October is the new December!

It's my first blog! Since reading blogs is fast becoming my new religion, I thought I'd get in on some of this action. I chose to call this 'Who does these things?' because that is what my Mom used to ask the room at large when she'd find an empty bag of chips in the pantry or a gallon ice cream bucket in the freezer with exactly one bite of ice cream left in it. That doesn't really explain why I chose it now, does it?

The reason October is the new December is because all the sudden Halloween is like the biggest thing since Christmas. My no-holiday-decorating-unless-it's-Christmas is starting to look a lot hum-bug (which is the only reason I started decorating for Christmas). Every year our neighborhood does a sneaky treat left on the doorstep with a humiliating paper that says "WE'VE BEEN BOO'D!" that we are instructed to leave in the front window so we don't get boo'd more than once. Those same instructions say that we need to boo someone else or die tragically or something. For the last three years I haven't gotten around to making a copy of the Boo! instructions, so we get boo'd three times before I get the paper in the window. Boooo indeed.

I decided to have my piano recital in October this year because when I have it in December my mind ends up being blown for the whole month of December. I'm having it at Greenwood Manor, the local Assisted Living home where my Grandpa lives. My students are wearing their Halloween costumes and playing songs that are related to their costumes. The activity director at Greenwood wanted me to take two nights since the families of my 16 students would take up too much room. Having eight kids play one song each is going to take 15 minutes. And I wasn't able to talk Abby (six year-old, Primer-level student) into being a character from The Sound of Music to play Edelweiss. She will be a vampire and it makes perfect sense... to her. (For those of you who are interested, I'm guessing none of you, the correct way with numbers is to spell them out if the number is ten or lower and to write the number if it's 11 or higher.) It's always a good time performing for the residents at Greenwood. If they like you, they ask you to stay all night. They also ask you how old you are. Okay, Gertrude asks you how old you are. She is German and she needs to know. So, I asked my violinist friend and her daughter to fill out the rest of my program on Thursday and I'm going to see if my Dad knows any haunting music to sing next Tuesday.

Anyone who reads this is going to hear a lot about my 16 month-old baby, Bridget. She is a princess. :) Since she performs a new trick every day, I will tell you today's trick. She has figured out how to climb onto the dining room chairs. A few times I have come into rooms and found her sitting on her own little chair or sitting on the toy chest in her room. Also, she pulled Brian's scriptures off his bedside table and stood on top of them to more easily empty the top drawer. She actually did this yesterday and took out his swimming goggles. I was able to curl my hair while she paced the floor trying to get the goggles on her head. Very determined. At church my friend commented that my hair looked nice. She sounded surprised. Probably because Brian was off on the hunt and every weekday I look like a scarecrow because he's not around to distract Bridget while I pull myself together.

So! That's all for now, I guess. I need to figure out how to put in pictures and act like I know what I'm doing.