My Birthday Party

Recently, I celebrated my tenth birthday on November 8th. My cousins, and grandparents came to my house to wish me a happy birthday. We celebrated my birthday in the evening when I came home from gymnastics. I was really glad to see my grandparents holding a huge chocolate cake, my favorite. I quickly showered and put on my warm pajamas. When everyone arrived at our home, my grandmother pulled my ears 11 times, an extra time for good luck, and I blew out the candles.

Getting my ears pulled

The next day, I invited my friend over to go ice skating with my family. We all drove to the rink, and wore thick pants, and a warm sweatshirt and jacket, so if we fell, it wouldn't hurt as bad. When we entered the ice rink, I got the chills, as it was very cold. We all quickly got our skates on and went onto the slippery ice. We adapted to the slippery ice instantaneously, and were soon skating very fast and playing games like tag. We finished our adventure unscathed with no injuries.  After skating for about 4 hours, we went out for dinner with my aunt and uncle. 








Here is a video of us skating on ice.

Do you have any funny birthday traditions?

Bach Pieces

Over the weekend, Hannah and I recorded 2 new piano pieces that we recently learned. We both played Bach. I played a piece called Invention in C major, and Hannah played Prelude in C minor. I worked very hard to learn all the right notes, playing parts loud and quiet, and learning the piece by memory. Many of Bach's pieces have two voices/melodies, the right hand has one melody, and the left hand has a different melody. When I play, I am supposed to show both melodies. Bach wrote these Inventions, as exercises for his students to play with no mistakes. He wrote one invention for each scale. The first one was for C major, then C minor, and so on  for all the scales. I played the first invention in C major. My sister Hannah's prelude was one of 6 short preludes that Bach wrote also for his students as exercises. They were never meant to be performed, but since they are beautiful we decided to record both of them.

My name is Hannah, and I am doing a guest post on Sarah's blog. This weekend, I learned a new piece. It was a lot of work to learn it by memory. I had to practice this piece many times.  The piece is two pages long. I played it so many times but I just could not remember this piece by memory. One day I practiced only the left hand and I realized that I almost had it by memory. When I tried to record it, I played it perfectly without notes. The piece is hard because the left hand has it's own melody and the right hand has its own melody.

What did you think about these pieces? 

Should they be played only as exercises or performed as concert pieces?