25 memories from the Rabbit Year

         The Year of the Rabbit wasn't without it's ups and downs, but regardless, I came away with a lot of great memories, and lessons.

1.Our first team meeting and learning something weird about everyone.  Highlight was Sihing Brinker's toe and how Sifu Rybak couldn't look away.

2.Watching Todai Poitras use her son as a proxy to demonstrate her weapon form, and proving that there is always a way to meet your deadline.

3.Weapon swapping with one of our teammates and putting together a short demo.

4. Our electrifying Canada Day dragon dance, and feeling the static.

5. Competing in and heling with keeping track of numbers in the Tiger Challenge.  Highlight was watching the kids pool noodle fight, or lack there of in one instance.

6. Taking gold in both sparring events at the tiger challenge. Other highlight, watching Sifu's Ward and Bjorkquist battle it out with the pool noodles.

7. Break-a-thon, and board breaking at the Tiger Challenge, both gave me great insight in how to improve.

8. All my one-on-ones with Sifu Brinker.  I cherish each one, because I know one day that knowledge will be lost/inaccessible 

9. Our dragon dance practices. I'm hoping we can continue on and nail down some of the more complex movements to showcase next year.

10. Halloween class, the costume and the games.

11. Elephant-Jello + animals.

12. Maintenance week and finally finishing that darned ceiling.

13. The potato bake.

14. Bootcamp, and the struggle it was to begin to learn the butterfly swords.

15. Earning my Brown Belt

16. Completing my Yoga Teacher Training

17. All the push-ups shared with my teammates, special shoutout to Sihing Burke

18. Constant support from Sihing Y. Csillag over the year, and all his help with the dragon dance too.

19. The banquet, the dances (all of them), the demos, the award recipients

20. Watching our 2 newest black belts get promoted, and their speeches, both of them.

21. Personal growth I experienced this year. I had a lot of hard conversations this year, but came out better because of them.  They also helped me to strengthen my relationships.

22. Learning to relax my shoulders more while using my weapon.

23. Our monthly mini challenges put up by Sihing Kohut, and crushing some of those challenges by a large margin

24. The times Sifu Hayes teaches us a class, always filled filled pearls of wisdom.  In particular, the downward foot block.

25. The accomplishments I made this year in the IHC, my numbers just keep improving year to year.

Current numbers for the Year of the Dragon:

Km's- 9 km

AOk's- 4

PU/SU- 1000

DMH- 0

Monk Spade-0

Sparring- 0