Today was Andrew’s birthday party. We had a party for his school friends at America’s Best Defense in Mansfield. This is where Andrew goes for Karate. While it is a hike to get there twice a week it is really worth it because of the instructors and Sensei. Everyone is great with the kids. Herding the young ones is a big job and they do it very well. I was interested to see how a group of kids who were not students of the school would react. Andrew is a lucky kid, his friends are great kids and they were excellent at the school. By the time the party was over all the kids were standing at attending, sitting like little black belt students, too.

Andrew got to wear the special birthday black belt and help out with the class by being a person who demonstrated the moves. You could tell that he was proud to do that and he showed such good form sitting and standing at attention. His blocks, punches and kicks were good, too. The party started with the kids all running around while Sensei and his assistant, Ms. Emma slid pads on the floor at the kids. If the kids got touched by the sliding pad then they would have to stop and do 5 jumping jacks. This got the kids running around and loosened up. I thought it was good because then they were not intimidated when the karate program actually started. The kids learned how to do some blocking and some punching before they had pizza (provided by the studio) and cake (made by Allison).

The blocking went well and the kids did a great job. Andrew was really doing well with his blocking and Eva was so focused. Then was the punching of “Thunder Paper” Andrew managed to punch Sensei three times in the face. Yeah. Sensei is a patient man.

Pizza and cake time was really well done. All the kids were so polite. When the cake came out it was time for one of the school’s traditions. Cutting the cake with a sword. Sensei held the sword with Andrew and asked Andrew if he wanted to cut the cake slowly or fast. Andrew opted for slowly, which surprised us all. So he and Sensei cut the cake in a dramatic fashion. Andrew loved it!

After pizza and cake the kids worked on kicks and at the very end of the party all the kids gathered around Sensei and he presented Andrew with a board that all the kids signed. Andrew then got to break his very first board. He kicked so hard that he went right through it. He then half spun around and fell on the into Sensei. Again, what patience. He did keep the board way out in front of him this time, though. Andrew broke the board twice and tried to break it against the grain on his own, that didn’t work so well.

The party at the karate studio was so well done. We were quite impressed and the kids had a very nice time. Everything was orderly and Sensei and Ms. Emma lined all the kids up at the end to hand out their goody bags. A couple of the parents even looked into signing their kids up for classes, too. It was a nice day for all.

Today was also our 11th anniversary. We had thought of doing something tonight but with the party we decided instead to go out to dinner as a family. We went to the Eagle Brook Saloon to enjoy some wings. We had a nice night and I had taken 4 hours off of work so Allison and I cleared out a bit of our DVR backlog while we had some time to ourselves. We’re going to look at doing something more for the two of us another day.

When we came home for the Eagle Brook Saloon Andrew opened his birthday gifts from his friends. He fought to stay awake on the drive home just so he could do that. He is one lucky kid with some very generous friends.