Orange Belt!

Jaymi earned her orange belt in taekwon-do this week!

Her last day at taekwon-do (because of surgery) was awesome.  She had a belt test, and was awarded her 3rd belt.  Orange.  She is now officially past the beginner stage (of white and yellow belts) and into Level 1.  She is thrilled.

 She also received a bunch of awards.  Lots of kids got awards, but her name kept being called....and called....and called again!

 And finally, at the end of the class, the staff got together and gave her a 'get well soon' gift and told her how much they would miss her.

They gave her a kicking target, a stuffed kitten, and a card.

We took a picture of her with the main people at the school, so that she can look at it and stay motivated to come back when she has recovered.

Skating Field Trip

Jaymi was lucky enough to participate in one of two skating field trip for her school, a couple of days ago.
She's going to miss a field trip to the museum and another skating trip, but she had a lot of fun skating with her friends this week.

 

Master Club

At the end of last year, Jaymi was invited to join the Master Club in her Tae-kwon-do school.  She has attended almost every class she possibly can in the last few months, has excelled in tae-kwon-do, has improved and worked so hard at it, and they recognize effort and motivation like hers.  So we had a meeting in December, with the head of the school, and she is now in the Master Club.

What does that mean?

Well, the most obvious part is the new black uniform she gets to wear.  It is a visual significance for her.  A way of visualizing her motivation and her goals in tae-kwon-do, and therefore making them happen. (It just happens that this month's theme is "vision" and they spend a lot of time discussing how to visualize yourself completing your goals, in order to achieve them.) 

She is so proud to have the new uniform.

It also means access to extra classes.  Master Club classes.  Classes that are longer, that teach more specific details about the techniques used.  Classes that are geared toward the kids who are more serious about staying in tae-kwon-do.  Only Master Club members can attend these classes.

It means weapons training and sparring training.  She doesn't begin the sparring yet, but she has started the weapons training.  She had the chance last week to attend her first master club class and she learned a few forms with the wooden sticks.  I realized then, that the weapons training is fantastic for memory and co-ordination.

It also means she gets pushed a bit further in those classes.  They started off the Master Club class last week, with 120 jumping jacks!  Wow.  I can't believe she did it.  The most they start with in the regular class is 50 or 60 jumping jacks.

Here are a few videos of Jaymi in her Master Club class.

Doing some kicks...

and some punches...

learning how to use the sticks...

and doing some one-on-one sparring with a pool noodle - fun!

I was so proud of her as she held her own!

Dressup, breadmaking, and a new haircut!

Jaymi has had a major dressup phase going on lately.

She has always been into dressing up, but lately her imagination has been in overdrive. LOL ;)

Her most interesting idea recently, was when she spent a few days pretending to be a bat.  She made her own bat wings out of construction paper at first, but they didn't work out quite the way she wanted them to.  When I told her that I had an idea of how to make a bat costume out of a black garbage bag, she was excited.

This was the result.

It was her idea to take an old black toque of Mark's (with his permission) pull it down over her face and cut holes in it for her eyes.

She kept going to the couch, or wherever, and would just hang out upside down for a while.

And of course, her favourite dressup costume is her Snow White costume.

She loves to pretend to be a princess, especially Snow White (and Cinderella).

She even had a storytime with her 'forest animal friends'. :)

And she loves to act out the part of Snow White, where she eats the poisonous apple and immediately drops dead.  (She likes to do apple bobbing first, and then when she bites into the poison apple...well...you can see what happens.)

She was awesome at making that bread recipe that I just posted.  She made a whole loaf of artisan-style bread all by herself.  The only thing I did was to put it in the oven and take it out.

And the big news of last week is....Jaymi got a haircut!

Not just a regular haircut.  A short one.

She has been asking us if she could have her hair short (above her chin) for months and months now.

We have made her wait for a long time.  Partly because we hoped she might change her mind, and partly because she does change her mind about things so much, and we wanted to teach her that she needs to be sure before doing something like that, as well as patience.

She hasn't wavered from the desire to have short hair, and although it was pure torture for her to wait that long, we finally decided on a date to get her hair cut.

And she absolutely LOVES it!

Here is the BEFORE and AFTER picture that I took:

 Although we weren't thrilled about the idea, it does look pretty cute, I think.

She loves the little pigtails that she can try out now.

And it looks great with her glasses on too.