Holidays in Toronto 2011

On the 27th, we left for Toronto. It rained the whole way there and was changing to snow as we arrived. We stayed with Greg, Ange and the twins and had so much fun with them.

Our requisite trip to Ikea for Swedish meatballs and fries with gravy. And new Ikea stuffed toys. And new Ikea plastic plates, bowls, cups and flatware. Then it was time for more aunts, uncles and cousins!

Three of four Ponesse girls, we found out there will be five kids on that side soon!

 Uncle Chris with Justin, Kyan and the girls.

 Like father, like son. Greg and Kyan on the guitar.

 Luke and Michael helping to make empanadas for the big Christmas party.

 Hangin' with the twins.

 Luke decided I should take pictures of him hugging the toddlers. Kyan was totally uninterested. Justin didn't mind.

 Kayla wasn't sure what to think, but isn't she beautiful.

 The only picture with all nine cousins in it. Maeve and Justin were NOT happy. From left to right: Maeve, Talia, Kyan, Jacinta, Kayla, Claire, Michael, Justin and Luke.

 Justin was much happier when the food came out. Here he is charming Grandma Sylvia and Auntie Katie. And, later, Uncle Chris and Granddad.

Meanwhile, Luke, Jacinta and Michael had turned Granddad's den into an undersea kingdom and played quietly with Justin's new sea animal set for a long time.

Justin was totally fine at the party except that I noticed he had a runny nose. We got back to Greg's late and the kids went to sleep. At midnight, Justin woke up with full blown croup. At 4am he woke up with stryder, too. It was awful. We started to pack up and leave since we don't have health coverage in Canada and it's 2 hours to Buffalo, but as Matt was loading the car, Justin and I fell back to sleep. By 8am, he was doing much better, so we drove back to Columbus. Matt took him into Urgent Care last night since it's another holiday weekend coming up and they gave him an anti-inflammatory, but they didn't think it was too serious. Well, we needed to use up the last of the flexpay anyway. He is still coughing a lot and very snotty.

Goodbye, Grandpa Bo!

Bo left the day after Christmas. I think he had a great time and that visiting with us was a nice escape from all of the chaos he is dealing with back home. I was surprised at how easy it was to have him around and how truly enjoyable it was to get a chance to visit with him. However, he left at noon on Monday and we had to get new tires put on the van that afternoon and then get everything packed up to leave early Tuesday for Toronto, so we were pretty frazzled by the time I drove him to the airport. We hope he will come visit us again this summer!

So much to catch up on . . .Xmas 2011

My grandfather arrived on Dec. 21st and from that moment until now, there has been very little time to get online. I am way behind on everything. Here are a few pics from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We had our traditional meal of antipasto and gnocchi.

 As you can see by the fact that the kids are half in jammies at dinner, we did not go to church on Christmas Eve. Since Luke decided not to be a sheep for the third year in a row in the pageant, we decided to skip The Christmas Eve craziness on go on Christmas morning instead. It was a good choice. The 11:30am mass was sparsely attended and no one cared how antsy my kids were.

Christmas morning we actually got up before the kids! It was a Christmas miracle.

 Oh, yeah, take that beatches! Our elf left a note!!

Santa left this massive castle. Santa probably should have looked up the dimensions of the room before he brought it, but it does fit and the kids think it's totally awesome. It also folds totally flat and can lean against the wall for storage. There are two towers and a big horse on the inside. New swords, shields and a couple of medieval costumes were also left. Luke got dressed as a knight right away.

 More new castles from Grandma Carole and Happy Nappers from Bo. The boys also got Spongebob Legos from Poppy and Nan and the much begged for Nintendo DSs from us. Justin got a toy grill from Santa, train tracks, duplos and lots of Sesame Street figures.

 For Christmas dinner, we had a "real" turkey from the Sponseller farm. It was delicious.  For some reason, the cooking seemed much more laid back than at Thanksgiving even though we had basically the same things. I think it was because we ate Christmas dinner at 6pm instead of 2pm and the turkey was about 8lbs smaller than our Thanksgiving bird.

Oh yeah, and on Christmas night, Luke lost his second tooth. We thought it might come out Christmas Eve, but it held on by a thread for another 24 hours. As expected, the Tooth Fairy left $1, but Grandpa Bo supplemented with an extra dollar.

What we've done so far . . .

As most of my friends know, my grandfather Jimbo is visiting for Christmas. My grandfather likes to be kept busy. Luckily, so do the boys, so this has worked out well for everyone (well, Matt and I are exhausted, but we would be anyway). Forgot to take pictures of going down to the Sponseller farm to get our turkey, but the weather was awful yesterday morning anyway. It dried out a bit in the afternoon, so we hit Wildlights at the zoo last night.  

