Update

It's been a while since my last update, and lots of stuff has happened.

DW and I went to the U.S. in October for two weeks - DW spent almost the entire time at her sister's, where her Mom was visiting, back from the Solomon Islands. I went off to my sister's for about a week first, where I had a great time, met my parents for a few days and got lots of exercise - I joined her in doing the "Couch to 5K" program, went to her dojo twice (Isshinryu), did "core" with her (lots and lots of crunches), and went bowling with her and the kids as an early birthday present to me :-). I came back to Georgia and my sister-in-laws on my birthday, where we celebrated an all-in-one birthday party the next day (mine, my mother-in-law's, my brother-in-laws all in the same week). Then I visited my cousin near Philadelphia for a day, and finally went to D.C. where I met up with DW and we celebrated her birthday with a few hundred thousand people (well, they mostly weren't there for her birthday, they were there for the Rally to Restore Sanity, which we were there for, too). We did a road trip back to Georgia, which was pretty fun - lots of time with DW. :-)

In December I passed the belt test for green belt. I did lots of prep and held children's "free training" Saturday mornings again - the kids did pretty good when they were tested. The youth were more mixed. The lower belts were really good, the middle belts were so-so, and two of the youth who had just moved up from the kids failed - the standards are much higher for youth than for kids. I'm hoping that they don't give up: they're both good.

We did some visiting during Christmas and had a small New Years party with Raclette at our place. I continued to work. I felt very out of shape after a couple of weeks of not training.

Then I jumped right in with a "trainer training", from Wed. (5-Jan) evening to Sunday noon, training, training, training, with a surprise: on Sat. all the green belts were given a surprise belt-test, and we're now all blue belts. I also have a trainer "C" certificate, allowing me to train in our dojo with my sensei's permission. I still need to get my first aid certification, though.

Mom is still cancer free, though it's really too early to say it is really gone. She's also just had a cataract operation on one eye.