We're All Yella-Bellies

The entire family is in karate lessons. We signed up a couple of months ago. My husband and I both firmly believe that activity is very important for the kids (and for us), especially in this day and age of TVs, DVDs, computers and the abundance of indoor sedentary activities. So, we signed the kids up. All of them were interested and as a bonus, once you pay for three, additional family members were at no charge so we all signed up. We are all really enjoying it! Sore muscles and all! I was into karate years ago and always loved it. It's really nice to be back. It's a different, but somewhat similar style which makes some things challenging, but fun nonetheless.

And this weekend, the entire fam-damily earned our yellow belts. We're all pretty excited about it. And wow! It was quite a workout! The workout was for all belt-levels - there were people testing from white belt through black. We just happen to be the lowest level right now and had to keep up as best as we could. But we all did well and had fun.

And, while it's exciting to be up to yellow belt, it's also somewhat bittersweet. While we really like this karate school - there are a lot of great people and it's a lot of fun, we were just informed that to continue, we have to join a 'club' and the costs are more than double to continue on after our current contract expires at the end of the summer. We could just about manage the costs as they were. Doubling them is just not do-able. So, come mid-summer we'll be looking for a new dojo. Something with more reasonable costs, but hopefully something fairly close by and something we will enjoy as much. It will mean starting over from scratch again as white belts. :-( But I'm sure we can find something.

And to finish the post off with a picture, last week there was a fundraiser at the dojo for the Make-a-Wish Foundation - a bake sale. Right up my alley! So I whipped up a batch of gi cookies. Very cute and very tasty.

Quack!