Parents Give Karate Belts

Last night we had a belt promotion for our little ones. Our Tiny tigers who are between the ages of 3 and 5. Everything went very well. The kids were great, the parents were proud, and I was extremely proud!

Just before the test I was thinking about when my children were Tiny Tigers and I awarded them their very first earned or tested for belt. I can not explain how happy and proud I felt just by being the one to award the new well earned belt to my child (children). I thought that every parent should expirience this feeling at least once. This promted me to change the belt ceremony just a bit. At the end of the ceremony I handed out the certificates (which are cool to have but the kids do not care for them half as much as they care about getting their new belt) and the parents each handed out the new belts to their child.

This turned out to be awesome! Every child got their new belt from one of their parents along with a hug and a kiss. What a scene this was! I felt quite emotional and we just created a wonderful atmosphere.

I just want to give out a big "THANK YOU," to all of our members and their families for making belt promotions such a big deal and so special. I have friends that own martial arts schools and some of them promote their students within their regularly scheduled class. I know that this makes things very convienient for students, instructors, and parents. I know because I used to do this.

We now try to always make it a special event and schedule belt promotions at special times other than during the students regular classes. Although a bit inconvienient at times, this has been working very well and reminds us all of how important of an event it really is when we are all being promoted to a new level and continue on our path of growth in the journey we call the "Martial Arts."

Hello,

It has been a long time since I posted here. It seems sometimes that with all that is going on it just gets harder and harder to post here, and on facebook, and the web site, and deal with emails.

I want to send out a big "Thank You" to my wife, Frances Cuartas. Without her all of the multimedia for Family Dragon Karate would not be possible. What a great job she is doing and continues to come up with a geat newsletter every month (if you are not recieving our news letter and would like to subscribe send us an email at andresfdk@optimum.net).

Also, today is Frances' Birthday. Happy Birthday Fran!

Here we are almost half way into February and we have already been so active this year. We had our very first night out with our adult students at Jeff's Cuisine in Norwalk, CT, celebrated Chinese New year next door to the studio at Asia Hamachi, had four new students become Jr. Black Belts, and 9 others get promoted further into their Jr. Black Belts, started a new session of Elite Team training (Chinese Broad Sword), and this Friday we will be hosting our Valentine's Parent's night out!

Next month we will be promoting 6 other students further into their Jr. Black belts and one to an adult Black Belt. We will also be going to our first tournament of the year. This one will be a Kempo tournametent that we attended last year and did a great job, scored many trophies and medals, and had a lot of fun. For the adults we will be having a dinner and movie night at Jeff's Cuisine.

Family Dragon Karate Rocks! We are so excited to continue to serve and work with such wonderful people!