What a week!
I have to admit, I was very crabby about a week in Fort Lauderdale over the holiday week - crappy location, heat, humidity, missing time at the cottage with my family, missing Tom’s, missing the dogs, missing my bed…
Overall it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The room and pool were nice, even though other hotel expectations were ‘broken’ (stairwell key pads, elevator, 1/2 fitness room equipment…) but you could walk to everything. It was damn hot though. Almost unbearable …
This team and their families is so fun, makes up for the rest. The kids worked hard and did great, regardless of wins or losses. It was a great learning experience.
Billy took gold in weapons for the 3rd year in a row! 3peat 🏅🏅🏅 he also took bronze in traditional pomsea and got his goal score in points pomsea. 6.23 on sip-jin - it was the 1st time he’s ever done it in competition and he wanted to get a 6. He lost in the 1st round of sparring. They switched him from a bye to fighting the 1st round of the day and it threw him off. Couldn’t get out of his is own head.
Billy was also part of the inaugural AAU varsity letter program and earned his letter. They had an extremely disorganized awards ceremony but it was fun to see him get recognized for all he’s put into taekwondo through his high school years.
Amiir and John also got gold in weapons and there were other bronze medals all around.
I’m a slightly scary situation, Isaac took a nasty face shot and was knocked out (video 5 - see link below) he’s ok but … hoo, very scary.
We had amazing team dinners, swims in pool, shell hunting and, I’m sure, lots of video games.
The kids hung out, cheered their friends both on our team, and others, and basically ribbed each other non stop.
I found a cemetery to walk through and saw 2 new ‘life’ birds - the duck was huge!! The ibis has the prettiest pink undertones.
We had the best server I’ve ever had - Kady at Duffys. In fact, the boys asked to eat there the next night so they could have her again. Then they tried to impress her with an atomic wing eating context. Billy won. I tried one and it was good!
Billy also always ends up celebrating his ‘gotcha’ day while we are at nationals. Of course I embarrassed him by announcing it to the whole team. They all rallied and made sure he got his traditional brownies as well as a shamrock pie.
I loaded all the videos to our YouTube channel and included highlight photos below.
This will probably be the last nationals for a few years while Billy adjusts to college and new adventures. I am grateful I got this time with him before he’s off in the wide world of the U of M.
Billy we are so proud of you… your kindness, character, dedication, smile, attitude, work ethic and how you support your team as a friend and leader.
Love you beyond measure 💕🥋
