Stripe Three!

As you can see here, she did it!  Madison earned her third stripe tonight, this after a whole lot of practice today in the house.  It's not an ideal place to practice in the dining room, but she did her best, and she practiced her form quite a bit today.  Last night, she had - in her own words - a "nervous breakdown."  She just got nervous in front of the instructors, and just wasn't ready for the last test.  She was a bit emotional and certainly disappointed.  But the great thing is that there's always another chance here, and in this case, it was the very next night.  And this time, she came out swinging.

Madison was full of confidence, and even early on there was no doubt that she was going to earn that third stripe.  It was a fun night to watch, as she was pumped and quite a different student than she was the night before.  I love this moment below:

This poor kid!  He was holding the cushion for Madison so she could do a side kick.  He wasn't ready for it the first time around, getting knocked to the ground!  Afterwards, he did his best holding up the cushion, but I don't think he was holding it right.  So across the mat they went, with him backing up and getting pounded over and over again by Madison's "foot fiesta!"

It was a good night, and in one week or so, she'll be testing again to earn that blue belt.  I think she'll do fine after tonight's performance.

She was practicing that today, and practicing piano as well today, still working on some new songs we just printed the sheet music for.  The "Spider-man" movies continue, with us watching the greatest Spider-man movie of them all, "Spider-man 2."  That train sequence still holds up, and I'm pretty close to saying it's the greatest superhero fight scene of all time still, even after all these years.  The storyboards must have taken forever just to line up.  The soundtrack is still epic, and it's still amazing just sitting and watching the moments that lead up to - and especially the moment right after the battle, with the passengers "saving" the hero.  I keep coming back to this movie as one of my favorite superhero movies.  With twenty-one MCU movies out there, this still has the best fight scene between a hero and villain.  I think after tonight's taekwondo, Madison would be up there on the train's top, helping Spidey!

Tonight we read some more from our book, getting closer to finishing "Heir to the Empire."  The girls seem to be liking it, which suggests we might be reading all three of these books.  Re-reading this book personally is a reminder of how good these stories were - and what the sequel movies should have been.  How many fans are out there like me that wish that these movies were the ones that were made after the first three?  Many, I'm sure.

This is sounding like such a geek post here.  Anyway, the girls are enjoying the story.  We prayed tonight, and Daddy did some more writing afterwards.  I'm on the sixth message of eight or nine for the "Toy Box" series, so that's coming along well.  It's been a good season here - a little busy, but summer is winding down, and we'll have to be sure to do something nice before school starts up again.