 

Today, we went downtown and let the boys run around the Statehouse. It wasn't open, but the kids just liked climbing all over everything anyway and we had the whole city practically to ourselves.

Tonight we'll have gnocchi and get ready for Santa to visit. We may have a second visit from the Tooth Fairy tonight, too!

Warrior Challenge

This is what happens when you are a six-year-old Green Belt at a small in-house sparring tournament. There is no one as young as you who is as highly ranked as you, so you can either "spar down" with the little kids or "spar up" with the big kids. Neither Luke nor I thought that beating up four-year-old white belts was a good idea, so Luke "sparred up."

  And I mean UP! Look at the size of this kid! Logan is a nice boy, but he just kept reaching out and bopping Luke on the head because he was so much taller.

At least Luke's friend Cameron was there, so he had one match against someone only slightly bigger.

 But he also had to spar Thomas. Now, to be fair, Thomas should have been in another division, but there weren't enough older kids that showed up, so they just put everyone together. Thomas is also a very nice kid (he also won Student of the Year), but he's just huge compared to Luke. But this was the most awesome match because Luke WON!!! Due in large part to an extra point earned by his buddy Daniela:

 See, while Luke was sparring, Daniela was earning him extra points by playing games of skill with friends of the other students. Of course, since Luke was competing against giants, so was Daniela!
Poor thing, I think the whole event was pretty intimidating for her, but she was such a trooper and won several times! She was awesome at the balance games.

And when she got bored of watching the sparring, she hung out with Justin (we left Michael at home with Daniela's brother Joseph). When she got really bored, she found some of Joseph's gloves and put them on Justin's feet.

 Luke took some hard hits and he was mad that he kept losing. He basically cried through the last two rounds and then had a total meltdown when he lost the consolation round and got fourth place instead of third (even though some kids got nothing), but he really wanted a medal and you only get a medal for third place or higher.

I tried to console him by telling him that next year he would be bigger. He said "No, I won't. By next year, I'll probably be a blue belt and I'll be the smallest kid in the advanced division." Oh. Yeah. He's probably right. Maybe we'll skip the Warrior Challenge next year. If he does any "real" tournaments this spring, it should be fairer as they do it strictly by age.

Student of the Year

This was the first annual Koguryo Martial Arts Christmas Party and Awards Ceremony. Master Circle had touched base with me earlier in the week to see if we were going, so I thought Luke might get something, but I had no idea what kinds of awards there were or how many. Turns out the only awards were for Student of the Year, Instructor of the Year, Outstanding Service and Outstanding Attendance.  Student of the Year was awarded for Little Dragons, Youth, Teen and Adult. Luke won the Little Dragons Student of the Year even though he hasn't technically been attending Little Dragons class for a couple of months, but that's still his age division.

Master Circle talked about how Luke is involved in almost all of Koguryo's events and how dedicated he is and how much he enjoys teaching Luke. He said Luke was in the top several kids for attendance and stated a ridiculously high number of classes that he'd been at this year (especially as demo practice doesn't count towards attendance). He said he had a story he was originally going to tell about Luke, but that he wanted to share a new one (I still want to know what the old one was!). Then he talked about how Luke sparred the big kids today at the Warrior Challenge (post to follow) even though they were several years older and several inches taller. It was just amazing to hear how much Master Circle really seems to appreciate Luke in all his Lukeness. HOWEVER, I was having a hard time listening because Matt MISSED THIS!! Justin had gotten away from us, and was out in the conference center, exploring the second floor with some other wayward toddlers including Master Circle's daughter and Matt was chasing him down. Remind me to give Justin a hard time about this when he gets older.

How I kept Michael busy--letting him take unflattering pictures of me. He also took about 60 pictures of the table and half eaten food. Then he went to Master Circle said "Excuse me, Master Circle, it's not fair that Luke gets an award and I don't." Master Circle was awesome, he told Michael that he was a little brother, too, and that he remembered how hard it was and that he bet that Michael would earn lots of awards as he got older. Michael settled for several large cookies.

Luke took this picture of his certificate. Luke has his special "student star" week at school in January, so we won't hang it up until he's had a chance to bring it in.

The Students of the Year.  Next to Luke, Vili won the Teen division, Mark got Instructor of the Year, Thomas won the Youth division and James got the Service Award.  Alexandria won the attendance award and her dad won the Adult division, but they had to leave right away, so I didn't get their picture. Alexandria came to over 150 classes last year not including her demo team practices. I have it on good authority that she was about 40 classes ahead of any other student. That's crazy. But, my kid was up there, too, so who am I to judge?

