Thursday, July 3, 2008

Krav Maga/Martial Arts

Mason has been BUGGING me to find a place for him to take karate for months. I told him we could maybe find a place once schools was out so he hadn't been out of school 5 minutes when we were looking for a place. We found a place called Paul Evans Martial Arts - and the best part about it is that it is only about 4 blocks straight up the street from our house.
They told us he could come to a class and see if he liked it. Of course, the next teen class they had we were there. When we walked in Paul (the owner) told Mason they would be learning to use some kind of Samurai swords and some kind of staff that night and Mason's eyes got about as big as saucers. Needless to say, we were there two nights later for the next teen class with our money to sign up. The nice thing about this place is we pay one amount and Mason can go up to 6 hours every week. So, Paul tells Mason he should start coming to the Krav Maga class. The only person who might actually know what Krav Maga is would probably be Gary (so if you read this JaNae show it to Gary if he is ever home). It is some kind of martial arts used by the Israeli army or something. So now, in addition to the two nights of the teen class, Mason is now going to two nights of Krav Maga, and they have a weapons class on Fridays we are going to be adding to our schedule so I would say we are definitely getting our money's worth!

I went and watched part of the Krav Maga class last night and it was pretty intense. There were a few other teenagers, but most of the people in the class are adults. Mason comes home drenched in sweat after every class and he LOVES, LOVES, LOVES it. I had my camera in the car so I took a few pictures of some of the stuff they were doing.


This drill would have killed me. They were supposed to do a stand up or a sit up while one person was holding their legs, then punch three or four times in the air and then when they laid back down another person hit them on the chest (hard) with this big padded thing. And they had to keep doing it until Paul told them to stop. I know this isn't a great picture but Mason is on the floor doing a sit up and the guy standing behind Mason's group in all black is the owner. He is covered in tatoos and looks like this big mean guy but he is surprisingly nice and friendly (when he isn't teaching Krav Maga).

For this drill they had to drag themselves across teh floor with someone on their back. When they got to the other side of the room, they switched places and went back across the floor.

This little activity was punching a padded board, but the punching was the easy part. Holding the padded board without having it hit you in the chest each punch was the hard part.


Sweaty and happy!


Chuck E. Cheese

We were in Arizona the weekend of Anna's birthday, so we missed her birthday party. I told her we would let her pick somewhere and we would take her and have our own birthday party with her. She chose Chuck E. Cheese and Jana decided to bring her kids and come with us. We went to lunch at Chick O'lay (Chick Fillet) and then went acros the street to every kid's dream and every mother's nightmare. We actually had a good time and although my kids complained a bit about going to a "little kid" place, they had more fun and went through way more tokens than the little kids.

The best part of the whole outing was when we were walking into Chuck E. Cheese. I was holding the door for the kids and Jana was coming in behind us. Ella and Anna walked in and Owen was right behind them. Before Jana or I were actually in the door Owen started screaming and crying and turned and ran for the parking lot yelling "I don't want to go in there!" When I actually got in the door there stood Chuck E. Cheese (Anna had run in and started hugging him while Owen was running out the door). It was so funny. I have some pictures of him crying but they are on my camer'a internal memory and my USB cable got stepped on and so I can't plug it in. As soon as I get another cable I will post the pictures of Owen crying. It took Jana about 5 minutes to convince him it was okay to go in, but he was a bit nervous the whole time. So, here are some of the pictures of our fun birthday party! (And, we missed all of our other cousins who weren't there!)

This was the valuable prize Anna got with her tickets - along with a couple of rings and a sucker.
Owen finally recovered from the Chuck E. Cheese sighting and actually played some games.

Ella dancing as she was riding the merry-go-round.

Mason will always be a "little kid" at heart!

Syd is counting her tickets.

The whole group after picking out their prizes.