Congrats Tristan!!!

This kid LOVES his Tae Kwon Do and gets so excited for the upcoming tournaments. Saturday was his 2nd tournament and he was just as excited as can be. We decided to make it even more special for Tristan by sending the other two kids to stay the night at my Dad's house. That way Brian and I could focus our attention just on Tristan. It's not often that the kids get such undivided time with us and the three of us all really enjoyed it.


His first event was breaking. He was breaking 1" boards with his feet. He had practiced this at TKD (we've gone through about 20 of these boards in the past month ... we had to pay for each one too. OUCH!). He said he had practiced without pads on, as they don't allow pads at the tournament. However when he broke his first board it hurt quite a bit (see him breaking his first ... a nice roundhouse kick! And Brian got to hold his boards for him too.). Because it hurt he took it easy on his 2nd kick and didn't break it in the 3 tries allowed (this is very common ... many did not break all boards). His 3rd kick was a front kick and he broke the board on the 1st try. He did great and was awarded a bronze medal!

His 2nd event was forms. This was his first time competing in forms and he had just learned the forms completely and correctly two weeks before. While he did the form correctly, he didn't score high enough to medal in this event. He wasn't discouraged though and was excited about his final event.


Last off was sparring. I will admit that I got no photos at all of his first match, simply because I didn't have time! He won the match 7-0 in less than 30seconds!!! WOW!!! His second match was quite a bit harder and he lost 4-10 to the boy who eventually went on to win gold. However his good performance earned him a bronze medal in sparring.


Tristan was just thrilled with his day. He's so stinking proud of those medals that it's ridiculous. He paraded around all day with them around his neck, even in the car and while eating lunch. It was so cute.

Thank goodness, he has only one more tournament this year. I say thank goodness only because of the sheer amount of money involved in competing. Each tournament costs us over $125. OUCH! And 3 within 3 months is just a bit too much to ask. We'll be glad for a break from competing until the fall tournament.


But we are SOOOOO PROUD of Tristan and his accomplishments. Most of all, we're glad he found something that he truly loves.