And it’s over too. Time flies! So it’s time to give a kid update.

Ashley has had a busy month! She participated in the variety show at school, a karate tournament, and the Solo & Ensemble contest with her flute. She still does piano lessons and cares for Nibbles.

For the variety show, she performed Fur Elise in front of around 100 people or so at school one evening. It is one of the fastest Fur Elise I have heard her play, and she did it with very few errors.

The Solo & Ensemble contest was an event where she played a flute solo (with an accompanist) before a judge. She wouldn’t let anyone in the room with her, so I don’t have any video or anything like that. She ended up earning a 1 rating, so she adds another little gold medal to the one she earned last year for her piano solo. This year, piano was not allowed in the contest.

The karate tournament is held 2-3 times per year at Harper College. It’s a HUGE event, and she can choose up to 3 competitions, kata, kihon, and kumite. In karate, kata is a choreographed set of moves that mimic a battle with numerous opponents. The students are scored on how fast they complete each move, the quality of their form and stances, and the proper sequence. Each color belt has a kata associated with it, which get longer and more complex as the belt color goes up. In the tournament, she went up against one other in her color class. The better of the two moves on to face another winner, and so on until each person has gone twice. The best of the bunch wins first and so on. Kevin captured just the last few moves of her kata. Kihon (basics) is done like kata. This time, students are being asked to show specific moves or combinations of moves. Kumite is sparring. She went up against another in her color class (this time she had to face a higher belt because no other yellow belts in her age group were there). They try to tag each other until they reach 6 points.

Here are the last few moves of her kata:

And here is the awarding of trophies for kata:

And the end of the trophy awarding where she has her kata and kihon trophy:

Here is some video of her sparring match. Both Kevin and another dad from her Monday class were cheering her on. I guess her opponent had one of the those intense “Cobra Kai” Karate Kid parents. Poor kid.

The final results (in case the blurry videos didn’t show it well)?

Kata – 1st place!

Kihon – 4th place

Kumite – she lost that match

Here is a picture of her new trophy shelf. The hanging medal is her 3rd place in kihon from the last tournament.

On to Kayla! She keeps busy with her homework and all that goes on with school. That’s kind of it. School is a 40-45 minute drive one way, so by the time she gets some work done, we drive home (she works in the car too), make dinner, and take care of evening stuff (like packing lunches and showers), there is not much time for anything else. Kayla doesn’t mind too much. She likes school and what she is learning. This past Friday, her school had a dance. She invited Logan to go with her again. Pulling off a Friday night dance was a feat! It went something like this:

Order dinner for Kevin, me, Mom, and Dusty from Panera. Put the order in on Thursday night online for Friday pick-up by my work. Order dinner for Ashley and Kayla and Jimmy John’s, also online for pick-up by my work. Get Kayla at 4PM on Friday. Drive to JJ’s and send Kayla in for the food. Go across the street to Panera and send Kayla in for food. Get to mom’s house because we would not have time to come all the way home. Discover that a main part of our Panera order was missing. Call and arrange to have the Libertyville Panera fix the mistake (this included getting some items free, some cookies, and a voucher for $10!). Get Kayla’s hair and make-up fixed and paint her toes. Feed her. Get her changed. Kevin and Ashley arrive with Logan (it was the only way to get him to Kayla with the time crunch and distance). Take some pictures, then drive back to Lake Forest to drop them off for the 7PM dance. I then drove all the way back home to go to dance class. When that was done, I drove all the way back to Lake Forest, with a stop at Starbucks to get the kids some cocoa. I had to deal with a snarky barrista who didn’t like that I couldn’t order the cocoas in proper Starbucks speak. Pick up kids at 10:15PM. Drive them both all the way home, which for Logan meant overshooting our house and going to Fox Lake. Get Kayla home at about 11:30PM. I put 130 miles on my car that day. Next time, they really need to do dances on a Saturday! The two kids had fun and that’s what matters.

Here is Kayla all dressed up. She is wearing a dress from Target that she had already, the jewelry from Erin’s wedding, and her shoes from homecoming.

Oh yes, the socks. She hadn’t put on her shoes yet.

She did change out of the socks and into the nice shoes for a picture with Logan. Logan likes his meat pink. It might be OK for him to be Kayla’s go-to dance date.

And yes. It is exceptionally mind-boggling that she is taking dates to dances, even if it is just the friend type date. How can we have a child that age? Wasn’t it just last week she was storing ladybugs in her ice tray condos? She can’t be turning 15 in a few short weeks, can she?

This will be a fairly quiet week around here, but next week is crazy! Kevin will be visiting some west coast-ish family briefly while out on business in the same week I have late nights and Ashley has a concert! His trips almost always match up to something like that. He might also be sent to Virginia the week after that. We have tickets to a Piano Guys concert in two weeks also. Spring break is around the corner….could a trip to the east be in our future? Only time and the level of health in our house will tell.