* tiny but powerful *

Rev. David Jones, on Halloween: "It's like a picture of the gospel - little devils running around getting gifts."

Hahahahaha.

In summary (thanks to Microsoft Outlook):
- Oct. 4: Stephanie Paz was born!
- Oct. 7: Wallace & Gromit, the movie! Gromit is so cute!
- Oct. 10/17: DL auditions/callbacks. Welcome back, Melisa and Lily!
- Oct. 12/15: Opening auditions. Congrats, Lisa Kim!
- Oct. 13: Emerson Annual Kick-off Dinner @ Celia's.
- Oct. 14: First Jammix of the year.
- Oct. 18: My first ever parent/teacher conference. Scary, but thank goodness Pat was there to help me guide it.
- Oct. 19: Back-to-School Night.
- Oct. 20: More job training, this time in Pleasanton. Almost done...just one more day in November, and it'll be at our Palo Alto campus.
- Oct. 23: RUF music team led Sunday worship at Grace. Then I visited Chi-En up in SF, and we also went to visit Justin's place. In the evening, I met up with Brian, Felix, Diana, Tiff, Will, Yves, and Trang to see Itzhak Perlman with the National Symphony performing at Davies Hall. It was an AMAZING performance, and I even appreciated some of the 20th-century music! I especially enjoyed the two encores they performed at the end.
- Oct. 25: Lunch with Meggy, a high school friend who just returned from over a year abroad in New Zealand! My lunch break was too short for us to really catch up, but it was wonderful to see her again.
- Oct. 28: Historical Halloween @ Emerson School. Guest appearances included: Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Queen Victoria, Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Maria Montessori, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sally Ride, George Lucas, and Elvis ("Thank you, thank you very much. Elvis has LEFT the building").
- Oct. 28-30: RUF/Grace Fall Retreat @ Mission Springs Conference Center. Great speaker, good discussions, wonderful acoustics, beautiful weather, fun games, hilarious pictures, and lots of food for thought and prayer.
- Oct. 30: Melisa finished my '30's dress! She's a rockin' costume machine! ;)

This afternoon, all the 1st-5th graders will be dressing up as a historical figure they admire and giving a short speech as that person, telling about their life and the positive influence they had on the world. They'll go in chronological order to create a living timeline. Good way to turn Halloween into an excuse for a research project, huh? ;) (We'll have a real Halloween party on Monday, don't worry.)

Right now I'm in the upper elementary room (Grades 4-5), because Pat (their Head Teacher and my supervisor/mentor) is recovering from a bad fall after our Staff Meeting on Wednesday night. For whatever stupid reason, no one left any lights on for the path leading from our front office to the parking lot, and it was DARK. There are these knee-height stumpy lamps that are supposed to light up the path at various points, but because they were OFF we couldn't see where the path *curves*, and Pat ran into one of the lamps and fell and sliced open her upper lip. She had to get stitches and a tetanus shot, and understandably she's pretty sore all over. Poor Pat... she won't get to see her kids give their speeches, but we hope she'll get lots of rest this weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, I'm really looking forward to it! I'll be leaving right after work today to drive up to the Santa Cruz mountains for the RUF retreat. Thankfully, the retreat doesn't conflict with Ragtime Ball like it did last year (although it *almost* did, because Ragtime was originally scheduled for tonight, before it got changed to Nov. 11). So this year I can go for the whole time and not miss any of the speakers/discussions. It's also funny that we get the extra hour from Daylight Savings on Saturday night/Sunday morning, because I remember being on a Crusade retreat several years ago when it was also Daylight Savings weekend. Yay for extra time!

If you pass by MemAud around 10:45 tomorrow morning, you will probably see me there outside...WITH MY KIDS! All of Emerson School is going on a field trip to see a Stanford Lively Arts flamenco performance, because our Spanish teacher has been teaching the kids some flamenco steps. Hahaha... wow, that's going to be weird. Two worlds colliding! Help my brain!

LINDA FINALLY HAD HER BABY!!! She was over a week past the due date (Sept. 26), so everyone at school has been waiting anxiously to hear from Linda. Little Stephanie finally entered the world yesterday morning at 7 pounds, 11 ounces! All the kids cheered when the news spread to our classroom. :-D Yay! So exciting!!!

Wow. I think this is the first time since sophomore year that I've missed an entire month of blogging. Um...oops. :-P I guess the activation energy threshold is a little too high these days.

September was a very busy month. It included: starting the new school year, working with brand new Kindergarteners (oof...), a family trip to Monterey, New Parent Orientation/Class Potluck Dinner, the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival, various Staff Trainings (I'm only 3/7 done), the start of Danse Libre's 10th season, dress designing and fabric hunting, starting The West Wing's Third Season for real, getting back into RUF things, and the usual Testimony beginning-of-the-year madness (Orientation Week, O-Show, auditions, and callbacks - though it was my first time as an alum/spectator during this time of year). Fun stuff, but very time-consuming. I probably won't ever blog about all that, so if you'd like to hear about something, just ask me directly. :)