He did it!

The Damonater is now a black belt in karate. Yay! The last test, this "fun" one involving sparring and grappling, happened yesterday and the entire class passed. They worked their behinds off:

Damon's second grade teacher popped in for awhile and commented, "I think I've lost weight just while I've been sitting here..." and "they're making me tired just watching them!" His face lit up when he saw her. Our buddy Myron also made an appearance for "mortal support" (yes, I know it's "moral", but if you haven't seen "The Gods Must Be Crazy" then you should and you'll catch the reference).

Of course we celebrated with ice cream afterwards, because that's how we roll. Graduation will be Saturday, May 12 at noon if anyone wants to come see him actually get his belt, the ceremony, the fun after all the hard work, and so on. 

Woohoo, three cheers, hip hip hooray, and way to go!

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!

Holding Pattern

Grandmama has been asking how we are doing and what we're up to, which is usually a signal to let me know that we haven't been A) calling B) writing C) blogging or D) all of the above. I guess you can figure out what the answer is.

So let's see. 

Last week we had a two hour delay on Monday and we skipped karate because Liam had a lot of homework. Tuesday was a snow day, wouldn't you know it, so we forgot all about homework that was due Wednesday since we'd done so much on Monday night. We skipped the half hour weapons class at karate because we were cozy and didn't feel like taking longer to get to class than we would spend IN class. Wednesday rolls around with another two hour delay just to be on the safe side. We made it to karate and naturally it was, "unbelievably poopy out" (a Grandmama-ism), which makes it a splendid time to realize, "waitaminute, it's mid-January and I have no idea where my ice scraper is because I haven't NEEDED it for these past two months, wahoo!" Just another reason God gave us mittens. So I mittened off Pepe and we sludged home. 

Then, amen and hallelujah, two whole days of school! Bliss! Except we'd all gotten used to sleeping in a little (or a lot) and we are all harder to motivate in the cold and in the dark. Everyone made it onto their buses at the appointed times and this Mama got her errands done in the outside world.

Saturday meant we needed to pick up a karate class or two to make up for skipping so much earlier in the week, so we headed to sparring class to use all the fancy gear the kids got as Christmas presents. It was their second or third time sparring, third I think, and it seemed to go really well. It was a big class meaning there were lots of people of all ages, sizes, and ability levels, and they were pairing up to spar and separating again so that those without partners for one round were the first to choose partners for the next round, and so forth. 

I was really proud of Carrie, especially, as she's not afraid of anyone including the men, and goes right up to them when it's her turn to pick. The guys are all good sports, quick to teach and correct, and usually have kids of their own in the class. I told the kids that the grownups make good targets because they're so big, while the kids are small and fast. The men usually also do a great job encouraging the kids, showing them where to best hit on them, how to turn, where to strike for more power, etc. It was really fun to watch! I was impressed with a lot of other students, too, who were also very good teachers and would hold back a little less because it was kid-on-kid. Dada did get some pictures on his phone but they're not ready for here yet, so remind me. 

Damon and Liam also had to get cups, for obvious reasons as there's a lot of kicking and striking going on, so it was doubly hilarious to watch Damon adjusting his cup with one hand and his mouth guard with the other while he waddles across the floor in all his pads. Priceless. He was delighted with the whole package and had to be almost forcibly persuaded to take out his mouth guard and put it in his bag until next week. That kid would probably sleep with it if he could...

We've spent the past several months reading Harry Potter at bedtime and the rule is that we have to finish the book before we watch the movie. Because we polished off the third book earlier in the week, we got to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night. We've begun book four, and though Damon often falls asleep while I'm reading, Liam is completely absorbed and is crushed when we don't have time to read at night. He pays close attention and is frustrated when someone doesn't say a line in the movies that tickled him in the books. Can't say I blame him. It's been really fun to read to them and it's been interesting to see their reactions to changes between the books and the movies. It took Carrie three or four tries to make it through book four, but she finally did it and has now started the fifth one. We love seeing how much the actors have grown because they were so little with such baby faces when they started filming! And the kids noticed right away that Dumbledore is different in the third movie. It's been a very enjoyable process, one that I'm glad we have a long way to continue!

Today we'll be heading to church and doing some more homework because it's a long weekend and the time off for snow has pushed their work back a little bit. The snow is almost gone and good riddance. Dada had gotten our trusty John Deere out with the bucket on the front and plowed the driveway last week. Now that I look outside again it's snowing fast, tiny flakes...

We've had tons and tons of feathered friends and fuzzy squirrels. We've seen white-breasted nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers, Red-bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, juncos, finches, Goldfinches, cardinals, and our owls have been heard twice this month already. Yay! We salvaged one plastic bird feeder from the wreckage of the birdhouse disaster and have been refilling it every other day with sunflower seeds. The cranberry suet out back seems to last a long while even with our many small visitors. Carrie is worried about "her" frogs as the "pond" has frozen completely. She was chopping air holes in the ice for them the other day. Triskal is glad to come in where it's warm. She'll check around under the table for dropped tidbits and then head over to her corner where she's soon snoozing away. It's like having a large piece of fuzzy furniture...

Virgil Eugene still has his hat, but Cheeky Beaky is going to need his scarf pretty soon, methinks.  And I must go get ready for church, so have a good week, everyone!