Meadows Medley

Eric said I should name this post: Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy, Sir!

Bonus points if you instantly know the reference! If not, maybe this will help: Fear does not exist in this dojo. Or maybe this: Sweep the leg! And finally, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about: Wax on, wax off. Got it? Okay good. Now Eric is appeased.

On Saturday Emma participated in her first taekwondo tournament. She did her form and some sparring. We had no idea what to expect, but ended up having so much fun! Emma loved it too. Her form looked great. She earned 2nd place for it! And it's always fun to watch her spar. She fought her way through 3 rounds to earn 2nd place in her bracket! And she should have won her last round. All of her kicks were too high (nice problem to have) and she lost a point for accidentally hitting her opponent in the head. Plus, after her awesome jump-kick to the head at about 8 seconds in during her first round, she sort of started focusing on just that attack and forgot to also punch more and block. But considering it was her first tournament, I can't believe how well she did. And as long as she had fun, we're happy with her performance.

In case you watch the videos, here is the points system for the sparring: 1 point for a punch or a kick to the chest or side. 2 points for a kick to the head. 3 points for a jump-kick to the head.

Here is her form. They only did as much of it as they've learned in class so far this session.

The medals for forms:

Ready to spar!

Sparring rounds 1, 2, & 3. About 8 seconds into the first round is where you can see her make contact and earn 3 points for her jump-kick to the head. It's awesome!

Medals for sparring:

Our cute purple belt with her 2 medals!

Emma with her head instructor

The past month has seemed to fly by. Anytime you take your already busy day to day schedule, add one or two (or more) extra things that don't frequently come up, throw in 3 holidays, extra school stuff, and sickness, you get a very very busy month that flies by. That was this past month for us.

I love holidays, and I like trying to do fun things with Emma. Usually there are more things I would like to do than I actually accomplish, and this year was a definite bust. We scraped by each holiday doing the bare minimum it seems. Last year we were much better - week long celebrations of holidays and entire days filled with activities, but alas, this was not to be this year. Luckily I don't beat myself up for missing the mark. Actually, there is no mark for me. Each year my expectations are a little different. And this year the expectations became very low as the month progressed. I don't even have pictures of most things we did. Meh.

We had a lot of sickness in our home this month. Usually it was Emma, and except for one longer bout with illness (which I'll mention later), it was typically a one day thing. And almost always on the weekend, either Saturday or Sunday. I feel like I was hardly at church this month! But sickness always changes your plans.

We don't usually have much time during the week between Emma's late school release time, homework, her taekwondo, Eric's meetings, and my meetings (I know all of you understand this - regular life is just so busy!), but this month we had several additional activities that were added to the calendar. I'm not complaining mind you. We choose to do most of the extras we do. We agree to do what is needed for our church callings. And most of the things we do are enjoyable, so it's not really a complaint. More of a sigh or a phew kind of feeling after it's over when it all piles up like it did this month and we've come out the other end having survived.

Emma had a music program at school and sang Disney songs. It has been really fun listening to her sing Candle on the Water (her favorite that they learned) around the house. Emma also had another belt test for taekwondo (which she passed, earning her purple belt). It is always fun to see her learning and growing and enjoying school and sports.

Emma at her school music program

Emma prior to her belt test

Doing her form, which is just a series of kicks, punches, etc. She is in the front on the left. There was no time requirement for this. It didn't matter if you were fast or slow. Some kids race through it, but Emma likes being very deliberate with her moves and tries to be exact, so she enjoys taking her time.

This is the sparring. There were several pairs sparring at a time.

This is Eric's favorite thing to watch Emma do.

This month was peppered with church things. There were several conferences this month (stake, ward, a women's conference at our stake center), I helped at a youth activity, and we had a Relief Society activity. The RS activity was our birthday celebration, and it went really well. There were several tables set up representing the different months of the year, and decorated fun as if for a party for that month. People signed up to decorate the tables, providing everything for it (tablecloth, plates, cups, etc, centerpiece, and a cake). I signed up for November. I realized that I've never been able to decorate a Thanksgiving table before. Not really nice anyway. Most years we have been with family or friends, and haven't even been home. And when we have been home, it's just been the three of us, so I haven't gone to great lengths for the tablescape. It was fun creating my table, and I really like how it turned out.

