Black Belt

We've been anxiously waiting for 2 1/2 years for this moment (Emma even less patiently than Eric and me), but Emma is officially a black belt!  I am just so proud of her!  She has worked so hard for this.  I have never seen her more dedicated or more diligent.

And let me tell you, this was a lot of hard work for her.  Not just the long couple of years worth of classes, tournaments, belt tests, practicing, etc.  But just the boot camp and test itself was killer.  It took place in early June, right after school had ended.  For three days straight all the kids testing for their black belts had to attend a black belt boot camp.  It was 4-5 hours each day of continuous work.  They worked on their form, their weapons, sparring, and board breaks.  And they just kept doing it over and over.  And besides these things, there is a fitness element to the test, comprised of push-ups, sit-ups, punches, kicks, and punch/kick combos.  For the test itself they would do these things for one minute each as fast as they could (the punches, kicks, and combos were against big punching bag).  They practiced these over and over at boot camp as well.  So all the kids were a sweaty mess each day.  One of the days they all went on a 3 mile run and went to the beach where they ran drills back and forth on the sand.  On their way back to the studio they climbed up a super huge muddy hill (as Emma describes it) as part of their workout.

On the third day of boot camp, at the end of practice, they had the actual test.  The first thing they did was the fitness portion.  For 5 minutes straight, without any real breaks in between elements, they all did as many push-ups, sit-ups, etc. as they could.  One minute for each element.  An adult was watching each student and counting how many they did.  Each push-up, sit-up, and kick counted as one point.  Every two punches counted as a point.  And the combo consisted of two punches and a kick, each combo counting as one point.  In order to qualify for and earn the black belt, the the students had to tally at least 350 points.  Emma's score was as follows: 70 push-ups, 46 sit-ups, 328 punches (worth 164 points), 91 round-kicks, and 72 combos.  Her total was 443 points, which was even more than 2nd degree black belts needed to earn.  She exceeded her expectations by leaps and bounds.

After the fitness portion of the test, they did their forms, 3 different board breaks, sparred 3 different opponents, and performed with weapons.

Getting some instruction on how the testing will proceed.

Emma is right in front of the instructor.

The judges tallied up the scores and announced who had passed the test.  We were so thrilled when they announced Emma's name!  We felt confident that she had passed, but it was really nice hearing her name called as final confirmation.  It had been the most intense 3 days (and especially the final day) of Emma's life.  I don't think I had ever been more anxious either as I sat there and watched her complete each task.  The relief of it being successfully over, was overwhelming.

Oh how I love this picture.  You can see the relief on her face of having passed, that it's over,
 her sheer exhaustion, and that she accomplished this huge goal of hers.  I think that's very tear-worthy!

Congratulatory hug from one of her teachers (Emma's favorite teacher!)

Her teachers daughter who also helped coach and train Emma.  She is a huge supporter and fan of Emma's.

And one more with the head instructor.

It takes awhile to get the black belts ordered, since they are custom embroidered with each student's name and rank.  In late August, we finally attended the black belt ceremony and award banquet.  The black belts were all seated at a table in the front of the room, and they stayed there through dinner.

I can't believe there is a black belt with Emma's name on it!

Following dinner a traditional Korean black belt ceremony took place.  A single candle is lit in the front of the room, and each student, after the teachers and instructors go first, walks in holding a candle, bows, walks up to the candle, lights their own candle, bows again, and proceeds around to either side to sit behind the table.  Once they had all done this, they were each awarded their black belts, and one of the instructors talked about them and their individual achievements.  Being done by candlelight, it was not great for picture taking.  So most of my pictures are of after the ceremony of Emma with her instructors.

Being awarded her new belt.

Singing Emma's praise.

All of her instructors and TKD leaders.

I almost can't believe she has her black belt now.  She looks so good in it.  And now she wants to work towards earning her 2nd degree black belt.  That's just fine, but I'm still enjoying this moment for now.

Six Flags

We went to six flags, and Emma couldn't have been happier about it.  She just loved all of it.  She's always loved rides and coasters though, and has never once been afraid to ride any of them, even when she was really little.  So I knew she'd have a blast.

