thesellers.net

Molly’s been practicing karate for over three years now, and just reached her biggest milestone yet. She tested for her brown belt on Friday night. That’s the last belt before black. The test got started at 6:30 and finished around 10:30. There were some very tired kids.

The test included lots of katas (choreographed fights), including this bo kata.

There were 3 girls testing for their black belts, which meant all of the girls got to try their hand at breaking boards. Molly’s done this several times before, and had no trouble.

There was a lot of sparring.

And Molly got her brown belt!

She was very excited.

Getting her brown belt means she is now an advanced belt, which means she will now be teaching (well, assistant teaching) classes. She’ll be working toward her black belt, though it’ll likely take her 18 months to get there. Along the way, she’ll be working towards milestones that allow her to remove stripes from her brown belt. Once all 3 stripes are gone, she’ll be ready to test for black.

Awesome job Molly!

Molly’s chorus and orchestra at school had their first concert in December. In past years, they’ve held this in January, but this year they pushed up the concert for Chorus, Advanced Orchestra, and Advanced Band (Beginner Orchestra and Beginner Band still got the extra month of practice before a January concert).

First up was chorus. The first song even had a student accompanist playing piano.

The orchestra concert came next. Molly was really excited for this, as she knew they’d recognize the students selected for GT Orchestra and Sinfonia. As you can see after the first song, she was excited (though perhaps lacking some humility). And sorry for the shaky camera then - I was trying to change lenses quickly.

They did a great job, though this concert really hit home how much more advanced Molly’s GT Sinfonia is.

This year, Molly auditioned for and was accepted into the GT Sinfonia. This is a countywide orchestra that is very difficult to get into. They have a 2 hour rehearsal every week at one of the local middle schools. They had their first concert after only 7 rehearsals, and they were phenomenal as you can see here. The first two songs I recorded up close, and the second two are wider to see the whole group.

And here are a few pictures from before the concert started. Most of the kids were very serious when they came out to play. Molly… not so much.

The girls’ school had Family Lego Night again, (renamed from Legos with Dad to be more inclusive). As always, the girls had a great time building.

Most of the time, the girls are in two different choirs at church due to their age difference. But there’s an occasional year where they overlap, and this year is one of those years. Leah is now old enough to join Joyful Noise, and Molly won’t move up to middle school till next year. So, they get to sing together. Here’s there first performance in October.

In November, they sang again. I even got to accompany them on the second song.

Molly’s school selected some of the more responsible 5th graders to be safety monitors, and she was happy to get the job. So, now we have to get to school early every morning so she can stand at her post (outside Kindergarten) and make sure kids are being safe. She takes her job seriously.

Even on Halloween, all dressed up, Molly was ready to be a responsible safety monitor. She wasn’t even thrown by Leah’s photobomb.

For Halloween this year, we all went with Harry Potter costumes (which I am very excited about). I am Remus Lupin (possibly my favorite character), Molly is Luna Lovegood, Leah is Hermione Granger, and Jen is a Quidditch fan.

The girls really got into character. They even had a wizard duel.

And they cast their spells. I don’t think they’re trying to hurt each other, given the smiles on their faces.

On Halloween day, the girls had a Halloween parade at school as usual.

Then they had their class parties. And perhaps even took some time to learn something afterward.

As evening approached, it was time for some serious trick-or-treating. This year, Molly’s friend Grace joined our crew of trick-or-treaters.

We trick-or-treated for about an hour.

Jen handed out candy this year while I walked around with the girls. We didn’t have very many trick-or-treaters visit us early on, so we thought it might be a light Halloween. But eventually they showed up, totaling 139 trick-or-treaters this year.

After returning home, Grace really wanted to keep going. Leah was done, but Molly agreed to go back out after thirty minutes of warming up and eating candy. So, Grace, Molly, and I headed back out to a street further than we've been before. This was later than we’ve trick-or-treated before, and Molly learned that late-night trick-or-treating can be awesome as folks are trying to unload candy. Every time someone said “just take a couple handfuls” she was very happy. She ended up filling up her pumpkin twice by the end of the night.

We’ve been really busy of late, and failed to get to carving pumpkins until our last chance. So, Monday night (October 30), after homework was finished, we finally tackled them.

The girls started the pumpkin carving off by cutting open the tops.

After scooping the guts out, the girls both applied their designs. Leah opted for a unicorn printout which she transferred to the pumpkin by poking holes through it with an awl. Molly had a Harry Potter pumpkin photo she found that she free-hand drew on her pumpkin.

Molly had to be really careful with the Harry Potter glasses, as they have large pieces that are only attached by a small bit.

Leah had lots of zig-zags in her unicorn’s mane.

And here are their finished products - Molly’s Harry Potter pumpkin and Leah’s unicorn pumpkin.

It may have taken us a long time for finally go to our local Six Flags, but it didn’t take long before we headed back again. Six Flags had a Bring a Friend Free day, and Zach and Stacie were kind enough to offer to bring us. So, after church we headed there for fun again. After lunch, our first stop was the Ragin Cajun.

The dads got to ride as well, though we were relegated to the car after the kids.

The ride Leah most wanted to ride again was Wonder Woman. Jen and I were again happy to stand by and not ride this high spinner.

We rode lots of other rides, but I didn’t get pictures of them as most of them were the same ones we rode before. Molly continued loving roller coasters, and even added one beyond what she’d rode before. She was worried about riding Apocalypse (it’s a standing coaster), and said she didn’t want to ride it. Then Stacie bet her a dollar to ride it, and she of course did. She ended up saying it was her favorite ride of the day, and we ended up riding it a second time on the way out.

We left the park right as Fright Fest was starting, and our girls were ready to get out of the park then. Lots of zombies and other scary folks start wandering the park terrorizing guests, which was not their idea of fun. Next time we may have to leave a couple minutes earlier to avoid them entirely.

Thanks so much to Zach and Stacie for bringing us along.

In September we had visitors from a far away land. Emmie, JJ, Aunt ‘Chelle, and Uncle J flew up to spend a couple days with us. While they were here, we went for a fun outing of putt-putt. We split into two foursomes, with the girls requesting me to accompany them while JJ and the other adults made up the other foursome. There was some intense concentration.

The girls had fun golfing, but also got a bit of time to relax while waiting on the other group to catch up.

It was fun!

The putt-putt course is right next to Rita’s, so we had to stop in for a treat.