Familia Black

Today’s testing went fairly well. For some reason we didn’t do free sparring, which is too bad, since I really enjoy that aspect of it. Hopefully we’ll do it next time.

It took me a few tries to break the board, since the Grandmaster wanted me to break it at head height (rather than waist high as practiced), and used only one board holder instead of two, which requires a more advanced technique known as “speed breaking”. He seems to like to throw me curve balls like that at testing time. In my multiple tries I sent the instructor careening into the mirror a couple times (the flying side kick has a lot of power behind it, and is frequently seen in movies).

This was Tyler’s first time coming to watch Daddy at TKD testing, and he didn’t complain, and was very happy! Enjoy the video!

(It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, because we’ve been too busy with everything going on right now. I will be posting another video of Tyler soon as well.)

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We have a new addition to our family that we are very excited about! Here are some photos and video clips from the hospital, when he was less than 24 hours old!

Testing is here once again, and this time I tried for my High Brown Belt. The morning of testing I woke up with severe back and neck spasms, which made testing really difficult and painful, but luckily I still made the cut. I’m the one with the white headband.

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Today I tested to advance to brown belt in taekwondo. We’ve been doing it for almost eight months, and love it! Laura is currently a green belt, and will continue advancing once the baby is born.

Testing consists of each student demostrating the curriculum for their current belt to the Grandmaster, in order to qualify for advancement to the next belt. Here’s a video of me at testing:

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Today we went to the Utah Brazilian Festival at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City. We went with our (Brazilian) next door neighbors Claudio & Manuela, and my cousins Paul & Valeria. We had some amazing food, and enjoyed watching the parade. Here’s a video of the day:

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