Happy 8th Birthday, Ty!

8???? How is this sweet little boy of ours already 8?? He's still as caring, outgoing, and funny as ever, but with more confidence and even more awareness of how people are feeling around him. He makes us laugh in one way or another each day and we are so proud of him. As is traditional with his birthday falling right after a holiday weekend, we celebrated his birthday all week. This year he wanted a Minecraft theme so I did the best I could (although I still don't completely understand the game). On Tuesday he had the traditional birthday donut and present opening in the morning and that evening he had his TKD graduation (just by chance) and he got to do a birthday run through everyone in the class and we all went out to dinner.

On Saturday, we had his first out-of-the-house birthday party at TKD, with 15 of his classmates (from school and TKD) attending. They had a lot of fun learning TKD, self defense, and breaking boards (all while defeating Minecraft spiders and creepers at the same time).  Keeping with the martial arts tradition (which I just learned about), each child had to tell Tyler something that they liked about him when they gave him a gift.  I've never seen that done before, but it added something special to the time.  Mr. Cox did a great job with the party and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

For more pics from his birthday, click on the photo below. Since some of the activities require some explanation I added captions to many of them. Enjoy!

Megan's first TKD testing

Megan continues to LOVE Taekwondo, but I didn't expect the extreme joy that she showed when she tested and got her orange belt.  As she waited for Tyler and me to test, she insisted on showing her new belt to almost every person that came into the school.  It was fun to see.

Below are some videos (clearly I didn't think about the placement of my seat, but at least you can see a little bit around the post.).  To view a few more photos, click on the photo above.

1st Day of School!

Here are some fun picks from Tyler's first day of 2nd grade and Megan's first day of her second year of Pre-K.

Amateur Taekwondo photo shoot

If you can't tell, the kids are loving Taekwondo.  We got some great photos after class one day.  The top one is my favorite :).

Summer long weekend in Austin

For our last family trip before Tyler starts school we took a long weekend in Austin.  On the way, we stopped at Louie Mueller's BBQ in Taylor where I had the best BBQ that I've had since we moved here (and we mistakenly ordered 7 ribs until we discovered that they each had about 1.5 lbs of meat on them).  After that, we headed west of Austin to Enchanted Rock where we had fun hiking to the top.  The next couple of days we had fun around Austin swimming, hiking, and, of course, eating.

Click on the top photo below for more pictures.

...And another

Last weekend we travelled north of Dallas for another TKD tournament. It was a great venue and had alot of fun with all of the families from the school. Ty won a tiebreaker for 3rd place in forms.

Another TKD weekend...

This weekend we had two fun TKD events.  Tyler got to participate in his school's instructor demo at a local festival (Tomball Night) and then the next day we had an "in-school" tournament at the school.  For the first time, both Megan and I (yes, I'm training now too...it's a great bonding time with the kids) got to compete.  Everyone did great and had a lot of fun.

Here are the pictures (linked) and the video from the instructor demo (they were supposed to be on the stage, but there wasn't enough room).


Click on the photo below for the tournament pictures.