Karate award ceremony

It’s official – Kyrie and Asher earned their stripes!  Their award ceremony was today, and they were really excited.  Now they’re both even more motivated to work extra hard these next few months to that when they test next they’ll move up to a yellow belt!  Here’s a video of their award ceremony.  You can see a little bit of Mr. Bratcher’s personality when it’s Asher’s turn.    He’s really the nicest, most wonderful guy, and the kids all just love him.

And here they are after class showing off their stripes! 

Karate testing

Today Kyrie and Asher tested for their stripes!  They were originally going to test for the first stripe, but their sensei said they were ready to test for 2 stripes instead.  They did great!  Mr. Bratcher (sensei) had another black belt in there helping with the testing (so Mr. Bratcher could watch and see how they did instead of being the one getting beat up ), so here are Kyrie and Asher showing him their skills.  This guy would get the kids in a hold, and they would have to do every move they could think of to get him to the ground.

                                                                                                                              

Here’s the video of Kyrie and Asher beating the poor guy up.  Pay special attention to Kyrie’s moves.    (Their sensei, Mr. Bratcher, is the guy standing off to the right.)

Here they are showing Mr. Bratcher the combos they’ve learned so far this year.

They also had to show him one kata (a kata is a sequence of moves).  The one they are showing him is kumite tai ichi (kuma tie eech).  Here’s Kyrie doing her kata!  If you’re wondering what she’s saying, she’s counting in Japanese (ichi – 1, ni – 2, san – 3, shi – 4, go – 5).

And here’s Asher.  He’s counting, too, but it’s really hard to hear him.

I’m sure they passed, but we find out the results for sure next week.  Way to go, Kyrie and Asher!

Karate Kids

Clever title, right?    Kyrie’s gi finally arrived, so I had to snap a picture of our karate kids before class tonight!  They’re showing off some of their karate moves, too – Kyrie is doing a tsuki (sue – kee), and Asher is doing a Jodan uke (joe – dawn – oo – kee).  It’s keeping us really busy (classes are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 45 minutes each time), but it’s been really great for them! Kyrie especially has really benefited from it, and we are already noticing a huge increase in her stamina, speed, and coordination. One of the biggest reasons we put them both into karate is because we loved how this sensei focused so heavily on respect and obedience. Both kids are getting much better at that! I think it helps that we can threaten to tell their sensei when they misbehave, though. He’ll make them own up and do extra push ups or laps if we give him a bad report! It’s great.  (Thankfully we’ve never had to give him a bad report – they always shape up fast when we remind them! )  He’s the nicest sensei – very gentle and kind, genuinely loves the kids and what he does.  But he’s also strict and makes them answer up (always demanding a “Yes, sir!”), so they have a lot of respect for him since he’s got such a good balance of being firm yet kind.  He hugs them all after class.  We sure love this dojo!