Double Nunchuck Seminar

Today was the day of the DOUBLE NUNCHUCK SEMINAR!  All you needed to attend were two nunchucks, something we got for Madison a few weeks ago, so she was all ready to go.  We signed up, and this morning at 11am, we joined all the other students at the dojo for a two-hour lesson that was focused entirely on nunchucks.

Here's Madison with her aggressive yell face, a sort of "Chun Li is about to whoop you" facial expression that you should probably be wary of, particularly if she's armed with double nunchucks.  We've been looking forward to this morning for a while now, and although there are plenty of other weekend activities and festivals out there, the idea of going to a DOUBLE NUNCHUCK SEMINAR was too much to resist.  Usually when you think of a seminar, you think of something in an office setting, and usually a bit dull.  But when you throw that word together with the word "nunchuck," you've suddenly got a word combo that could work for a rock band name or at least a comic book title:  Look out, foul villains!  You're about to get schooled by NUNCHUCK SEMINAR!  But wait:  we're not done, because this is a DOUBLE NUNCHUCK SEMINAR!  Now this here, my friends, is a title worth waiting for.  It's an explosive combo, a must-attend event that takes all those other Saturday morning activities, tosses them in the trash compactor, and hits the "on" button!  Parents are given an entire seat to sit on, but THEY'LL ONLY NEED THE EDGE!

Speaking of which, here's her instructor, Mr. Edge.  He's helping Madison along with the various maneuvers she can do with the nunchucks.  He is an absolutely talented and gifted person, ever patient with the kids, but also firm when he needs to be, and all the while entertaining, warm and just right for the students.  They not only learned a lot today, but they all enjoyed it immensely!

Here's Madison, practicing a 360.  Beware foes!  And beware furniture in our house!  She's going to need some space to practice, but by the end of this session, she was looking fantastic!  All of the kids were doing various moves that they named themselves, from "American Deli" to the final move, one they called "Everything hurts."

Ah, as you can see here, they've put on their most intimidating faces to paralyze their foes with absolute terror!  The truth is, we were watching Madison throughout this entire thing - and you can see Daddy was taking pictures too - and she was really catching on to a lot of the basic movements involved.  She was doing a pretty good job, and stayed even through the segment known as "Extreme Nunchucks."

That was more about positioning the body, along with some creative maneuvers.  The students were invited to throw in their own creative ideas into the basic nunchuck moves, and while some were doing high kicks or splits, Madison did a pirouette and a forward strike.  Yes, beware a ballerina with nunchucks.  You will not be warned a second time!

It was a lot of fun for her, but obviously pretty tiring.  Still, we managed to go grocery shopping afterwards, picking up some food for our volunteers tomorrow at church.  While there, we picked up some SweeTango apples, the new discovery from last year.  Again, while these are good, we're going to enjoy picking our own apples soon.  The Jonagold apples are available for picking starting this upcoming weekend, so hopefully we can head out there for a bit.

After shopping, we went to the Mexican ice cream place, which I really need to remember the name of.  Regardless, it is clearly the best ice cream in Gainesville.  Period.  It is insane how many flavors they have there, and how many homemade delicious dessert items they have.  This place is so good.

Daddy was working on the Haunted Mansion some more today, and speaking of Disney, we bought a new game that was on sale:  it's a Duck Tales game!  It's a updated game from the 90's, one where you play as Scrooge McDuck.  Can't wait to try it out.  Also can't wait to finish this Haunted Mansion Game.  It's a paper craft, and it's taking a really long time to cut everything out, and then glue it, and fold it and so on... but it's coming along, and it's going to be great.

Madison did piano work, and Daddy was cutting the grass, doing a bit of edging outside.  We heard that Hurricane Florence is actually more of a threat than earlier anticipated, heading for the East Coast.  We don't know where yet, but we're keeping an eye on that, obviously.  That should be some time next week.

Tonight, we watched "Beetlejuice."  Madison hasn't seen this before.  Don't worry:  we hit the mute button before Beetlejuice yells at the Maitlands about their model tree.  Other stuff is over her head, hopefully, as we usually hope with many of these movies.  Funny when you look at these movies as a parent.

Anyway, I remember seeing "Beetlejuice" in theaters, and I think I saw it three weekends in a row.  Tim Burton was such a fresh thing for movies back then, and we just kept going back to see that, and then "Edward Scissorhands" and all the others since.  Obviously, we're pretty excited about his next project, "Dumbo."  Madison just saw "Miss Peregrine," so this is the second Tim Burton movie of the week.  We'll probably be watching "The Corpse Bride" again soon - Madison was surprised when we told her Johnny Depp did the voice for Victor's character.  We're going to wait for "Nightmare Before Christmas" until it is closer to Halloween though.

Anyway, all that said, Madison enjoyed the movie.  It took her a bit to realize what was going on, as the concept is somewhat unusual.  But once she got it, she was along for the ride, and was laughing at some of the weirdness of the title character.  To this day, Daddy can quote Beetlejuice left and right!

"Ah... well, I attended Julliard.  I'm a graduate of the Harvard Business School.  I travel quite extensively.  I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that.  I've seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY TIME I SEE IT!  NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY!  NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK?  You think I'm qualified?" - Beetlejuice

We read tonight, we prayed tonight, and we went to bed early tonight.  It's going to be an early morning tomorrow, a full and wonderful day.  We'll be ready to take on the world though, all thanks to our DOUBLE NUNCHUCK SEMINAR!