Black Belt and Water

Our first full day in town we enjoyed some relaxation and catching up time in the early part of the day.  Then we drove to the kids house so we could spend some fun time with Anders and Dagny after they got out of school.  Karsten soon joined us from his daycare so we could all head over to Anders J Tiger TaeKwanDo School to watch him take his two hour long black belt test.  This was the final step to earning the belt.  He had other smaller tests and even had to do an essay notebook.  This is the first page

There were 18 candidates running from age 9 to a couple of adults for the test.  As a group they did some warmups together before getting started.

They they had to present themselves to Master Lee and declare how many "stripes" they had earned during their preparation period for the test.  Each time they master a move they get a red stripe on their belt.  You can see many of them on the belt in the picture above.  He had a total of 48 of them.

One requirement is doing a series of kicks and punches resulting in breaking two different boards from both a forward and backward position using the foot.

They each had to create a freestyle series of moves to music using many of the postions, kicks and punches they've learned up to this point.

In addition they are required to break a piece of granite about 2 inches thick with the palm of their hand.  The adults had to break a cement block 4 inches thick.

 This guy had them stack up 8 pieces and he broke through 6 of them!!!!!!

Sparring is another aspect of the test.  Anders and his partner had a very close contest.

 

Once the test was over and he knew he'd made it, he along with the rest of us decide to make a run to Chik-Fil-A for a little supper and celebration before calling it a night since everyone had to be up early tomorrow for school and work.

We arrived home to see water in the driveway. Oh No!!!  That didn't look good.  We quickly discovered the fitting for the water hose for the washer had broken and water was gushing out into the kitchen.  Jack quickly shut it off and then we went in to see what had happened.  Disaster!!!! There was a minimum of 2 inches of water throughout the first floor of the house including Janet's office (she works from home), the family room and living room, the dining room, kitchen, bathroom, guest bedroom and of course, the laundry room.  It must have broken almost immediately after we left to have done that much.

Carolyn quickly got to work with a broom shoving water out the door in the laundry room, while Janet called Serve Pro for professional help and Jack called the insurance.  Then they settled the kids down in bed as best they could while we continued to shove water out the available doors.

The company finally arrived about 10:00 pm, we left but Jack and Janet were up till two in the morning while the guys removed the remaining water we'd not gotten out, got furniture up on blocks, got things off the floor, throwing some stuff out and putting other stuff up to drip and dry.  Then they put 57 fans, 2 dehumidifies and a power distribution box on the floors and started them up.  What a roar!!!!! They were told it would take a minimum of 5 days to get the floors and walls dried.