Zachary and karate

This fall we decided to put Zach into karate. His cousin was taking it too, but he was already a yellow belt. Zach started out as a white belt and would go every Friday evening. Not my favorite day of the week to have to take him, but oh well. He had fun. Although, honestly I wasn't too sure how good he was doing at it. So when the time came for them to have their testing to advance to the next belt I was so worried for him. But then luckily my cousin told me that they automatically advance the first belt. That made me feel better. Yes, I am a great mom with such confidence in my son, sorry Zach. Anyway, so the time came for the testing and it seemed like he actually did ok. The next week they had the awards ceremony. The advancement goes from white belt to first degree yellow belt then next year to second degree yellow belt. All belts have two degrees. Come to find out Zachary got all 5 out of 5 on his test and advanced to 2nd degree yellow belt. He actually skipped a degree! I was so proud of him, and more over, he was so proud of himself. I was thinking that we wouldn't have to keep doing karate after that term, but after seeing how good he did and the confidence it gave him, of course he is doing it again this term.

Also, after the award ceremony they had a little party thing. During the party they had the kids doing little competitions. First it was the jumping frog. They saw how many times they could do the frog jump. Zachary's cousin (well, my cousins boy, so whatever that is to Zach) won first place on that one. Way to go Johnny! Then they had them hold, dang it I can't remember the name, some pose. They stood with their arms out and their pointer finger up, and their legs out bent at the knee. Anyway, they saw who could hold that the longest. Zachary won! The other kids that he was up against kept kind of slacking and not holding the pose so good. Zach held it the whole time, all the while having to go to the bathroom. And if any of you know Zach, when he has to go, that second, he has to go. But he held it and held the pose for 14 minutes! His teachers were quite impressed. They said that was better then a lot of adults. One of his teachers said that his best time is 15 minutes. So Zachary won a little fortune frog figure thing and was so proud of himself. Way to go Zach!

The infamous pose!