Orange Sunset

 

Madison had her full class of taekowndo tonight, and as you can see, she was sparring again with a couple of opponents.  Her leg kicks were so efficiently brutal tonight, quick, powerful and accurate strikes that seem to be improving quite a lot lately.  She was so effective this evening that her first sparring partner took about three repeated blows to the head, each one followed by a quick "I'm sorry!" from Madison, who wasn't expecting to make contact in such a way.  

It was a nice session though.  One week from tonight, she'll go through the first round of testing for her black belt, with just two more of these tests to go in December and then March.  It's going to pretty awesome.  Hopefully Nana will be okay to come next week for testing.

We've been doing a lot of work to get benefits and pensions set up for Nana, with so many different hoops to go through for real estate agents, VA representatives, insurance agents and so on.  Mommy and I have been scanning documents, emailing letters, making phone calls and just doing a lot of paperwork in order to get Nana the financial help she needs.  It's been quite the process, and you can only look at these things as "one day at a time."

It was Mad Hatter Day today, and therefore we watched yet another Tim Burton movie, "Alice in Wonderland."  We hadn't seen this one in a few years, but it's still an enjoyable movie.  It's one that brings back memories too, as this was the movie the KidPak cast and staff went to see immediately following the first run-through we had of the "Wonderland" series at KidPak.  We designed the entire series to take place one month before the actual release of the movie, riding off of that hype beforehand.  After all the costuming and hard work, we had a big celebration, all of us heading out to this large movie theater to see this new movie on opening night.  It was quite the event.  

After a bit of reading, and praying, we were all off to bed tonight.  Well, except for Nana and Mommy.  Nana has been having a tough time sleeping occasionally, so Mommy was off in her room to help with that.  We've had some difficulties here and there.  Things do seem to be getting better in some areas.  But the times that are difficult are very hard to keep up with, and the do wear Mommy out quite a bit.

One last picture here, one taken by Madison on the way home from taekwondo.  There was a wonderful sunset, one of brilliant orange, a theme color of the season.  The weather this week has been astoundingly beautiful.  This season has been going better than expected, and hopefully that trend will continue.  Of course, our expectations were fairly low.  But regardless of where our expectations are, hopefully things will continue to be much better as we move along through fall.