Friday, October 8, 2010

It was a great day

I know, I know, it was a week ago, but still. Saturday was fun. We had to get up really early, we were meeting the others at 7.15AM. Of course we were the first ones there.... we stopped for breakfast on the way up, thank goodness. I really needed more coffee, I did nothing but yawn!
The tournament was something else. Lots of people dressed all in black and funky uniforms, all kinds of color belts, the forms were often times hilarious looking. You couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag with those, they looked more like dance performances. Gabrielle did well, she placed second in forms. Considering that all three judges wore black uniforms and the girl who took first place wore a black uniform she did awesome!!!
When it came to sparring they were informed that the junior ranks were not allowed to touch the head area (now remember they were wearing headgear), so Gabrielle was just a little freaked out. Her thing is this high spinning inside kick and not being able to do that intimidated her. I could tell she was not herself sparring. Nevertheless she beat 2 girls but got disqualified fighting for first place. She had previously gotten a warning for touching the girls head (with her fist) and then she kicked her in the stomach (which was supposed to be a contact area (allowed) and the girl bent over slightly, so they told her she used excessive force and she was disqualified. Boy was she ever mad! She got over it though, especially when our Sabomnim told her he was proud of her :) It was a fun time though, everybody in our group placed and I got to take pictures :) Perfect! I should have competed, there were hardly any old people...:)


Here she is doing her form




Here is the guy we called the Power Ranger, because he did all this funky stuff like throwing his sword in the air, doing a flip and then catching his sword again on the way down. Totally retarded in a real fight, but it looked good :)


Here she is fighting her last fight. This lady judge in the front is the one who had it in for her. She warned her continuously, oh well...



Here they are, all proud and happy!



So then we had to rush home, because I had the Black Belt Reunion in the evening. I just had time to get changed and put some makeup on. It was really fun seeing some of the kids who quit years ago and now are young adults. The meal was great too. They asked me to take some pictures, of course I didn't have my external flash, so I had to use my regular flash, yuck! I fixed them up the best I could and they were happy anyway. Somebody got me with their camera and I got that photo too :)





A bunch of crazy people!

This page was really popular in the gallery, it's all because of cute Max! He does think he is a little baby!


Another one of those cellphone pictures that Rachel took..


I felt like playing with perspective and had fun extracting Michael for the "I"


Here is that photo again..


I just finished this one, although the pictures are from January of 2009. That's the way I work, I am all over the place...


And this cool spider web was in the backyard the other day, once it finally stopped raining. I thought it looked really neat


the last 365 page for August, now on to September..



The rest of the week went it's usual way, again there was something almost every day and I hardly got anything fun done, but that's life I suppose. I really wish there was more time to do everything. I want to read stuff about photography, how to make a studio, how to use lights and all that cool stuff. I want to have time to look at different blogs, my friends must think I abandoned them... hopefully tomorrow I will be able to go to google reader and check out what everybody has been up to...

Well, that was just a quick update. We'll see how the weekend goes, maybe I'll post again before another week is over (yeah, right)

4 comments:

Joanie said...

Looks like you had lots of fun. Anke, do you ever have time to sleep?

Unknown said...

First off, congratulations to your dd on her accomplishments! Wow! That is a sport I know nada about but it looks intense. Secondly my dear, how do you manage to get photos scrapped so beautifully so quickly? Tell me your secret! I'm always in awe! These are great LOs….love them all!

Jeanne said...

Anke, you accomplish SO much in your life that you claim is just same old, same old. I don't know where you find the energy! Then you scrap your special moments beautifully.

That competition looked really intense! Congrats to your daughter for placing so well. And your reunion looked like tons of fun.

Post when you can and enjoy these moments with your family.

Barb said...

Of course congrats to Gabrielle!! AS always, a great job. I guess you will always come across people like this in competition. All you can do is what she did. Smile it off!! Know you are good and accept the congratulations of those that you know know their stuff!!

Glad you got to go to your reunion. It looked like a fun time!!

Have you started getting your photography studio in shape? Come on!! You need to do it!!

Never say Never!

Well, here I am creating my very own blog! I was always very sure I would never get into this blogging "thing", but here I am. I hope you will enjoy finding out a little about my not so interesting life!