Molly’s choir sang this past Sunday (and they’re singing again today for Christmas Eve service). Here’s what they looked like Sunday. Come to the 2:30 or 4:00 service at Glen Mar today if you’re local and would like to see them sing a different song (and see Molly serve as one of the worship leaders up front).
Per tradition, the girls went to Grams’s house to bake Christmas cookies. Sadly this year Aunt Caroline was not around to help since she no longer lives nearby. We miss you Aunt Caroline.
Baking cookies with Aunt EA meant they also got to hang out a bit with Charlie. Leah thought that was great, though Charlie seems a bit bored by it all.
Charlie is excellent at staring. Molly’s smile doesn’t stand a chance at getting him to blink.
It’s test time at karate again, and Molly is going for her blue belt. This is a big step, as it will mean she moves out of the beginner class and into the advanced one. It also means she gets a bō to train with.
Here she is having her core strength tested.
There was no surprise who Molly would choose to spar when she had a choice.
Nice punch!
Sensei sat on Molly in push up position to test her strength.
Molly got her blue belt!
Congratulations Molly on your blue belt!
Molly competed in her first karate tournament on Saturday. Her dojo was holding a tournament, so it was an easy way to try it out. There ended up being girls from lots of other karate schools there (which meant the place was packed). Molly elected to compete in both Forms (katas) and Sparring.
Here she is doing her kata. It was good enough to tie for first place in her division with a score of 7.47.
She lost the tie breaker, but was still very excited about winning the silver medal. Congratulations, Molly!
In sparring, she had a tough opponent to start.
You get 1 point for a punch, 2 points for a kick, first to 5 points wins. There are 3 judges, which are all sensei’s from different schools. Scoring a point requires confirmation from 2 of the 3 judges.
It was a very tight fight. Towards the end, Molly was losing 4 to 3, and her opponent came close to scoring several times. But then Molly landed an excellent kick, giving her the 5-4 win.
In the gold medal fight, Molly faced another tough opponent with an excellent kick.
She fought well, but ultimately lost.
Molly won the silver medal!
Molly’s a happy champion, even if her smile looks odd with her mouthguard in.
I couldn’t get a picture of her with both her medals there since it was so crowed, but here she is right after we got home.
Congratulations, Molly!
A couple of weeks ago we realized it had been a long time since our last real photoshoot. With the need to print Christmas cards arriving soon, we picked the warmest available day we could and planned an outing. Jen and I looked through lots of locations, but ended up choosing to go to Rockburn Branch Park.
Give me a kiss!
Suddenly, Leah became much older than she was a few minutes ago.
These girls manage to always have fun. This can make it hard to stay on task sometimes, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Jen thought it would be fun for the girls to wear their hats. I thought I might wear one as well, and then suggested Jen join in the fun too.
This picture made it onto the back of the Christmas card.
And this picture was the big winner for the front of the Christmas card. Jen got a crate and some letters for the perfect extra touch.
Note that the hats did eventually come off.
As the sun went down, it started to get colder. The girls let me take one last picture before heading to the car to warm up.
This is just a taste of the photoshoot, but you can see all the great pictures on Flickr.
While Jen and I got to meet Charlie at the hospital, Molly and Leah were not so lucky. Fortunately, Charlie came home from the hospital yesterday, which meant Molly and Leah got to meet their new cousin. They were so excited to meet this sweet little guy.
Of course, they were excited to hold Charlie. Molly was all smiles for her little cousin.
Charlie checks out the world; Molly checks out his face; Jen and Leah check out his feet.
Charlie is really studying Molly here.
Leah loved to touch Charlie’s soft little face.
Charlie has soft chubby cheeks, but his hands are old man hands. Long, thin, wrinkled fingers. Here they are up close.
Eventually, his mom did get a chance to hold him.
The girls gave Jen a chance to hold him, but they didn’t go far.
Molly loved chilling with Charlie, but she also would get tired of it and want to get up. Leah, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of him.
So cute!
It didn’t take long before he was back in Leah’s lap.
Leah could not stop stroking his hair.
