I love Liam's face. 

Ed also goes to Krav with Dada and Mama Rita. Once in awhile when I ask how they're doing they'll say something smart like, "sore... cuz... Ed." I think we should make T-shirts proclaiming that: Cuz Ed. 

High flyin' kids

Carrie, quit picking on the boys and get back to work!

Black belt testing took three Saturdays. There were sparring elements, grappling elements, basic skills and katas, and pretty much everything they could throw at you. The instructors really made the candidates work; they had to make the instructors really feel it. Mr. Penny said to several of them, "if it isn't hurting me, I'm not going to let go!" 

Here's Damon, mid kata, with his friend Austin. Graduation was really fun because there were a lot of candidates who had prepped their best work to show off. It was great to see kids we'd been rubbing shoulders with for the last three years receive their black belts!

And apparently those last two didn't get cropped. Oh well. Pay no attention to the fact that there is a curtain. I think Mr. Stanford gets quite the kick out of the post-graduation photo taking time...

So we now have a red belt and two black belts in da house!

The promised graduation post and our typical Saturdays

Hi! I got a little carried away with karate pictures, as usual, so I tried to tidy them up some so I wouldn't be tempted to add a hundred of them. 

Damon moved from a low green belt to a high green belt, so he's featured in some of the pictures but didn't bump up to a different belt color. Hopefully that will happen in February. Brrr. I don't even want to think about February. But after that graduation all three Thingz will be in the same class again for the rest of forever and let me just make the sound here to express how excited I am about that: Wahoooooooooooooooooo!!

As always, click on any picture to see it in more detail and larger. Damon was featured in two of the weapons displays, though he informed us later that he should have only been in one (typical), and Carrie did one as well. 

New belts, with the exception of black belts, are tied on by parents after the graduation ceremony. Black belts are tied on, onstage, by instructors. The medals around their necks mean they graduated with honors. In order to do that, they had to have turned in at least three karate homeworks. The categories are Knowledge (reading minutes, which ties in nicely with the school reading logs), Self-Discipline (which encourages them to be responsible around the house and with homework, etc), Goal Setting (which seems the easiest to me: three goals and how you'll achieve them. Two of the three have to be completed before you turn it in. Liam's first goal is "to not quit until black belt!" Needless to say, his paper hasn't been turned in yet...), and Respect (going out of their way to be helpful/courteous/etc and must be signed by a parent AND a teacher). 

I can't say enough good things about this program. Yes, it takes up a ton of our time and, let's be honest, our money. But the instructors are amazing, patient, encouraging, dedicated, and fun. Not only are the Thingz learning martial arts and defense, but they're in something that isn't instant gratification. They're starting to see that accomplishments take a long time and that you need to stick to it to be good at something. Do they always want to go? No. Do I always want to take them? No. But we feel that these are good lessons for our family and that this particular program will help their lives in other ways down the road as well as helping them stay physically active now. 

And then there are these feet that I just adore. Damon is still disappointed that he isn't yet a brown belt, which is the lowest of the highest belt levels. He was pouting about his lack of a new belt in the above photo.

It's too bad that you really don't get a sense from the pictures of how hard these kids work. They go to class 2-3 times a week in our old town. Most weeks we go Monday for both of their level classes, Tuesday for weapons, and then again Wednesday for both classes again. Thursday nights are our night off, every other Friday tries to host home group, and weekends are crazy. 

This weekend we did our third Mystery Adventure (see previous post) and three karate classes on Saturday. This is a first. The Academy hosts a Grappling class at 10 AM. It is an elective, but highly beneficial towards earning one's black belt. Until now, the Thingz could only do one elective and they'd chosen weapons, which improves focus and concentration. Grappling is more like wrestling, and I am not even close to qualified to tell you how they differ. 

Anyway, now that the big kids are only six months away from being black belts, they are officially black belt candidates and are encouraged to take classes in everything. One, they'll need all that stuff for their black belt tests, which is taken in stages, and two, it's kind of a reward for sticking with the program for the years required to get to this point. 

So the big kids were excited to head into that first Grappling class. I stayed home and sent the camera with Pap, who was visiting. And kudos to him; in spite of being intimidated by the fancy camera, he did a great job capturing them!

As Damon is not yet a candidate, this was how he spent his time while Thing One and Two were on the floor:

After 45 minutes or more of hot, sweaty working, it was time for their regular family class which means any student of any level participates in the same class. There are jumping jacks, push ups, and some kind of ab work in addition to all the karate stuff they do.

