Sorry to all our avid readers *smirk* that we haven’t posted in awhile. We’ve both been really busy with work, Dliberation work, friends and family. I was thinking back to this time last year, when we were buying our house, living at my mom’s, I was preparing for my black belt test, Emmaus was going on, we were having all sorts of car trouble, etc. Whew, what a stressful few months!
Now, a year later, it’s happening again…not so many big things going on, but this time of year seems to be a tough one for us to get through. We’re both swamped at work, there’s another black belt test coming up (thankfully this time I just get to watch everyone else), we have 3 mock trials coming up in the next month with Dliberation Resources, plus we are squeezing in a visit to St. Louis, and a couple of on-call weekends for me, and of course, Brian and Ashley’s upcoming wedding.
Luckily though, we’ve got Lost, Survivor, and The Amazing Race starting back up again (which we love), a great cruise to the Caribbean (YAY!), and April, which in general is our “ahhhhh, it’s all over” month. Hopefully we’ll get back to posting soon, just wanted to keep everyone updated.
-ec
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Last night was the black belt Christmas party for Emily’s karate school. It was at the clubhouse of Sensei Steve’s apartment complex. The black belts all chipped in and got Sensei Steve an XBox 360! He was floored and immediatly plugged it in (of course). Merry Christmas everyone!
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Pictures are up for Jim’s black belt graduation and my attempt at breaking concrete.
Click on the picture below to see them all:
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Well, all my psyching up didn’t do that much good. I didn’t get through the concrete last night. Some of the black belts did massive breaks; 3 and 5 concrete slabs, and Sensei Kurt even broke a coconut with his hand. Pretty cool stuff. Neither Cathy or I could break the concrete though *sigh* Cathy and I were talking about it; part of it was that we couldn’t really get focused. There were probably 50-75 people there last night which made it really hard to concentrate. We each tried it twice.
My first miss hurt a little, but not much more than missing a board. I skinned up my palm on the first hit but it wasn’t a huge deal. I wanted to try again immediatly, since I was pissed at that point and could have easily taken out my anger and frustration on the concrete. They made me sit out for about 5 minutes before they let me try again. By then I was all calmed down again. I couldn’t seem to get as focused as I should have been…and again I didn’t break through it. Busted up my hand pretty well on that second one. I jumped up immediatly in pain and thought I had broken something. I hit the concrete much harder the second time and when it didn’t break it rebounded that much more into my hand.
My hand was all swollen up, purple and red last night, and I couldn’t make a fist until this morning. It’s getting better. Wanted to take pictures last night of my hand, but I couldn’t find the card to Paul’s camera so I had to wait until today. CLick -here- to see pictures of my hand from today. Not as swollen, and a little bruised up, but it doesn’t look too bad.
Guess I’ll get to try again in a few months at the next black belt graduation (maybe April?). Cathy’s mom got some pictures of us breaking, I’ll post them as soon as I get them from Cathy.
-ec
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My sensei told me last night in karate class that Cathy and I would be breaking concrete after the graduation ceremony this Friday. Eep! I’m a little nervous; I know I can do it, but one wrong move and my arm is shattered…
If anyone wants to come let me know and I’ll tell you where to go and when!
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Jordan, Jim’s daughter, was promoted to purple belt tonight. The graduation ceremony was awesome. Many students were promoted; they each got a chance to show off some kicks and punches and kata for the audience. At the end, the black belts did some board breaking demonstrations.
Click here to see the videos of black belts breaking boards and Sensei Steve doing one of his flying side kicks over 4 students into a board!
Click on Jordan’s picture below to see all the pictures from her graduation.
Great Job Jordan!
Jim’s black belt graduation is next Friday night; the black belts have to do more demonstrations too. Cathy and I are supposedly breaking concrete that night…stay tuned to find out!
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We got back from NY a day early, so we got to have some fun for 4th of July. We went over to Jim & Cathy’s for dinner, and Sensei Steve and his family joined us. After dinner we headed over to the dojo to meet up with many more people to set off TONS of fireworks. We had a great time, there were some great fireworks, and no one got injured. Toward the end of the night, we got a little crazy and started putting fireworks into the sewer drains. Check out this video that I posted on You Tube to see what happens when you put a small mortar down into the drain…hehe
Also got some pictures, check them out here.
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We finally got our seed & straw yesterday!!! Only took 3 months! We spent about 5 hours watering it; guess the yard was a little bigger than we thought, had to move the sprinkler around about 12 times *sighs* We’ll be doing that for the next week or so I imagine. Any tips on getting those little grass seeds up and going nicely?
Megabyte is super excited about getting a yard. We can’t wait for it to grow in so we can get a fence (we have an estimate next week) and a deck (yay!).
Also, at karate last night, Cathy and I were given the black belts that they had ordered for us from Japan. They are Shureido belts, which are handmade in Okinawa, Japan (where Shokotan karate was founded). Normally, belts cost $4-10. These cost about $70. They are extremely nice belts; top of the line. Cathy are I are very thankful and appreciative of our Sensei for these belts!
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Shihan Futamata, a famous karate instructor from Japan, is visiting our dojo this week. He’s pretty hardcore! He has been teaching all of us a bo kata called “Shushi No Kun.” I’m pretty bruised up because you have to hold the bo differently for this kata and hit your arms with it instead of your sides (which seem to take the beating better). We all got pictures with him on Tuesday night after black belt class. He gave us an amazing workout; and of course he taught it all in Japanese! We didn’t understand any of it, except for stances, blocks and strikes (since the names of those are already in Japanese) but it was fun anyway, and we learned a lot.
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Ok, hopefully I got the black belt graduation pictures/video back up and running. If it doesn’t work for some reason, let me know. *crosses her fingers*
Click here to be directed to the gallery
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