First-Degree Blackbelt

The day has finally come when Taelyn officially earned her first-degree black belt in taekwondo!  It has been a very long process over the last year, especially during the last couple of months.  To prepare for her blackbelt testing, Taelyn has been attending taekwondo sessions for 3-6 hours a day, including: 

• specialty classes such as extreme and creative forms every day before school from 7-7:45 am
• her regular classes after school from 3-4
• leading younger belt classes after that from 4-5
• a combination of regular, leadership, blackbelt-focused, and special seminars from 8-3 on Saturdays.  
  

It is amazing to see how much she has grown this semester, and it all paid off during her two-day testing sessions.

On day one, Taelyn had to show mastery over all the lower belt forms. In the past, she could advance from one belt to another by showing an understanding of some of the forms up until a certain point.  Each testing focused on a different form as well.  This time, she needed to execute each move flawlessly over every form.  

Then Taelyn had to show the ability to spar with more advanced moves.  Sparring has always been a struggle for her; just a year ago she was running away from her opponent, but now she was able to use more advanced moves and read her opponent’s body language to try to block.

Next, Taelyn did board breaking, using more advanced boards that are harder to break.

On day two, Taelyn had to complete fitness and endurance tests where she had to continually punch a bag for 2 minutes followed by kicking the bag for 2 minutes.  The testing ended with a set number of pushing and 2 minutes of plank.  She was exhausted by the end!  What was especially nice, however, was that all the other older students that have already earned their blackbelt in the past joined in with her during the push-ups and plank, cheering her on along the way.  It felt like she was a part of a blackbelt family, and there were great, positive vibes in the room.

At the end of the two days, Taelyn officially earned her first-degree blackbelt with no hesitations whatsoever.  There was a lovely candle ceremony afterward where her instructor highlighted some key strengths that Taelyn has shown over the last year.  Then she was “crowned” with her blackbelt that is embroidered with her name and rank.  It was such a special day, and we are so proud of her!

Message from the Future

It is now August of 2021, and the girls have been asking me more and more to see old pictures and videos from the blog.  We have such a good laugh together watching what feels like a lifetime ago.  As I think back to how I have not kept up my blog since 2019, I am filled with regret.  At the time, it made sense.  Life felt overwhelmingly busy at AES.  We each participated in numerous activities outside of school, and the community held so many events during any given week that it wasn't uncommon for us to be triple-booked on a Saturday night.  

The girls are now both in middle school, and I can't believe that 2/3 of their childhood is behind us.  I try to savor each precious moment I have with them, and we all want to be able to look back at our memories together.  So, I have decided to start up the blog again.  I will do my best to add current updates while also slowly trying to add posts from the "missing years" of 2018-2021.  My older posts may not be as detailed as they would have if I had written them just after the event, and perhaps I may only be able to add photos at times.  But I still think it's worth an update, and I want to keep those memories documented.  So here begins the next chapter of the Walker Family Blog!

Merry Christmas!

Halloween Fun

This weekend was jam-packed with Halloween celebrations.  It actually started Thursday after school with a superhero-themed Halloween festival at our library where kids went from station to station to complete various games and crafts.  Then the girls had a day off of school on Friday for parent-teacher conferences, so they used that time to get together with other campus kids and decorate the apartment for Halloween. They all did especially well with the front door!

That night, we had our faculty trick-or-treating on campus.  Kaelia dressed up as Moana and Taelyn was Mal from the movie Descendants. Then we all headed down to the faculty housing playground for a potluck and photos before the kids teamed up with their buddies and made their rounds to all of the apartments.  We love how independent they can be on campus at outings like this; we even had a little get together with some of the adults in our apartment as we passed out candy.  Then several of the campus kids came to our place after trick-or-treating and stayed for a Halloween movie, followed by a sleepover.

On Saturday, our school held its annual Fall Fiesta where the high school clubs run carnival-type games, bouncy castles, a haunted house, and musical performances for the younger children at the school.  Again, the girls were able to get together with friends and walk around on their own to the various games.  They had so much fun with their friends and with each other.  At one point, they a
ll pooled in their winning tickets from the games and shared some prizes together.  The evening was topped off with a raffle, and I won a free massage!

We had such a nice weekend full of spooky fun.  Happy Halloween!

Fall Break

We just cam back from our fall break where we spent the week in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Bruges, Belgium.  We had an amazing time and felt a nice change of pace from the busy school year so far.

We started the trip in Amsterdam where Justin and the girls ran races in the Amsterdam Marathon.  The girls entered the 700m kids' runs while Justin completed his 71st marathon!  Taelyn was very excited for her run and really focused on how to race well.  She wanted to pace herself instead of sprint from the start, and she learned that she can pass a lot of people at the end of the race this way. Kaelia has always been nervous about  races but wanted to try the run here to just see if she could have fun, and that is exactly what she did.  She didn't care about competing but just wanted to enjoy herself, and this was actually the first race that she did not walk in the middle.  Both girls were also excited that they got to finish their runs in the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium.  When their races were done, the three of us found Justin out on the course and cheered.  It was a beautiful day, and all three racers were happy and healthy!

