Kara tested for her Brown belt recently. She's come along way since her Yellow Belt Test. Her forms have really improved, and she's kicking with a lot more power. Her kick for breaking the board (Part 6) was particularly impressive. This belt test included some sparring with the other kids. She did pretty well the first round, but didn't do great the second round. But she had fun!
Enjoy!
Part 1 - Exercises
Part 2 - Practicing Kicks
Part 3 - Demonstrating Forms
Part 4- Sparring Part 1 (Kara is in the blue)
Part 5 - Sparring Part 2 (Kara is in the blue on the left)
Kara tested for her Blue Belt on January 9th. It feels like she just finished testing for her green!
The most exciting part of every belt test is breaking the board. Kara broke her board on her 6th attempt, but she had several solid kicks before finally breaking it.
It was a great success!
Here are some more videos of the test. Kind of interesting to watch.
Kara tested for her green belt mid-October. She did an awesome job learning all the moves, including breaking her board on her first try. Check out the video!
Kara tested for her purple belt on August 8th. Kara, of course, did "outstanding" during her testing (all the kids did outstanding). She did all the moves correctly and broke the board on her second try.
Kara is very proud that she did an outstanding job on her belt test (actual quote from Kara). Mom and Dad are pretty proud of her as well.
Kara has been practicing her Tae Kwon Do quite a bit for the last few months and has been improving. She has learned quite a few moves and is performing them confidently. On May 18th, Kara tested for her yellow belt (everybody starts as a white belt and then moves up to yellow). Daddy was able to videotape the whole test, which only a parent or grandparent would appreciate. However, if you only watch one video, watch Part 5. That's where Kara breaks a board. We were impressed!
First of all, yes, I know I've gotten pretty lazy with the titles. I really need to pick up my game. Be sure to check out the videos at the end!
Other than Emily's birthday, nothing terribly exciting happened in March. Kara has continued her Tae Kwon Do lessons and will be testing for her yellow belt pretty soon. Her reading has been improving as well. We think she has memorized a ton of sight words,but still gets a little frustrated when she has to sound a word out. She's getting pretty good though!
Emily has learned to count up to 5, consistently, though we've heard her count as high as 11. One of Emily's favorite things is to race. She'll say, "ready set 1 2 go!" Potty training is continuing. Emily has figured out that the potty can be a very powerful tool in delaying bedtime. Almost every day now, she'll say, "need potty" at some point during the night-time routine. We want to encourage her to listen her body, so we'll get her down to the potty. Most of the time she'll do something in the potty but is always very insistent she needs to do more when we try to wrap things up. Emily has also learned the words "my" and "mine" and applies them to pretty much everything, even Kara's toys. For the most part Kara is pretty okay with sharing her toys with Emily, but Emily has not learned the concept of sharing....
Near the end of the month, we got a visit from Mom's side of the family: Scot and Cassie (and their babies Amelia and Bryn), Brad and Maggie, and Uncle Randy and Aunt Tracey. It had been a long time since we'd seen all of them. Emily thought the babies were awesome. She helped feed the babies, change a diaper, and pet the babies hair while saying "fuzzy". Kara, on the other hand, was excited to have people to play with and spent most of the time playing ball with Brad and Maggie.
Kid Qutoes:
(playing a card game with Mommy)
Kara: "I got a 3-4-5."
Mom: "Kara, you're not supposed to tell us what cards you have."
Kara: "Oh, I was just kidding. I don't really have those cards." She did.
"Oh boy!" Emily's new favorite expression.
"I conjured the toy behind your ear from thin air!" Kara explaining how she did a magic trick.
A couple decent snow storms late in the month rolled through, dumping almost 2 feet of snow over two weeks, which was quite a contrast with the first half of the month with record high temperatures. It made for some good snow fun and some warm weather for playing outside!
Kara has been really improving with her reading skills. She's been reading through some of our books at home (we mostly figured she'd just memorized the words); however, she really impressed Mom when she picked up a book at the library (Pete the Cat at the Beach) and read through it all by herself! Kara has started Tae Kwon Do lessons. She seems to enjoy it and is catching on quickly (see the videos). It's great fun! On the less fun side, however, Kara got her first cavity. None of us are excited about that...
Emily has been continuing her swim lessons every Saturday. She loves getting in the water and playing. Emily is speaking in 2-3 word sentences and impresses us every once in a while with a new word or phrase ("one more book"). She has started counting and frequently counts to 2 (as in "1 2 ears" or "1 2 eyes"). She knows the words for higher numbers, but she doesn't understand the concepts yet. Emily has regressed a bit with potty training. She's fighting Mom and Dad when they try to remind her she should use the potty. Although, she has been getting better about feeling she needs to go and letting us know (usually after she's already peed in her pull-up). Ah, fun times!
Cousin Cassie and her husband Scot welcomed their twin babies (Bryn Oliver and Amelia Rose) in January. Kara and Emily got to meet their second cousins early in February, though they were more interested in playing with the toys than they were in the newborn babies.
Kid Quotes:
- Kara loves making up jokes and songs. Here's a joke: Kara: "What do you call a hairless monkey? A cold monkey! hahaha"
- Kara: "Thank goodness Valentine's Day only comes once a year." Why? "Because of all the work I have to do to make my Valentine's card box!"
- Kara: "Gah, I talk as much as Papa. I'm turning into Papa!"
- "Emily do!" Emily's favorite saying.
- "Step stool!" Emily usually demands to have the step stool, so that she can help out with things in the kitchen.
- "One more time." Emily is always asking for just one more...
- "Love you" ahhh, Emily now says these words. With a sweet look and a hug, Mommy just melts!
