I don't think I have written anything here about Matthew, Simon and Christina taking Karate classes. On the surface, it may seem that such activity doesn't relate fully with the "homestead" theme, but on another hand it does. Our homestead is all about becoming more self sufficient and self reliant. By studying martial arts, the children are learning skills that will enable them to be more independent with an ability to defend themselves in a bad situation.
I pray such a case would never come up, but in a fallen world which seems to be spiraling toward evil at an ever increasing pace, it makes sense to be prepared. I desire my family to be proficient with firearms for hunting, but also for self defense. It also seems wise to be prepared for any personal attack that may take place unexpectedly when a weapon such as gun is not expedient or feasible.
In the Cobra Martial Arts classes, they have been learning some mixed techniques of Tae Kwon Do, Kung Fu, and Mua Thai, along with basic self-defense. It has been very rewarding, and the children have really been doing well with it.
It was Matthews idea to start the lessons and Simon wanted to go with him. About 6 months later, Christina decided she wanted to give it a try as well. With their help, Christina has been catching up. Last Tuesday was a testing day to move up to the next belt level. Cobra Martial Arts use a white, yellow, blue, green, brown, and black progression. Matthew and Simon each passed the test to move onto a green belt. Christina was able to "double belt" and moved from white to blue!
I am very proud of them and took a couple of pictures. Here they are:
On February 29th there is a school program scheduled for the group at a local elementary school. The founder of Cobra puts on "Kick Against Drugs" presentations in which he gives a motivational speech and the Cobra students demonstrate some martial arts, including breaking boards and maybe even bricks. I think Matt, Simon, and Christina are all pretty excited about participating in the show. I'll try to take pictures and come back here to write about it after it takes place. (Hopefully it won't be snowing and school canceled!)
Until then, keep kicking! ===================================================================================
I'm coming back to this post since I noticed it was a loose end and I did not share anything about the school program. It went very well, but I did not get very many good pictures. Here is one of Bob, with some of the students behind him. You can see Matthew and Christina back there:
And here is a shot of Matthew's part of the show. He broke 3 boards, one right after the other, with kicks and hits:
By the way, that was the tornado that first smashed West Liberty, about 20 miles away from us. Our area was not hit on that Wednesday, but our county was hit with 2 tornados just 2 days later on Friday evening, March 2nd! Matthew worked non-stop all that night and into the morning with the fire department clearing trees and keeping people safe. (Maybe I will create a bigger post about that in the near future, even though we were blessed here at Pure Water Hollow to not have any damage at all.) One more note about Cobra Martial Arts: On May 8th Matthew and Simon passed their tests to move onto the classification of Brown Belt, and Christina passed her test to become a Green Belt! They are continuing to study with Cobra throughout the summer. Here they are in their new belts with the founder of Cobra, Bob Hyden.
And here they are with their main "sensei", Thomas Reffitt, along with their biggest fan, Timothy:
And here they are with their main "sensei", Thomas Reffitt, along with their biggest fan, Timothy:
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