Ryan Tests for His Orange Belt

Tonight I tested for my Orange Belt at Taekwondo. I thought they were going to have us each individually perform the form and defensive steps. However, they did it as a group. I was sweating it for nothing. As you can tell from the first photo, Benjamin kept getting on the floor. I'm still trying to figure out how to keep him off. I've been taking him to my Taekwondo stuff to allow Elizabeth some time to study her school stuff.
This is the standard position of attention. Hmm, fairly similar to the military except your toes are touching instead of in a "V". You can somewhat see in this photo that I have a number of black stripes on my belt. That signifies that I have mastered in practice sessions a number of techniques required for the form. I was the only white belt that broke boards earlier in the week. I was also the only white belt with four black stripes.
This is a high knife hand block. It's near the beginning of the form.
This is a great picture, Elizabeth does not think so. It looks like it should have Carl Douglas wailing "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting" in the background (even though it was actually Taekwondo).

Benjamin's Artwork

I learned my lesson about leaving Benjamin alone with Alexander while he has markers in his possession. I was in their room organizing Alexander's clothes while they were next door in the toy room. I heard Alexander start fussing and this is what I found.
Apparently, Benjamin ran out of paper. He amazingly didn't get any marker on Alexander's clothes, but I started stripping Alexander to get him washed off before I thought to take the photo. I love technology because I e-mailed it to Ryan at work right away and he got a kick out of it.This was what Benjamin colored before he got to his brother. He said it was a track and Thomas is the blue spot in the middle.
This is a tree Benjamin made by having his arm traced a the Early Childhood Center later that day.

The Chaplaincy Again

Ryan is pursuing the military chaplaincy for the 3rd time. There's a lot of paperwork involved in the process and our photo is one of the things they needed.
8 Sep 09. This was our first attempt at a photo. After Ryan submitted it, he was told we needed to be in "church dress" because a "General Authority" would see it.

We were going to have a professional take the photo but then decided we just needed to get it done.
20 Sep 09. Benjamin tried to be in the photo.
I don't think this is the one that made it in Ryan's chaplain packet, but the one that did looked really lame as Brother Clawson kept flipping past it in Ryan's interview. It was printed in color ink really big on the front of Ryan's packet. Maybe we should have gone for the professional photos after all.