After years of encouraging her, watching her sister, and us just leaving her alone to make her own decision, Josephine decided to start TaeKwonDo in August 2014. She took a bullyproofing class that week at the martial arts school and decided to give it a try. We got her signed up.
She took her first class and had a blast!
She participated in the annual Harvest Home Parade as well.
Since that time, she was able to test for her gold belt (November 2014):
This past Friday, March 27, she then promoted to the gold belt with orange stripe.
Very proud of your efforts, Joie! We really have a couple of beautiful, sweet, and potentially lethal young ladies!
After eight years of hard work, Livvi was promoted to black belt in Tae Kwon Do on November 1. Now the real work begins to truly learn the art.
The test was nearly 5 hours long (due in part to 5 other students going up with Liv and another going for her 2nd degree black belt).
The test included warm ups, forms, weapons, choreography, board breaking, brick breaking (note the concerned look on Joie's face above when Liv attempted to break a brick), sparring, push ups, sit ups, etc.
The students also had to write a black belt thesis paper. Heather got to read Liv's to the folks in the room. If you would like to read it, I included it at the bottom of this post.
Finally, after all that hard work (that day and the previous eight years), the reward came!
More pictures here. Video Playlist (click the upper left corner (where it says playlist) to pick which video you want to watch):
Congratulations, Livvi (Miss Shaut)! We are so proud of you!
I know Throwback Thursday is more of a Facebook or Twitter thing, but I came across some old info I thought would be nice to share out here. It was 13 years ago today when we took our first child home!
Olivia:
KINDERGARTEN!
Livvi started kindergarten on 8/24/2006. Here is a picture:
Her first day on the school bus was 8/25/2006:
GRAVELRAMA PARADE
Here is a very brief video of Livvi being silly at the local parade in August 2006:
Livvi playing soccer on 10/20/2006:
Livvi lost her first tooth on the morning of 5/16/2007. However, for some reason, she would not tell me she lost her tooth. Not sure why.... She finally let Heather tell me two days later. She lost her second tooth on 9/8/2007.
FIRST GRADE!
Livvi started first grade on 8/22/2007. Here is a picture:
Josephine:
Part Dolphin?
Our precious new girl just might be part dolphin. Check out the sounds she makes:
Here is video of Joie coughing to get people's attention, reacting to Daddy coughing, and reacting to Daddy saying "boo".
I'm really enjoying spending time with my family during this Christmas break.
About a month ago, Heather and I wanted to surprise the girls with an outing, so we booked the tickets.
Today was the extra special day:
We went downtown to Local 127 for lunch. Great food and we left stuffed!
After lunch we walked down to the Aronoff Center for the Arts to catch the show. After the girls figured out why we were there, we went to find our seats to watch the Cincinnati Ballet and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra perform The Nutcraker.
It is a beautiful place!
At intermission:
After the show, they had a Sugar Plum Parade, which allowed anyone who wanted to to go up on stage and see some of the set, dancers, crew, etc. While the line was extremely long, it was pretty neat.
We all really enjoyed the show quite a bit! Check it out next year!
