Thursday and Friday

Blarg. I'm falling behind because things happened quickly. ;P So, I'll try to add this before I need to go finish other stuff for this afternoon (which will get its own blog post).

Thursday night, Micah had his second (final) testing day for black belt. It was the big one...going through all of their one step and grab defenses (Asher got thrown around and punched and kicked a lot, lol) multiple times...and then sparring. The sparring is the part that gets to all black belt candidates. Each candidate must spar 6 two minute rounds consecutively, without breaks. They typically bring in other black belts (and higher degree black belts) to do the sparring. Given the age and size of Micah and one of the other boys testing, there was a need for smaller people, so some high brown belts (just lower than black belt) and brown belts were brought in as well.

When it was Micah's turn (and remember, this is all after an hour of throwing their partners and going through all their other self defense stuff), he ended up sparring a high brown belt, one of the other black belt candidates, and Asher (who's a black belt). (Coincidentally, each of the candidates this time around had at least one older sibling who is already a black belt...and each of them got to spar that sibling, lol. I think Micah actually got the best end of that deal, as he and Asher are such good friends and closer in size than the other sibling sets.)

The fourth round for each candidate was a two-on-one situation, and Micah was up against a black belt and a second degree black belt. Then Micah had another round against a black belt and a final round against a second degree black belt. Whew.

So proud of my boy for surviving! :) In all seriousness, he did a superb job of overcoming his inner little voices of doubt and really getting a handle on self control for this whole testing process. 

Here are all three boys after the testing was finished:

Yeah, a little (incredibly) sweaty. ;) (This is why I buzzed Micah's hair last weekend, lol.)

Normally, after the testing, candidates would have a little over a week to recuperate before the promotion, but circumstances this time around were such that the promotion got moved to today...meaning they only had yesterday (Friday) off. But...Micah had wanted to take the others to Loveland Laser Tag to celebrate being done with testing (which we'd originally planned for next week before one of the family's schedules changed everything) so we did that yesterday. They may not have been moving as quickly as normal, but they had a blast:

(Asher and friend, both in the "back" above were partners during the testing process...the ones who got thrown and punched and kicked and sparred. Plus four of these five are all on demo team together.) I love how much they enjoy spending time together and how truly well behaved they are.

And, after more than four hours doing that, everyone had a couple hours break before they met up again for the 6pm class at karate so that they could find out whether or not they passed the testing. (Again, this is something that wouldn't normally have happened so soon but it was the only class between the testing and the rescheduled promotion.) 

Fortunately, all three passed! Here's Micah after receiving his white stripe (wrapped on his belt to indicate that he's promoting):

Much happiness all around!

After class, my guys (and most of the others in the above picture) stayed another hour and a half for demo team practice, as they had to figure out which routines to do today since they're short two members (who had planned to be back in time for the promotion before the promotion got moved).

And now I must go finish getting ready for the promotion! More soon!!

Comments

[Nancy]

Whew! and congratulations to Micah! We are so proud of him!