Ok everybody, *big* bragging warning.

MY LEVEL TWO'S ROCK! THEY ARE TOTALLY AWESOME AND BLEW EVERYBODY OUT OF THE WATER AT THE STATE MEET!

Haha...we had the TAG gymnastics meet for one's and two's yesturday. The Gym City level two's have been doing REALLY good in practice and I was expecting good things from them. When I showed up at the gym I walked around telling different parents, "Watch the level two's today...they're going to blow everybody out of the water!" And then they did...even more so than I was expecting! EVERY last single of them got blue on EVERY last single event! I was about to explode with pride!

Tomorrow the level three's will be having their meet...I'm excited about it but not quite so sure they will do great. We have some level three's who will rock the house...but we've got a couple who probably won't do so great.

The semester is over and I think I've got a 4.0 again. Cool, no?

Ok, now on to the tournament today...here's the quick run down since I'm really tired and don't have time to write much...

Isaac: third in sparring.

Joshua: 2nd in kata, third in sparring. He probably would have taken 1st but he got disqualified in his second fight for face contact...he made the other guy's nose bleed. Rats. But he fought really good.

Anna: 3rd in kata. Very nice kata too. She didn't fight though.

BJ: didn't place in kata, third place in sparring. She fought the best fight I've ever seen her do in tournament...really good reverse punches.

Ethan: 3rd in empty hand kata 3rd in weapons kata and second in sparring. His fighting was amazing: he was on fire. And he beat Blake Dressler (who is a REALLY good fighter). He lost his fight for first place by one point. Because he was fighting for first place in the advanced boys division (which is the hardest division other than black belt...we're talking about some SERIOUS competition) he fought his last fight in the "big ring" at the end of the tournament. It was an awesome fight.

And finally, Samuel: 2nd in kata, and a "good job" from Mr. H...which is worth about twenty first place trophies to me. Fighting....drum roll...1st place! And I beat ISAIAH for it! I honestly did not think I could beat Isaiah. But I did.

Oh and the cool part is, Isaiah is the guy who hit me the back of the head on Monday. Haha...so I guess I got my revenge.

Here is my board breaking for my second degree brown belt test.

Ouch. I hurt. It hurts to chew because my jaw got hit so many times last night. It hurts to move because I had to do my drop kicks without a mat (read: on the concrete!) My fingers hurt from messing up on a punch and skinning my second knuckle (bad punch...I should have known better than that...) My eye hurts from a backfist that landed right on the eyeball. But mostly my head hurts from a punch that landed on the very base of my skull and gave me a mild concussion.

Like I said, ouch.

The good news is that I passed my test. And my board breaking went really good. I had troulbe doing my supsended ridge hand, but I did a suspened punch and a suspended backfist without any problems. For my power break I tried doing a three-board punch, but I rushed into it and didn't have enough power to go through (hence the skinned knuckles). I could have tried punching again, but I didn't want to injure my knuckles, so I did a hammerfist and went through them with no problems. Then for my power foot break I did a 2x12x18 monster board. That's a REALLY big board. We got it on video and I want to post it on youtube sometime son so you guys can see it.

I did ok during my fighting. Isaiah landed a couple nice ones on me (as usual) and Mr. Hargis planted two very solid punches in my midsection, but I got them back for it. :) Oh my last fight I made Luke's nose bleed (not on purpose!) and he got me back for that...lol. I didn't do so great on my first plural fight...2-on-1 I lost 2 points to five. On my 3-on-1 fight I was tied 4-4 when Isaiah landed a hard punch on the base of my skull. It didn't really hurt very bad (in fact it hardly hurt at all) but I started crying. I didn't even know why I was crying and it didn't help to try and stop. Mr. Murry came running over and checked my eyes with a flashlight. He said my right eye wasn't responding to the light at all for a few minutes and he didn't want me to fight any more (I still had a 4-on-1 fight left). I told him I could still manage, but he said no, that wasn't a good idea.

So, the bottom line is that I passed, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fight at the tournament on Saturday. I know I'll do kata, but if I still feel like I do now then I won't be able to fight.

The other problem is that I don't think I'll be doing much spotting at gym. I'm just not so sure that my reaction speed will be good enough to keep somebody from breaking their neck. I told my boss that I'll come in tonight and help to teach but that I won't be spotting. She said she doubted I'd be coming in at all tonight and to call her later and let her know how I feel.

Hey, check this out. Josiah put together a slide show of pictures from our trip to the Philippines. It's really well done.

Well, this week is finals. I've already taken two tests. I have two more tomorrow and then two essays due on Thursday and then the semester will be over! I still need to study some for my nutrition test, but I'm thinking I've got a pretty good shoot at 4.0 for this semester. Pretty cool, huh?

Speaking of studying, that's exactly what I should be doing right now. Talk to y'all later!