Yet another martial arts post

 Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I was supposed to be attending the Catholic Women's Conference today. I really wanted to go. But with us getting the house ready for the market, Matt asked if I could keep the kids out of the house, so he could do some work. So no conference for me this year. Turns out Koguryo was having one of its Warrior Challenges. This is the little tournament where they bring partners. Some Saturdays we do violin lessons with Malcolm and Quinn, but since Matt was working on the house, he couldn't teach violin today. So we dragged invited Malcolm to be Luke's partner. Quinn and Michael were just supposed to tag along since Michael's not a registered student right now. But then Quinn showed up in her karate uniform and I felt like she and Michael were going to lose their minds if they had to just hang out while Luke and Malcolm had fun. So I asked Master Circle if Michael could participate (I had thrown his uniform in a bag and brought it with me) in the Little Dragons division with Quinn as his partner and he said sure.

 

All geared up and ready to go. Although he's a fixture around the studio because of Luke, Michael hasn't actually done anything martial-arts related in several months. He tried a few weeks last summer, but just wasn't ready. The last few weeks though, I've been noticing that the Little Dragons are getting, well, littler and that's had me thinking that it might be time to start Michael again since he's almost 5 now.  But, I didn't have high hopes for him today, we were just trying to keep him busy. 

Then Michael got called up to spar. At this point, Karla (Malcolm and Quinn's mom) and I pretty much forgot about Luke and Malcolm and got totally into the Michael/Quinn experience. Quinn got pulled aside to play games against the other partners and those of you that know Quinn will not be surprised to hear that she totally rocked the games and earned Michael some extra points. And Michael just loves to spar and he and this boy had a great match, neither one could stop smiling, and Michael won (handily, I might add, he didn't even need Quinn's extra point). Then Michael sparred again and won again. 

 And again. This boy is about a year older and has been at this a while, but he was totally mesmerized by his sparring pads and seemed to like how it felt to get hit in them, so Michael won. Look how happy Michael is!

 

Literally jumping for joy!

 But all good things must come to an end. He went to the finals and had to spar this girl who is clearly on her way out of being a Little Dragon. He spent most of the match whining "she's hitting too hard. She's hurting me!" And so he was eliminated. This girl sparred another girl her size for first place. The match was awesome!

 But Michael ended up in third place! Holy Moly! He wasn't even supposed to be doing anything! He got a medal and a private lesson with Master Circle.

 Oh yeah, Luke. I almost forgot. It was supposed to be HIS sparring tournament. Luke has been down this road before. He's done three of these tournaments and he has never gotten a medal. Well, today he was in luck as only three kids were in his division, so we knew he would get something. Malcolm earned him an extra point or two. This boy, Tristan, was a good match for Luke size-wise. They sparred twice and each won once. But the third boy was a giant and basically wiped the floor with both Luke and Tristan. Luke still cried when he lost, but he regained his composure quicker and was better about congratulating the winners. There's still plenty of room for improvement in that regard, though.

 So somehow Luke ended up in second place. It's his first medal at this event and he was very proud. He also earned a private lesson. And he earned Malcolm a free 2-week membership which, since he already does Karate, he won't use. So Master Circle transferred it over to Michael. So I guess Michael is starting Tang Soo Do again. Tomorrow after church we need to have a family meeting as there cannot be two kids in martial arts and tee ball this spring while we are also putting this house up. We need to make some choices.

Two exhausted kids with their medals. We all came back to the house and had lunch and all four kids were hot messes the rest of the afternoon. Oh, where was Justin, you might ask? He was at Lowes with Daddy buying bricks for a retaining wall.