Noah Orange Belt Test Video

Here is what I edited from the raw footage of Noah's orange belt tests to get sized enough to upload on this site. A couple of his tests:

St. Patrick's Magic Birthday Party Fun

Rainbow cupcakes = never again

The kids loved, loved the magic show!!

It has been a fun and exciting week at our house. Pictures of our Spring Break/Birthday Celebration in Iowa coming soon.

Mister Noah, Orange Belt

Today was the big day of Noah's tae-kwan-do belt test, which he has been working hard training for to become an orange belt. He was required to repeat everything he has learned over the last few months in a series of five skill tests alone in the middle of the gym with just Master Chris: patterns (20 moves), blocks (3 different blocks), kicks (3 different kick combinations), escapes (3 different escapes), and finally the board breaking! Additionally, he was required to count to 10 in Korean and know the Korean words for "ready", "bow", "attention, "stop", and "go" (I didn't get that part on video). We can proudly say that he passed all of them with flying colors and most on his first try, with a few small adjustments. Master Chris was pretty impressed with a 5 year old being able to memorize all those things including his 20 move patterns so well!!! He said he rarely sees it. It did take hi
m about 6 tries to break the board, but he nailed it with the last try! On his second escape move, he actually put the instructor on the ground with a thumb to the throat escape he executed so well! We are so proud of the little guy; tae-kwan-do and Master Chris have done miracles for his self-confidence and helping him really progress socially. Below are some pictures and I (Joel) captured some rudimentary video captured on Heidi's pocket camera phone which will be on Heidi's Facebook page. I got a little excited at the end and lost focus with the video. Way to go Noah!!!

Board Breaking (click to zoom and get a good look)

Our newly orange-belted Mister Noah with his board

The board was 3/4" thick!

1:20pm

Eight years ago we were blessed with this cautious, careful, clever, contemplative, creative, certain, compassionate, considerate, conscientious child. I had to add this picture. Eli was sooo excited to show me the new hole in his mouth. For two weeks, he has had a hard time eating, and his tooth was bugging him. However, this is Eli. He wasn't going to touch it, and he certainly wasn't going to let anyone else do it either. He was determined to let the root dissolve and have to tooth fall out on it's own. Luckily, he had a run-in with Aunt Jennifer on Sunday night.

houseplans.com

While Noah spent the entire week on the couch with the flu, I sat in front of the computer looking at plans for my future house. Why?? Because dreaming seemed liked more fun than cleaning. Noah must have been paying attention because now that he is finally mobile, I found him drawing his own house plans today.Here's what he has so far (he wants to add a school tomorrow): at least 7 floors, 2 oval hot tubs, a puzzle piece shaped pool, a TV room full of TVs each with their own headset, 2 master bedrooms (one with bunk beds), I'm not sure how many other bedrooms or bathrooms, a game room filled with arcade games, every playstation ever made, an Xbox, a Wii, a ping pong table, I don't remember what else, and an exercise room. I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but I thought this was the cutest!! There's more on the other side. I think we'll need an elevator.