Picture of Zeke running his first Race.
It has been such a wonderful time watching Ezekiel mature over these past several months. He truly has a heart to do good and do well at whatever his endeavor. He is definitely my planner. He know what he likes, knows what he wants, and is willing to do what it takes to get there. Ezekiel and I have a mutual love of hiking and running. We have kinda developed it into "our" time together. Last year Zeke ran three races. We began running together in the fall of 2009. When we started running he ran about a 13 min per mile pace for two miles. Now he runs a race pace of about 8 min a mile and has run some trails with me upwards of 6-7 miles. The first race he ran was a 5 mile race in April. He came in second in the 14 and under division with a time just under 56 minutes. Then we didn't get the opportunity to race again until October when we ran a 10K. He did extremely well but the age division in the race went 19 and under. Boy are those older guys speed demons. He ran the race in 61 minutes. The last race we ran last year was a 5k that he finished in almost exactly 25 minutes. Our first race this year is the first week of April and he hopes to take 15 minutes off last years time and first place in his division. Additionally, we have been making time on the weekends to go hiking usually for about 10 miles. It is such a great time for us to spend talking and observing nature.
Zeke in the Freedom Run 10K
Zeke during warm-ups for TKD
In addition to running Ezekiel is in his 5th year of Tae Kwon Do and just a few short months from testing for his black belt. He excels in weapons training and loves to spar. He is the youngest, one of only a handful of students at the school who can actually use two sets of nunchuks at once. Right now in addition to nunchucks and his standard "forms" and training, he is also learning to use the bamboo stick, and learning the defensive moves of Hap Ki Do. He loves Tae Kwon Do. After he earns his black belt in Tae Kwon Do he hopes to begin training in Ju Jitsu.
Zeke getting ready to test for Dan Bo (his current belt)
Ezekiel is going on five years taking drum lessons and is really starting to get good at it. It is nice to hear "music" as opposed to noise coming from the basement. LOL. He has enough confidence in his abilities that he is actually signing up to perform at this years Homeschool Fine Arts Fair. It is awesome to see him stepping out of his comfort zone as he is definitely not one to enjoy being in front of a crowd. In addition to drums Ezekiel finished Music Theory II in school and as promised I have begun teaching him how to play clarinet. It took a couple tries for him to make a sound but after a week or so he is beginning to sound ok. It is fairly quick for him to pick up as he already reads music from taking two years of music theory, and playing the recorder is very similar to clarinet. He is having a lot of fun with it.
Picture of Zeke with one of the three Butterflies we raised this year.
School is going great this year, and he should finish his fifth grade studies by April. We added Latin and some vocabulary word studies to this year in an attempt to improve his dismal spelling ability. It is amazing the difference in his spelling ability now from this time last year. He reads endlessly and has a better grasp of language now. He really likes Latin and it has not been as hard to teach him as I originally dreaded it would be. I am hopeful that after a couple years if Latin, moving to a usable language will be easier yet. His study skills are coming along, and he is capable of independent study for a large portion if his schoolwork. He is looking forward to being done with school when Chris comes home from deployment so he can just hang out and not worry about school
Zeke with the fish he caught barehanded on a day trip to the Shenandoah River with Friends Angie and ZZ
For his birthday, Ezekiel took the money he got from his father, and purchased a little laptop for himself. He has taken such good care of it and been so responsible with it. I am really proud of him. We all went out to a movie and had diner out because it was a crazy busy time at the house and we just did manage to squeeze in a little celebrating. Instead of having a cake we went to Nutter's Icecream and Ezekiel had a HUGE banana split. When we decided to spend November and December in Florida this year Zeke was a little stressed about the prospect if having to go see his father. We had to reassure him endless times that he would not be required to go to his fathers and it still took him forever to relax about it -but He did, and we had an awesome time. Ezekiel really only asked for a couple things: another knife for his collection, some running gear, a couple books and games. He got everything he wanted and more. It's amazing how exciting life can be when you get what you want because you don't need to have everything. Ezekiel and I enjoyed being able to run more frequently in FLorida because of the wonderful weather in Nov and Dec. However, we really missed our trails. It's so unfortunate that there is more opportunity to run but less options as to where to run. We were not happy to return to WV and find the trails hard packed with ice and snow and the temps in the teens on a nice day.
Ezekiel at Dinosaurland
. Since we have returned to WV Ezekiel continues to work on his Drums, Tae Kwon Do, and finishing up school for the year. He is also happy to be back actively participating in AWANAs at church. He will be participating in the AWANA games in Baltimore next month. I can't wait to watch him. He is also excited for the return of spring weather and we are back out on the trails.
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