Getting Medieval

Madison woke up joust in time this morning!  It looks like there was a mini-medieval times event going on in the kitchen, a joust event with candy canes.  I love that General Thade was involved - this was so random.

It was a good day today, a warmer one outside, although that's all comparative of course.  The weekend was not that pleasant, so a day like today was refreshing, at least later on in the afternoon when the sun started to appear once again.

Madison had a great day at school today.  Part of one of her classes is an assignment, creating and marketing a product.  The class created stress balls, and Madison purchased one for a dollar.  They're basically balloons with corn starch, which Madison accidentally spilled in the classroom.  But all is well, and the kids did a good job with their project.  She's studying for a big test in Language Arts coming up, but tonight was a test of a different sort:

Tonight we met once again to watch the kids test for their next belts.  The instructors were quite happy with Madison's progress.  She does so well out there on the mat, and we're just smiling so big when we see her and the other kids out there, so into this.

Madison loves it.  And when she was out there with her routine, she was so focused.  She explained that she was going a little slower with her routine than others, not speeding through it, because she wanted to get everything just right.  And she did.  Notably, others did not - we told her that it's better to be right than to be quick.

All the parents lined up to watch the kids together as they were doing basic moves as a group, kicks and punches and exercises.  We were lined up against the wall, and humorously, we were positioned on the opposite side of the room as Madison again.  This is humorous, because we were on the other side of the room last time, and Madison was on the opposite side.  Thinking ahead, we moved to the opposite side this time, only to have Madison on the other side!  Still, we could see just fine, and see that she was doing really well.

Madison did her floor routine, and had great form out there with kicks, punches and so forth.  We're not sure what the total count of moves that were put together - somewhere around eighteen, maybe?  It could be more.  Whatever it was, Madison did each with precision and in such a way that there was no doubt that she knew each maneuver with confidence.  She was fantastic!

Here's Mommy and Madison afterwards, fooling around a bit.  There were other Free Chapel kids there, along with parents and college students. We're all a big family, and it's nice to do big things like this together.  The kids are having a great time and learning quite a bit along the way.

Here's another shot of Madison doing her floor routine, putting out a kick while her fellow students look on.  Those are orange belt kids looking on, about to advance to yellow.  Madison is about to earn her camouflage belt, which is somewhat of a graduation out of this time slot.  She'll be training - along with the others who are advancing to camouflage - to a whole new time on the schedule now, so we won't be so rushed after school.  We might even be able to fit in three visits a week!

We'll talk about that later.  For now, we're very proud of her, as you can see here.  You can also see that she doesn't have her camouflage belt yet - nor do any of the other students quite yet.  The recent weather troubles slowed down the order just enough that the kids didn't actually hold a real belt tonight, but Madison will have hers soon enough, either tomorrow, or at the event we're going to on Friday.  We'll see!

It's not about the actual belt, of course.  As the instructor noted, you can order these online at any time.  It's all about the actual belt, but rather the process and the moment a belt is earned.  Madison certainly earned it tonight, according to the instructors tonight.  They're just as proud of her, talking about how quiet and timid she was about six months ago, and now look at her!

Mommy and Daddy are immensely proud of her, of course.  She loves doing this, and is doing well at it, and when asked now, her answer is no longer "maybe I'll get a black belt," but now the goal is to get one, so we'll be there for her along the way.

Here's the group of kids testing tonight, kids of all ages going to orange, yellow, or camouflage.  They did a good job tonight, although some have a bit of work to do in order to pass their tests - Bart told a few there were some things to work on for a few of them.  But with Madison, she passed with flying colors.  Or, at least the colors of camouflage, which of course are colors you can't see.  Which is ironic, because we didn't see the belts tonight!  But jokes aside, it was a nice night. We missed the Christmas staff party tonight to do this, and it was almost like that scene in "Jingle All the Way," where Howard Langston misses his son's new belt rank, but we weren't going to do that.  We were ready to watch our little girl on the mat, looking awesome.

We're so very proud of her!