Extracurricular activity

As you all continue to read my posts, you'll find that alot of it will involve my kids. Seems like once you become a mother, they consume a major portion of your life. But I don't mean that in a bad way. I can't imagine life without them and they're usually my first thought. I also really like hanging out with them and we do alot of things together. As you can see from my earlier post, amusement parks is something we look forward to in the summer and the twice a year that we visit family in Orlando.

Another thing they're involved in that I encourage is Tae Kwon Do. They've been training for almost 2 years now and they really enjoy it. I was lucky enough to find a community center that offers classes 3 times a week for an amazing price. While I've never participated in other forms of martial arts, I like the principles that TKD tries to instill in young children. It's focused on self-discipline and integrity and, surprisingly, that's it's better to avoid fighting when possible. Having said that, it's also important to know how to defend yourself, when the situation warrants. Classes are all about practicing the various techniques for each belt rank, but several times a year, students have the opportunity to practice what they've learned in friendly competitions, near and far. I say friendly because students are very likely to be competing against another student from their own training hall that they're friends with.




This weekend, my kids participated in a small tournament. The pictures are from the sparring portion of the competition. My son is in the silver head gear and my daughter is in the blue. The sparring is full contact, but the referees are careful to warn the students that contact is not to be overly agressive and students have been disqualified for hitting too hard. As you can imagine, it's a little difficult as a mother to stand there and watch your kid fight, but spectators are allowed to shout encouragement and instructions. As you can also imagine, some parents get a little too excited and there are those who treat this as a kill-or-be-killed street brawl!




My son won a 3rd place medal in the sparring competition (we were late for his portion of the patterns) and my daughter won 2nd place medals for both sparring and patterns. We were all happy with the end result and I'm proud of their dedication. Hopefully, next month they'll get a recommendation for testing to move to the next belt rank.