I could not be prouder of my driven little boy. I am so happy to have found something that he loves so much and to have found a place where he is so welcomed and valued and where his intensity is an asset and not a liability. Congratulations, Luke!

Michael's Christmas Pageant

Yesterday was the preschool pageant at church. I think we missed it last year because we were all sick. Matt and I are sick again this year, but the kids are fine, so we went.


Luke wore the exact same plate-sheep costume and sang the same song when he was 4. I assume that in three years, Justin will also be a plate-sheep and sing "Here we go to Bethlehem."

 To be honest, it's a pretty lame pagaent. I was not particularly excited to realize that Michael still has one more year in it (he will be promoted to angel next year) and that then Justin will be in it for three more years. But, everyone brings a treat and the best part for the kids is sitting on the gym floor stuffing their faces.

no business

I have no business posting photos of other people's children when I don't have permission from the parents, but both of these were on the martial arts page on FB, so they were kind of out there anyway. And I won't post her name. This young lady M is 13 and is on the demo team with Luke. They did some tournaments together last spring and were in summer camp together, too. That's where this picture was taken. Then she took the fall off to do marching band.

She reemerged tonight looking like this:

Holy crap, what happened? I was talking to her dad and stepmom who said M got her braces off last week and that, all of sudden, she just, well, turned into this stunning young woman! I can't tell you how much I love seeing teenagers emerge from their "under construction" phase (hence the post featuring a near stranger!). This happened with the teenaged girl across the street a couple of years ago and I think I started crying--yes, I am just that lame. BTW, this is NOT the 13-year-old who I am friends with on FB who drives me nuts with her posts. That's Vili, who is in the Black Tigers shots below next to M. I know Vili and her dad better, so I feel more comfortable posting about her. Vili took this picture of M.

On this theme, we have a new scanner, I keep meaning to scan pictures of the flower girls in my wedding who are now 16 and 17.

photo shoot

Every year, Koguryo takes a school photo that hangs in the lobby. They had both the Sunbury and the Westerville kids there tonight, so getting everyone together was crazy. Yes, there are cords and stuff in these pics and the lighting is weird because it was being professionally photographed. Really, I was just in the way, but so were a bunch of other parents. I'm so glad Luke pushed and tested last month because it meant he got to wear his new uniform and stand instead of sitting in the front.  The whole scene was chaos, I really hope they got the shot.

Then we had to stay for the Black Tigers pictures. Luke was trying not to cry because the orange stick in the picture was not "his" orange stick. He left that one at the Sunbury studio last week. This orange stick is nearly identical, but he was totally losing it. Did I mention it was almost 8pm by this point? Finally, he pulled it together. It will be photo-shopped and jazzed up and eventually posted on Koguryo's website. I'll post a link once it is.

Holiday Weekend

This is a crazy holiday weekend. Not everything has gone exactly to plan so far, but such is life. The tree lighting ceremony at ODU last night was cancelled due to the unexpected death of a faculty member. We found out after we were already on campus, so we rerouted up to Easton to see the lights where we ran into every person in Columbus. Luke and Michael liked goofing off by the tree. Justin liked the trains.

Then this afternoon, we made our way up to Sunbury for the Koguryo Christmas parade and a Black Tigers Demo. Since we just had a Luke martial arts post, I mainly took pictures of Michael. I hadn't intended on Michael marching in the parade, but he decided that he wanted to and, since he has the uniform anyway, he was more than welcome. Actually, Matt, Justin and I ended up marching, too. Someday, I'd like to just watch a parade again!

 Here a few of the kids are waiting to line up. Michael was having so much fun. His hat was a gift from Poppy and Nan and made him look super cool! Especially when you add a pinkish glow necklace.

 Master Circle gave all of the kids tiny battery candles to carry since it was a Christmas Lights parade. Michael was a riot showing the candle and his light stick necklace to everyone like it was something miraculous. Luke and his friend James spent the whole time scrounging for dropped candy.

And Justin rode and kicked off his shoes over and over. When he got out of the stroller, he ran around the Sunbury Koguryo location yelling "hi-yah" and doing karate kicks. I think some of the people thought he was part of the demo. The studio up there is small and kind of awkward, so I didn't even see Luke's performance. We stayed way out in the lobby so members of the public could see the demo, but it seems like Luke did a good job. 

Unfortunately, we had to miss the EBC Christmas party for this event. And tomorrow we are overbooked with church and ODU events. Such is the holidays.