Lauren's Black Belt Promotion

She's officially a 2nd degree black belt! Way to go Lauren! After a welcome introductory from Mr. Jim the 25 candidates came running on stage. They then started handing out the black belts. They did the first degree ones first and then the second degree which Lauren was last to get in her group. I do have picture and video of it but I need to edit it first. Once everyone got their new belt they were told to take off their old one and put it down, then pick up their new one. Before putting it on they were told to use their belt to wipe their forehead as a symbolic gesture of all the sweat it took to get it. Here Lauren is in the back row, middle of the picture. Then they were to tie on their new ones.

I guess they're not officially black belts until they take their oath. Here's a portion of it. They're told to memorize it which Lauren stressed about when she got her first degree. This time she didn't even bother since she knew all she had to do was repeat after Mr. Jim a few lines at a time. Near the end she goofed because the person next to her messed up, maybe she should have memorized it after all! The video gets a little blurry once in awhile, I think it's because I had it so zoomed in.

She demonstrated the kata she learned when she got to first degree, kata long 4, with one other person. During rehearsals Lauren was going to lead it but ended up letting the other person do it. I think she now wishes she had led! I have a video of her doing it but it's long, like over 2 minutes long so I can't put it on here. I was going to upload it to YouTube and just put a link here but after she watched it she didn't want me to. She said she did mess up once (I would never have known by watching) but the other guy messed up a lot. He messed up so much that quite a few times they were out of sync. She was none to happy!

So since I can't show you video of her kata I can show you video of her techniques. She partnered with her friend that is the same age as her (she got her 3rd degree black belt!)

She told me she messed up once there too but you can't tell by the video. They had to let their partners know ahead of time what techniques they were doing so they could be prepared and Lauren said she did something different from what she told her friend. They're both good at improvising so it worked out.

Next it was on to board breaking. Everyone had to break a board and Lauren did it by doing a side kick like this...

When she got her first degree belt she did a palm strike so she wanted to do something different for this one.

They took a short break for pictures, here's the group. Lauren is in the second row just to the left of the middle person.
A closer one of her and her friend.

The last thing Lauren and the rest of the black belts had to do was the "Rose of Appreciation." They were to recognize and give the rose to someone in their life as a token of thanks. Lauren said it was for both me and daddy. Yeah, he pays and I drive her there!

That was it for her, she was able to sit and watch the rest of the demos that the All-Stars and instructors did. The instructor portion is always neat to watch and this time they ended it with some board breaking using multiple boards. I know there had to have been at least 6, if not more, that one instructor did. I wish they could have done a funny skit or two like they did when Lauren got her first degree belt but overall it was pretty good. I wonder if she'll make it to 3rd degree...