New Belts

So proud of my boys! Last night Micah promoted to red belt and Asher promoted to high brown!

Both boys participated in both the promotion and the demo team performances throughout, so were pretty busy and sweaty. ;)

For Asher, this is the last belt before black belt. He's stoked and appropriately apprehensive. I'm so proud of the time and effort he's invested...in the confidence he's gained (and continues to gain). I'm looking forward to watching this next leg of his journey...

Five on Friday: Noah edition

1. Noah had that wisdom tooth out and other molar exposed this morning. It was his first experience with anesthesia...really his first experience with anything beyond a well check for either doctor or dentist. He did just fine and is making exactly the type of patient one would expect of such a stubborn teenager. ;P (He insists he's totally fine and doesn't need to follow the post-surgery instructions. Fun times. For what it's worth, though, he does seem fine. Don't tell him I said that, though, lol.)

2. Speaking of stubborn teens, I learned a new word last night: contumacious. It means "stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient." Is it coincidence that it came into my life last night? ;)

3. CEC has been doing mandatory standardized testing since last Thursday. Classes have been out and spring break is next week, which means Noah had/has more than a two week break (broken up in the middle by a lovely wisdom tooth removal, lol). He needs a bit more to do...kwim?

4. Noah's assigned day of testing was yesterday. He was there from 7:45 to 4:15. He was less than thrilled and declared the best part of his day was the fact that I'd bought him a bottle of Coke for his lunch, lol. (I generally only have him take water.)

5. Last week, btw, Noah lengthened his draw length once more...which makes twice since having gotten the new cams in the first place (just a bit more than a month ago). I think he may be part ape (as he's all gangly arms). 

Okay, off to check on the boy and see whether he'll ice his jaw as instructed... :)

Yesterday

Yesterday we attended the FoCo Comics & Gaming Festival here at CSU. There were lots of comic artists, vendors and people in costumes. Asher particularly liked this guy dressed as War Machine:

Asher also demo'd some new-to-us games, like HeroClix:

The staff from Gryphon Comics was very helpful in showing us how these games worked and explaining others.

The other two boys were busy this whole time with a Wii U Smash Bros tournament being held there. Game play began officially at 12:30, and there were 23 entrants. We left just before 4:00. This was the first round:

(They couldn't all play at once at the start, as they only had four stations set up.)

You can see Micah in the orange down the row a bit and Noah (in black) beyond him. Fortunately, they didn't get matched up against each other. (I only saw two other kids beyond Noah and Micah who weren't college aged, fyi.)

Each match up was to the best of three and then it was double elimination. Both boys won their first match ups. Noah went on for another two rounds but unfortunately lost both of those and was thus eliminated. (To be fair, one of his losses was to the player who went on to win the tournament.) 

Micah played another six rounds, beating five college aged (or older) guys and earning their admiration aplenty. One guy honestly was so stoked that he managed to win one of the three in their match up (though he still lost the match up)...he was bragging to the tournament organizers, lol. (I'll interrupt myself here to say that I'm quite thankful that the other players were very gracious and exercised lovely sportsmanship.)

The two guys who beat Micah and put him out of the tournament went on to be in the top four. Micah took fifth. Yeah, he was pretty happy and the organizers were quite impressed. :)

After that, we headed to Old Town to do a wee bit of shopping and grab some early dinner and ice cream before heading home. Whew.

Kick-a-thon

Just catching up. :) Last Friday, Asher and Micah participated in a Kick-a-Thon at Karate West to raise money for St. Jude's. Each boy had a tally sheet to keep track of his kick count, and each Asher and Micah came out to 683 over about 90 minutes. Yay!

During the event, they did a number of kicking drills like they do in class but also some more fun things like seeing how high they could kick, using a sheet of x-ray paper for sound effects, and also how many body shields they could leap over.  

Overall, they had a really good time and even put in another 90 minutes after that for demo team practice. :)

True story

After we finished our morning schoolwork today, Asher stuck a piece of tape on Micah's forehead randomly. He declared it the mark of awesomeness. Things then escalated from "awww, that's a clever way to ensure your brother doesn't smack you" to, well, this. 

I'm not really sure what else to say. ;)

I'm not ashamed to admit that I laughed right out loud when Micah realized that removing the tape from his eyebrows and hair (yes, he had some in his hair earlier) hurt.

Gotta give Asher points for the "curly-q's" on his mustache, beard and earrings. 

(And, PS, I hadn't noticed but it looks like Asher's actually growing. Look! He's more than an inch or so taller than Micah...which is what he was last time I was paying attention.)