After 45 plus minutes of that class, they take a break to put on their sparring gear:

That class is also 45 minutes or so. We had hot, sweaty, tired, starving Thingz come home! Again, good job to Pap for taking super pictures!

May-hem of graduations

I've already mentioned how May is traditionally a crazy hectic month with the end-of-the-school-year everything and Carrie's birthday. I can only imagine what it'll become once we add in Proms, graduation parties, and all that jazz. Yoi.

This particular May we already had two graduations. 

Yes, you read that right. Two.

May is the second of four karate graduations spread throughout the year. They're usually February, which we missed because I had the flu and Damon wasn't progressing anyway), May, August, and November. 

Two of those graduation dates are black belt graduations, which are extra special as you get performances by the black belt students who have been working for at least 3 years on becoming a black belt. This particular weekend, our amazing friends Nina and Jonathan received their black belts, and the kids' instructor, Mr. Stanford, was receiving his fourth degree black belt. Well, we couldn't miss that!

Parents normally are the ones who tie on a student's new belt to finish the graduation. However, black belts are different in that the instructors get to tie them on. Then there's flowers and pictures and all of that, often followed by ice cream (if you're related to the same people that we are related to, anyway). 

Here are some snippets of the gazillions of photos taken:

Check out that ankle pivoting, above (which is a good thing) and how quick he is- that kid is a blur! Hehe.

I promise, they didn't kick that innocent brown belt off the stage. Just trying to give you a sense of the kicks...

Once you're a high enough belt, you need to create your own katta/routine. Our favorite student performance was cleverly done to "Flight of the Bumblebee", and she used flyswatters. It brought the house down:

Not the best picture, but a hilarious reminder if you were there. 

And Mr. Stanford wowed us all with his Wushu skills:

It was really special for the kids (and the parents!) to get to cheer on Mr. Stanford. He is a super instructor and it was so much fun to see just him doing his thing instead of teaching. 

Don't ever be offended if someone tells you that you kick like a girl. I sure wouldn't want to mess with this one:

Not that kicking like a boy is a bad thing either!

And I keep hearing Goliath from "David and the Giant Pickle" of VeggieTales fame when I see these; am I a dog that you come at me with sticks?

I know that it's not all sunshine and roses. There are plenty of days that the kids do not want to go to karate, and I'd be painting an inaccurate picture if I implied that they're always 100% behind all this. But when we see the intensity and accuracy they're developing, along with the focus that some of us need more desperately than others, I am convinced that it is building incredible skills in our children. It makes it worth the 45-50 minutes of being in the car several times a week on top of the time it takes for the lessons knowing their instructors are top quality and that they're learning not only self-defense that we hope they won't need, but focus, determination, steadfastness, and how to push their minds and bodies in a safe place. While they're getting kicked. Just kidding! These kids work hard, and that all happens after they've spent an entire day in school already.

I should mention that this graduation kicked off a new facet. The instructors thought it would be fun if the students' friends and families wore the colors of the belts their students were progressing to. Damon was becoming a blue belt and the big kids were becoming red belts, so Dada and I decked out in red and blue. There were raffle tickets to be awarded according to how much "school spirit" you showed. Well, as Nina and Jonathan were becoming black belts, you can see that one of the ninjas below is actually Rita. 

Safe to say, Dada got more than one raffle ticket and made the instructors' day a little brighter. 

An amazing job displaying months of hard work was shown by all. We're really, really proud of these kiddos. 

And thank goodness for freer summer schedules!

***

You thought this post would be over now, didn't you? Ahh, but I'd mentioned graduations, plural, earlier. No, Carrie isn't that old, yet. I'm talking Kindergarten graduation!

Aren't their caps a total hoot!?

PaPa will be super pleased to know that someone did all the motions and sang all the songs required of him. There was the obligatory adorable slide-show of the year, from the pumpkins and leaves of last fall through all the winter activities to the field trips and butterflies of spring. These kids are busy doing way more than stringing beads and playing with blocks. Damon's class had a hard cover book published about their coveted future careers, complete with art work and a write up from every student. In Kindergarten, I remember boys kicking and throwing those cardboard building bricks. It's so interesting to me how much more capable kids are than we tend to think.  

Anyway, it was a rehearsed-to-perfection graduation followed by cookies and punch.     

And then the Kindergarteners were dismissed to go home with their families. That'd be Damon, getting outta Dodge. They still have four more days of school, but it was one super sweet graduation that I'm glad we could attend!