Today’s the day our youngest daughter starts ballet lessons. They’re once-a-week ballet lessons, but it should be enough to let her dip her toe in the pool and see if she wants to do this.
She was really nervous about it last night. I wish I could be there with her, but alas… I cannot… work calls.
Good morning and Happy New Year!
This year is going to be bringing great things. We had quite an interesting 2012. I’ll catch you up real quick.
If I think of more, I’ll update this post. For now, I think that’s about it 
A few weeks ago, our Tae Kwon Do master approached us about our son joining the a new demonstration team for our school. He has been wanting to form a demo team for a while, but an invitation from a church to perform at their celebration seemed to inspire him to move on it. I was honored that our son was selected to take part in this.
The boy? Yeah, as usual, he was skittish about the whole thing. It’s a new experience, right? He’s having to own up to the fact that he has a red belt and this was one more way to do it. I’ve worked very hard to make sure that he never backs down from a challenge. He didn’t try to back out of this one very hard.
I’m proud to say he did a fine job. Even he seems to be pretty happy with his performance and frankly, that’s all that matters.
Here’s a poorly-shot iPhone video of the performance.
Last Friday, we were getting ready to take our son out to Tae Kwon Do class. MeiMei (妹妹), the little sister… decided she wanted to participate. She was pretty emphatic about it too – she really wanted to do this.
We’ve been planning to put 妹妹 in class for a while now, but we were planning to wait until she was a little older. She is big for her age, however, and showing quite a bit of interest in the class. She has been watching her big brother do the class for years now and she was pretty familiar with the routine. I consulted our master and he thought it would be just fine if she started up.
We dressed her in a workout uniform (never have I seen a child dress out for physical activity as quick as she did) and put a white belt on her… and sent her on her way.
I was SHOCKED… and quite proud… at how well she did. She’s not even 4 yet, but she can follow directions and participate better than some of the adults in our other classes. I was beaming with pride.
After the class we took her out for her favorite frozen yogurt. You can tell she was loving it based on that smile.
Today, was a wondrous day. After several years of intense training and focus, our 7 year old son was promoted to red belt. His master has wanted to do this for a few months now, but we weren’t sure he was ready. After his fantastic performance in the competition last weekend, however, things were a little different. We finally decided we couldn’t hold him back any longer.
Congratulations to you, my dear son, on this awesome achievement. You are inspiring to me and the whole family. the little sister starts Tae Kwon Do this September.
As for daddy, he was promoted to green belt last night. That was a fantastic feeling I sure wish I had done martial arts when I was younger!
Our little girl will be starting Tae Kwon Do this September. She couldn’t be more ready. She is itching to get out there and kick the crap out of her brother.
Speaking of the competition, I should have mentioned it. We attended the Alabama Sports Festival 2012 competition last weekend with our class (Rocket TKD) and had a great time. Daddy and son both entered the tournament this year.
The son’s videos will be uploaded soon, but daddy’s fights are here. Round 1 is here and round 2 is here. Yep, I fought a 14 year old. But the boy was my same height and definitely a good sport about it. He was an excellent opponent. I learned a lot, for sure.
Our boy dominated the competition quite well. He won two silver medals. He lost the gold in forms by half a point and lost the gold in sparring by ONE KICK. He totally destroyed his opponent in the first match, then almost had a decisive victory in the second match until his opponent made a valiant comeback and tied it. They went into a third round to break the tie and after a few seconds of trading kicks, the other boy landed a kick on our son and won the match. Man, was it thrilling.
Our son was very happy with the two medals he got and everyone was thrilled with his performance. Great work, son!
On Saturday (04/07/12) – our son received a big surprise… it’s a THIRD red stripe!
The only place to go to next is a red belt. He’s doing so good, we couldn’t be more proud.
Today our son put down some serious effort on a Tae Kwon Do pop quiz and scored a second red stripe on his blue belt. He knows all of his forms up to Taeguk 7, which is quite impressive for a blue belt with stripes.
His focus on TKD now is to prepare for the tournament in June. He cashed out all of his tournament passes, he now has to compete in all of them. Sad day for him, right?
He’s going to kick so much ass, it’ll be amazing to watch.
I’m thinking… well, it’s 2012, it’s probably about time I get this blog on some software other than iWeb. Apple’s pretty much killed iWeb, maybe it’s time to stamp it out of my life.
So I did.
The last site I had with iWeb has now been converted to WordPress. As you can see, the blog text came over fine but many of the pictures did not come over properly. The comments and other items also did not come over. I’ll fix that over time (hah! yeah right).
Anyway, my apologies for the damage if you were following the RSS feed. I’ll be shaping this blog up over time and getting it to where it needs to be.
It’s about time I sit and catch up the blog a little bit. A new year has started and stuff like that, so it was about time to get something posted up here.
It was a great year for everyone. New beginnings (the oldest daughter turned 18 and pretty much got out on her own), new endings (dad lost 50 lbs.), steady as she goes physical fitness (BunBun is a blue belt with a red stripe in Tae Kwon Do)… and of course, the youngest is growing like a weed. She’s 3 years old and within 5 inches of catching her brother’s height. Don’t ask us how that happened.
Dad finally left NASA and started a new job at a small company by the name of Summit 7 Systems. It’s a great little company and he’s having an absolute blast.
BunBun started 2nd grade this year and is knocking grades out of the park. All of his report cards have been straight A’s and his Accelerated Reader work is outstanding. His love of reading has really flourished. His creative mind is really hopping.
MeiMei, as I said, turned 3. She started preschool and absolutely loves it. Her smarts, attitude, skills and maturity is great to watch. She’s a lovely little girl. She totally loves “Olivia” the show and is currently in the “I’m a Princess!” stage. Actually, she refers to herself as “Princess of the Queen.” We’re not sure where she picked that one up.
The oldest sister is working almost full-time and is a full-time student. She’s working VERY hard and cleaning house with grades. She is doing an outstanding job. She has hooked up with an awesome young man by the name of Mike, whom we’re very happy to have as part of the family. He fits right in – he’s a gamer, he’s a computer lover, quite creative and snarky as hell. He’ll do well with us.
Mom has lost an amazing amount of weight as well and is feeling great, looking good and livin’ life.
Moving on to 2012, there are new adventures awaiting, for sure. There’s plenty more to come and when it happens, I’ll get it posted here… uhh, relatively soon after it happens.