Done!

Two quick notes for this Tuesday...

1. Asher finished his black belt testing last Thursday and we got the official word last night that he's PROMOTING TO BLACK BELT! Here he is after class showing off the white stripe on his high brown belt...which indicates that he passed his testing. (There's a whole system for keeping track of things but the important thing is simply the look on his face.)

Folks, I'm also going to take a moment to tell you that my boy definitely earned that stripe. His testing on Thursday was for grab defenses, one-steps and sparring. During the sparring portion, he had to do six 2 minute rounds (with no breaks)...with one of the instructors (a fourth degree black belt!), a friend of roughly the same size and rank, a black belt in high school, that same black belt plus a second degree black belt at the same time, the second degree black belt alone, and then the instructor again. Oy.

For all that I may have been holding my breath, I'm so proud of the progress Asher's made. I can clearly remember when he first started sparring years ago...when he took every touch personally and could so quickly become dispirited. He's come a long ways to being able to handle this sort of pressure and still be able to joke around with his instructor afterward and ask him how to defend against a certain kick that he'd been throwing. 

Whew. So. Now we'll celebrate the promotion this Saturday with an exhibition of skills and such. The demo team will also be performing. We've got grandparents and friends coming to celebrate with us. Life is good. :)

(Incidentally, I didn't take any pictures during the testing. Okay, maybe two. I was too nervous. ;p Fortunately, the same instructor who sparred him took pictures and video throughout that will be available to us after Saturday. Hooray!)

2. Less importantly, our window installation went swimmingly and is all done! The crew was excellent and finished in less than two days with minimal disruption, and so far we're quite happy with the new windows. It took us another few days to get all the furniture and window treatments back in place, lol. And we'll likely now end up replacing some of the window treatments. But. It *was* a good opportunity for cleaning areas that haven't been cleaned in awhile when we shuffled stuff. :)

If you're thinking about getting new windows anytime soon and are interested, let me know and I'll get you their information!