Kung Fu Showdown!

One of the perks of moving out West and living in the same city as Papa Peep works in, is that he gets to do cool stuff for himself. He pretty much lived in an airport or airplane before our move. Because he loves his family so much, he never really did things for himself when he was home. He just wanted to spend as much time with his family as he could while he could. Things like playing basketball, taking guitar lessons or learning kung fu were put on the back burner so he could attend swim meets, baseball games, soccer games, and chess tournaments.

Well, no more!

He recently began taking Kung Fu lessons. He is very excoted to be learning this skill. He comes home eager to show us what he has been taught. Below you see him and the boy peeps hashing out his latest learned form. (I am sure there is a name for it but he is XBoxing right now and I don't want to go all the way downstairs to ask.)

(We had just had dinner and the kitchen is a mess so don't look too closely.)

Since he enjoys it so much, he spends as much time as he can practicing and perfecting his forms. This past weekend his school attended the first tournament in this area for this particular martial arts. Papa Peep entered 2 competitions. One was a forms competition and the other was a weapons competition. Today we will address the forms competition.

Here he is at the very beginning of the routine. He has presented himself to the judges and asked permission to perform his routine. (SHHH...he was very nervous and did not know what to expect.)

Intense! He is centering his qi....

The lighting was terrible in this place and I did not want to use my flash in case I distracted him. Can I say here that about 80 or so white, yellow, and orange belts competed in forms.....80 people!

Look at those lightning fast hands!

So he was the 20 something person to perform a routine that quite a few people performed. I must say, he was intense. He was focused. He was powerful. And unbiasly speaking, he was perfect!!!!

They chose 4 people to move to the finals and Papa Peep was the 1st person they called out!!!

We were so happy and excited. The kids were his biggest cheerleaders. They nearly tackled him when the announcement was over. It was wonderful to watch them get so excited for their daddy.

While performing in the finals he lost his balance and stumbled just the slightest bit. The competition was fierce. He ended the morning with a 4th Place trophy. We are very proud of him!!!!

To be continued.........The weapons portion........