The next morning, we decided to leave Amsterdam while there was still a lot of people there for the marathon, and we headed to Bruges, a medieval city in Belgium, for a few days.  We went to several museums including: a beer museum with a special tour for kids, the Choco-Story chocolate museum, and a medieval torture museum.  We also rented bikes one morning and rode over to the next town for a snack.  We had such a nice ride on a bike path surrounded by trees, farmland, animals and colorful, fallen leaves.  It was also the first time that all four of us have been on a bike ride together -Kaelia on a tandem bike with Justin because the 5 mile trip was a bit long for her to do on her
own.  For the rest of the time in Bruges, we went to a lot of great restaurant and pubs, enjoyed delicious Belgian beer and hot chocolate, and ate lots of great food, including Belgian waffles!

After a few days, we traveled back to Amsterdam where we spent the rest of the week seeing the major sites.  We took

a lovely canal tour, took a tour at the Heineken brewery, visited the Van Gogh museum, and went to the Anne Frank house.  The Anne Frank house was especially memorable and a good way for the girls to learn more about the Holocaust.

When we were not touring around in Amsterdam, we spent lots of time at Vondelpark for runs and for the girls to play on the Willy trees and various playgrounds.  We also, of course, enjoyed the food.  We especially liked the stroopwafels (thin, crispy waffle sandwiches with caramelized syrup in the middle) and poffertjes (small pancakes with a doughy center, sprinkled with powdered sugar and butter).

Overall, it was a wonderful vacation with beautiful fall weather.  We managed to escape the rain until the very last day of the trip, so that was a great time to head home.

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Summer Fun

We had a very busy summer this year, full of lots of driving to see friends and family.  First, we drove to Minnesota to run the Grandma's Marathon with other colleagues from our school in India.  On the way, we stopped in the UP to see Pictured Rocks; it was beautiful!  We ended in Duluth at a friend's lake house where we stayed for the race.  There we enjoyed boating, fishing, and lake life while we also fit in a running race.  Justin ran the full marathon, and I joined two other colleagues in the half.  It was an awesome race, beautiful course, and fun atmosphere in Duluth.

For the next adventure of the summer, Justin flew to Bolivia on a mountaineering expedition while the girls and I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Pepera for two weeks.  Uncle Joel came out too, so we had many days of endless activities and fun.  We went to a trampoline park, wave pool, and a Tiger's game with plenty of roller blading, jump roping, trail running, and playing school in between.  The girls also had a great time playing in the woods.  One of their favorite activities was building "Scotland" in the sand box where they made castles and rivers and labeled each part Castle Edinburgh, Inverness, Glamis, and then added Birnham Wood, Arthur's Seat, and Lake Loch Ness.  After finding lots of frogs and a turtle in the yard, they added these new friends to Scotland and put the turtle into Loch Ness so he could be the Loch Ness monster!

Justin came back in time for the 4th of July where we watched the parade and the girls collected candy.  Afterward, we headed over to Aunt Judy's for some pool time fun.  The local fireworks were actually a week earlier, and the girls were able to stay up that late for the first time to see the event.  We met up with Michelle (Taelyn's godmother and our good friend from high school) and the twins at the fireworks, and all four girls had an awesome time playing and watching the fireworks.

Our next endeavor was on the west side of Michigan where we visited Liz and Mike (Kaelia's godparents and our good friends from college) and their family, stayed with the Jettner's at their lake house, and then rented a lake house with Uncle Matty and his family.  Throughout this week, we had a lot of relaxation in the sun and boating and tubing fun.  Ari especially wanted to take the girls to a petting farm near her lake house where the girls all got to feed lots of animals like goats, donkeys, bunnies, camel, wallaby, and even a lemur.  There was also a pedal cart track and a giant air filled "pillow" for jumping.  One of the highlights was the parakeet section where we got to go into a large room of parakeets with a stick covered in food.  The birds swarmed us all, landing on our heads, shoulders, fingers, feet, and anything they could hold on to.  They seemed to really like Taelyn; at one point she was covered in dozens of birds.

While we were on the lake with Uncle Matty's family, we also went to an adventure park at Crystal Mountain to an alpine slide, rock climbing wall, ropes course, and pool.  The girls did an awesome job on the ropes course and rock climbing.  One day, we took the girls and Jayden to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and hiked the entire way to Lake Michigan and back.  It was definitely not easy for the kids, but they did a great job and really enjoyed swimming in the lake.

During our last week of summer, the girls spent lots of cousin time with Jacob and Riley while we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Walker.  They went to the pool, the movies, a robotics fair, and a Lego exhibit.  Once again, another fun-filled summer is in the books!

Kaelia's 1st Tooth Fairy Visits

Kaelia has had quite the wiggler lately, but she has insisted on not pulling out her first tooth until she is at school because she wanted a tooth necklace from the school nurse.  Her day finally came!