Flowering

The flowers in the garden are blooming all around, roses at the arbor, tiger lilies, and all kinds of colorful blooms springing up at various places in our yard.  It all looks rather nice!

The "harvest" is growing too - the blueberries are super close to a point where we can pick some and make our own pies or jellies.  And there are a few tomatoes that are plump and large and about to turn red.  Our yard is prospering!

Tonight was leadership night, and black belt class too.  Madison was practicing with her sword here, twirling it around her wrist. 

She started to get the hang of it, although she's still got that bandage on right now.  Her wrist is getting better each day, but repeatedly punching something isn't exactly the most helpful thing on the path to a full healing.

So why not kick something instead?  She's twirling here as she aims for the target, and getting a good strike, despite it being fairly high up.  She was remarking how when kicking, she doesn't realize how high she's actually getting her foot up in the air until she sees these pictures.

This picture cracks me up, or at least her expression does.  She trusts her partner here, but at the same time, it's still a bit of a moment of faith in your partner to hold up a target as they come at you twirling with a spinning kick.

Here's another picture to show how high that kick can get for Madison.  She's fantastic.  If she wanted to - if you got on your bad side - this kick can be a surprising and powerful blow to the head!  Not that this would be what she's aiming for, but it's this sort of self defense that gets you a bit more confident in all things.  

I couldn't stop taking pictures tonight.  I usually take pictures of all the students, and share them online for the parents to see.  Lots of great pictures tonight, as the kids had a lot of fun, and of course there was much variety in what they were learning.

Here's Madison punching away, although she's taking it easy on the one hand to let it heal.  She's got fantastic work ethic when it comes to class, never slacking off from what is requested and usually getting right to it.  She's focused, and she's committed, a really good student!

I took a few of these of the students practicing their form tonight.  It's more complex, but they're handling it well, learning the extra steps, and moving with precision and even a certain amount of grace.

We had a good day today, with Nana joining us at taekwondo for a bit.  Later on, we were watching the season three premiere of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  We come back to that from time to time, moving forward on that a little each week.  Maddie plays piano a little in the afternoon, and also has been playing a "Pirates of the Caribbean" game too.  She's wanting to play on the piano the Davy Jones theme song, which we may get sheet music too soon enough.

 

Tonight we were reading from "Kingdom Keepers III" again, and we're getting towards the end of this one.  It's been good, with lots of different EPCOT attractions under attack.  I know that the author is updating all these books to match the current park format - some rides have changed since the book's writings, so Disney is wanting to make the old books more current, including new rides and so forth.  I think these older books are fine as they are.

We said our prayers tonight, and we were off to bed again quickly.  It was a good day today, a nice one with rain and cooler weather.  It's been a much cooler summer so far, and you'll hear no complaints from me about that!