Yay for Charlie! And good luck to Aunt EA and Uncle Scott. We can’t wait to see you guys again.
The girls wanted to have bunk beds from an early age, and we always told them they could when Molly was 6 (that’s the Federal guideline for sleeping on the top bunk). When we moved to our new house shortly after Molly turned 6, they got their wish. When Leah turned 6 not long ago, she requested a swap. After a few trial nights, she and Molly agreed to permanently switch. Here they are ready to sleep on their first night in their new beds. Please excuse their very messy room.
They’ve done great the past couple weeks since making the switch and show no sign of wanting to switch back.
Molly participated in an after school Lego robotics program, and I volunteered as the parent helper. The program was run by Bricks for Kidz (which we love), and was awesome. We used the Lego Mindstorms EV3 kits and software. Here’s Molly building a jumping spider.
Molly’s program this week used a proximity sensor to detect when something came close to the spider, then activated the robotic arm to make it jump at that thing. The first time it jumped, she was a bit shocked. Sorry for the heavy vignette, but I did not get permission to post a picture of her partner.
There are a bunch of things I’ve failed to post about here. I’ve meant to catch up on them for some time, but failed. Today I’ll try to start to catch up.
Back in August, the girls hit another karate milestone. Leah completed yet another unit at karate, so it was time for another stripe ceremony. Leah led the class in some jumping jacks during warm up exercises.
Here she is showing off some of her skills (punching, blocking, kicking).
The preschool class even got to try out using pads, though they still didn’t make contact.
Here she is getting her stripe.
She’s now got 3 stripes on her belt. And that’s all she’ll have for a while, as she’s decided to take a break from karate. With kindergarten starting, we’ve limited her to two activities. She chose gymnastics and tennis for now, so no karate for her this Fall.
Once Leah was done, it was time for Molly’s belt test, and she’s grinning with excitement.
A minute later, she’s serious and ready to go.
Here she is doing her Elbow Kata.
Sensei even hits them in the stomach to test their strength.
Molly’s getting better at sparring.
She earned her blue stripe (half way to a blue belt).
Here she is with her yellow belt with blue stripe. And she’s not stopping there. Her sister may be taking a break from karate, but Molly plans to continue with it for the foreseeable future.
In preparation for Halloween, Jen got the girls some giant pumpkins, that we tried to carve at a party. We had some difficulties with tools there, though. Leah elected to paint her pumpkin, but Molly brought hers home to try again.
The biggest preparation for Halloween is of course the costumes, though. Thanks to Jen, these are always awesome.
Since our trip to Callaway Gardens this summer, Molly has been in love with owls. So, she of course wanted to be one for Halloween. Jen planned to make these feathers and attach them to a hoodie, but she couldn’t find a girls brown hoodie. So, she just made the hoodie. She also made the mask, the skirt, and the leggings.
Also note the pumpkin Molly carved in the background. Yes, it’s an owl as well.
Leah had a lot of trouble picking a costume, but eventually decided to be Mittens Fluff ’n Stuff, one of the Lalaloopsy girls. Jen made the wig, shirt, leggings, socks, and vest. She was going to make a skirt until Leah reminded her she already owned a perfect skirt (though Jen did add the waistband to it). Jen and Leah together sewed the pet polar bear accessory.
The pumpkin in the back was painted by Leah as well.
These were all the costumes this year. The girls wanted to pick their own costumes rather than do a family costume. So, Jen and I went without costumes.
As usual, the elementary school has a costume parade. Leah enjoyed her first time dressing up and marching at school. She especially loved that her costume included a toy, which meant she could have that toy at school all day.
Molly of course marched as well. No surprise she was in line behind Jordan.
On Halloween day, trick-or-treating started early on Halloween with a trip to visit Grams.
Thanks Grams from some happy trick-or-treaters.
As we’ve done before, we gathered with some of the neighborhood kids to go trick-or-treating. This year we gathered a bit earlier to get a head start.
We stuck with Jordan, Haley, and Madison again as we visited house after house gathering candy.
To close it out, here’s Molly’s lit-up owl jack-o'-lantern after a long night of greeting our trick-or-treaters.
