Ranking Up

This morning continued our Rank Camp adventure, with Madison joining the other students in the studio for a pretty rigorous training session.  Here you can see the kids doing laps, and somewhat like a biathlon, they're stopping in the center to do various exercises related to form, and then doing the laps again.

Madison had some great one-on-one time this morning with Mr. Edge, who you can see here helping Madison out with her form.  She's been practicing this even at home, at least mentally.  It's quite a bit in the head, with just a lot of memorizing and so on.

And then of course there's the execution of each move.  But in the end, she got it right, and really hasn't had too much trouble this time around.  She doesn't think she'll have a problem on Friday when testing time comes.  However, she was looking back a year ago, and remarking that she thinks this week was a whole lot more challenging than last year's Rank Camp.  Which makes sense, of course, as she's  more advanced at this point.

This was a nice moment.  Mr. Edge found Madison a little later to help her with a particular kick that she was having a little trouble with.  The great thing about Rank Camp and these smaller groups is that there is time for some one-on-one attention, so instructors can spend more time with certain students.

Madison was trying a few times, and she was doing a great job to those with untrained eyes.  But she and Mr. Edge knew there were just a few small areas to improve upon, so they stuck with it.

Madison got the move and kick right, and it was just a super sweet moment from a teacher's point of view, as the two were patiently working through the kinks until the lesson was learned.  Madison got the move right, and was pretty happy with herself.

Of course, part of Rank Camp is the fun of training with old friends and new ones.  Kaylee here on the left is a recent friend of Madison's, who is in fact invited to her birthday party this weekend.  The two have been spending some time together this week, and before that too, both training towards getting new belts.  Madison has looked forward to seeing her friends here - she's great at making new friends.

At the end of it all, there was a super fun game involving dodgeballs, but instead of hitting people, the idea was to hit targets, knocking down posts on the sides of the rooms.  Madison is seen here, taking a rather aggressive stance at the border line.  Funny you can't see too many other people in this shot - they're all over the playing area, tossing balls left and right.  It was a great way to loosen up at the end of the day!

In the end, we went home quite exhausted.  Daddy wasn't at work again today, because we're still waiting on test results of a co-worker.  But around 6pm tonight, we got the results, and it was good:  the test results were negative.  We can all go back to work again.

This we did, but we did so immediately!

Here's a shot of Nerdo as we filmed tonight, finishing up the filming portion of our skits for Summer Xtreme.  We filmed a few other things too, including host segments for Summer Xtreme and of course some material for this weekend's KidPak service, "Unleashed."  We got a lot filmed tonight, all after 6pm, and all racing against time.  This closure of the office this week really cost us some time.  But we're making adjustments, and hopefully we'll manage to make it all work out.  Time is ticking...!

Tonight I got home at 10pm, just in time to join Madison and Mommy upstairs for a trip to 1955, visiting with "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  There were some heavy storms today and thick clouds, but we were still able to watch with the antenna.  It's our family thing, sitting to watch together.  It's pretty much the last live television show we watch, the three of us in the guest room sitting there watching something with commercials during the breaks.  It's funny how that was a way of life for us growing up, but with Madison, this is the only time that she has to really endure commercial breaks.  And they are something to endure the last few years.  You never know what's going to come up.  The last few weeks have been okay, outside of the specialized virus-focused advertising about all of us having to deal with a "new normal," alongside commercials of large companies telling us that they "know what we're going through" and "we're all in this together."  That gets old when seen over and over again.  We get it.  Let's just watch the show.  Anyway, that we did, and it was fun as always.

While I was gone filming earlier today, Madison was at her weekly Zoom meeting with some girls her age from the church.  Camille is doing such a great job with this each Wednesday - it's a great substitute for church while we're unable to go.  It's on her weekly calendar though, something she doesn't want to miss.

This evening, we read some more of "Artemis Fowl" before bed, and said our prayers, off to sleep rather quickly.  We get up early tomorrow for another day of Rank Camp, and a full day doing work for Summer Xtreme.  Time to catch up!