Very first ride of the day was Goliath, the new coaster this summer, which is the world's tallest, steepest, and fastest wooden roller coaster.  I think it was a little more intense than Emma was anticipating, but she loved it.  The day just went on perfectly from there.

I didn't take many pictures on rides, but I did take some of a ropes course thing they had.  It was a three-story tall structure with different ways to walk between corners such as balance beams, rope bridges, wooden plank steps, etc.  Great test of balance and fun to be up so high.  You were harnessed to a rope which connected to a bar above you and would move along with you as you climbed about.  Eric went up with Emma for quite awhile (no time limit) and they went all over the place.  The pictures were extremely backlit, but they made for some great silhouettes.

Emma thought the double decker carousel was cool.

At the end of the day her very favorite ride was Goliath, so we had definitely started things off right.  And for anyone interested, here is a video showing this ride with the front seat point of view.

Minnesota

Emma and I went up to Minnesota to visit some friends who moved from here last fall.  We drove up with another friend and two of her boys.  It was a really great trip.  It was so nice to see our friends again.  And the kids had so much fun!  If you're ever wondering what to do with kids to entertain them in the summer, just visit good friends you haven't seen for awhile!  It was like a week long slumber party.  And I think us moms were just about as crazy excited as the kids.

Time was spent on the trampoline, at the park, at a water park, in a cute touristy village, eating yummy food, watching movies, playing games, eating gelato, and just hanging out.  I think this may have to be a yearly thing.

Best friends!

This was a very small, but really cute and fun water park we took the kids to.  These are the two main slides the kids went down.  The darker blue one in front wound around awhile before dumping them out.  The lighter blue slide in the back is one of those steep drop slides that empties into a long chute rather than a pool.

There was also a teeny wading pool.  The kids were mostly going down the slides, but they did have some fun in the shallow waters here pulling each other around on these floating things.

In a cute touristy town.

Getting ready for her heat of the turtle races to start.  

Taking a coach ride.

Yummy pizza.  Emma really was happier than she looks in this picture.  Not sure why she's just staring at me.  Probably tired of me taking pictures.  I think I looked like that in some of the pictures my dad used to take too.  Anyway, this pizza place was so great we ate here twice!

Love this picture!  Just hanging out together talking.

Fun at the park.  Even when you're kinda too big for some of the equipment.
These kids just loved running around together.

More park fun.

There was a great stature of Paul Bunyan you could climb on for pictures.

A better picture of the entire statue.

Summer Sports

One of the great things about our school district is the summer programs they offer.  The main one they do is swimming.  We tried it a couple years ago and didn't much care for it, so we don't do it with them anymore.  Plus the swimming is so crowded and fills up so fast and it's difficult to get a spot.  This might be because it's free.  Who knows?  There are many other sports programs that are offered though, and this summer since we'd be mostly in town the whole time, we decided to try some of them.  We asked Emma about it and she said baseball would be fun, so I signed her up.  While I was there I signed her up for tennis and soccer too.  Why not?  I told Emma if she didn't like them she didn't have to go after the first class.  Since the programs are free we wouldn't be out any money, and the way they run the programs made it so Emma not showing up wouldn't ruin the class for anyone else or prevent anyone else from signing up and taking the class themselves.  They do it all on a punch card system.  You are given a punch card for each sport and you may attend six times.  There are several locations and days and times each week for each sport, so it makes it easy to make up class if you are sick or out of town or if there's bad weather.  And it was easy for us ensure she didn't go to all of them on the same day.  Usually all three were on different days.  A couple times we doubled up, but it still worked out great.

Emma has loved all three that she's done.  Her favorite is baseball, but she really likes tennis and has enjoyed soccer.  I don't think she'll do all three again next summer, but probably baseball and tennis.  She's been keeping up with her taekwondo this summer too, so she's been very busy with all of this.  I love seeing how hard she works though and I love seeing her get a good sweat from working out.  She is such a strong girl.

Here are just a few pictures I finally remembered to take on her last day.  She did both tennis and baseball that day.  And I forgot to bring my camera to soccer, so no soccer pictures.  Oh well.