I had fun making these paper pumpkins that I placed on each plate.

Here's how my table turned out

Then came St. Patrick's Day. Emma set a trap, solved and followed the clues left by the leprechaun she almost caught, collected chocolate coins in 12 different colors (one for each clue), and found the pot of gold coins (chocolate of course) at the end. Pictures? Nope. I didn't even start writing the clues until 11:30 pm the night before. Pictures just weren't in the cards.

I was playing around with Emma's hair the day before the holiday and tried making a shamrock in her hair. It's hard to see because her hair is almost too short for it, plus she wanted to wear the bow which hides it.

Emma's school was going to be filming a lip dub and needed help getting ready. In case you're not familiar with what I mean, a lip dub is just a video with different people lip-syncing different lines to one or multiple songs. This one would travel through Emma's school, going in and out of several rooms, with all the kids lining the hallways or doing other things, while some of the kids did the "speaking" parts - the actual lip-syncing, sort of being spotlighted in the process. I helped get several props ready that the kids in Emma's class were going to be holding. Emma was asked to do one of the "speaking" parts, and practiced at home and at school a ton to get ready. Then Emma started getting sick, and when her fever didn't go away I took her to the doctor where we were told she had the flu. Not the flu as in just a cough and a fever (I think people abuse the word 'flu' and use it too often), but the flu as in influenza. She was highly contagious, and was told she absolutely could not go to school for 5 days (or anywhere really). This was on Monday 25th, just two days before her school was going to actually film the lip dub. Emma was going to miss it. The first thing she said to me when the doctor told us was, "All that hard work, for nothing." Broke my heart. She was very very upset. And there wasn't anything I could do about it. I can't tell you how much I wanted to just take her the morning they were filming it, and let her do her part and then take her home, probably no more than an hour later. But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't be that parent who disregards sickness and allows their child to be around other kids risking them getting sick too. And believe me it wasn't for lack of trying to figure a way out of it. I just hate seeing Emma sad like that. But it meant that she stayed home all week.

Emma asleep on the couch while feeling sick

This is one of the dress rehearsals for the lip dub. The sound isn't great, especially at the beginning, but it was mostly just a walkthrough. The filming is even being done by someone else than the final one. BUT this version has Emma in it! Which is why I wanted it. Her part starts at 1:33. The lines she is lip-syncing are: "There's nothing I can't achieve because in myself I believe in. Oh"

The final lip dub by her school. Emma's part would have started at 1:24. You can see they didn't replace her with anyone else. It turned out really cute I think. I just wish Emma hadn't been sick so she could have been a part of it.

Easter. Emma was feeling better for Easter, but I hadn't left the house all week to get anything. The Easter Bunny managed to come, and we did an egg hunt for Emma. There were puzzle pieces in each egg and the only way she'd know if she'd found all the eggs was if she could complete the puzzle. She had a lot of fun doing it. We didn't do ham, but decided to stick with pig as our meat source, and had pork schnitzel with spaetzle and veggies. It was fabulous! But again, no pictures. Suffice it to say, Emma looked just great in her new dress.

We are getting excited for the Brewers season this year. Emma had so much fun at the one game we managed to get to last year. We plan on attending several more this year (fingers crossed!). We watched the opening day game and were thrilled with their victory against the Rockies.

April Fools day is usually one we try to really play up. We love playing tricks on Emma and I usually play a trick or two on Eric. This year was a very mild one. We barely managed the night before to come up with a couple things to do to Emma, but it was minimal. We tied her door to the bathroom door so that she wouldn't be able to open her door very far in the morning. It was tied with a slipknot though, so if she really pulled she could get out, but not without effort. Also, we put some food coloring on her toothbrush (luckily it already had blue bristles so it disguised the food coloring) so her mouth turned blue when she brushed in the morning.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure, a fabulous picture of Emma. Our camera has a fishbowl effect that we were playing around with, and I got this shot of her. It makes me laugh every time I see it. Maybe it's odd that I didn't get pictures of any of the holidays this month, but I did get this one of Emma. Oh well. That's just how we roll I guess. =)