"what time is it?"

It's time to prepare for the next week of school! It's really a good thing I didn't wait to start on this giant clock until Saturday, because I know now that I never would have gotten it finished in time for class on Monday! Here it is in it's nearly finished state... And here it is practically ready to go! I need Dad to load it up and take it to the church tonight so I can set it up and see if it actually will stay standing... It's too tall to stand up in the house, and too COLD to try it outside, so the church is the next best place that I can think of! All it needs to make it complete is the "Griffitts Clock Works" logo on the clock face. Then it will be all done!
Oh, yeah - I made this for the kids at school to dance to a piece of 'clock music' that has at least 4 different sections, (like section 'A', 'B', 'C', and 'D') so they can learn about form in music. I thought this would make it more fun - but the tall kids are going to have to really scrunch down to fit through those doors! It's been fun to make it, though. It really ended up coming out pretty much how I imagined it! That's a first!

It's also 'time' that gramma got some new jammies! Grampa thought it would be fun to open these for a Christmas Eve present in Pennsylvania so the girls would be happy that I got some
jammies. Well, we weren't there, so I just opened them on Christmas and wore them to Alan and Sandy's for dinner! They sure are cosy!

and, last, but not least, icicles!

These pictures speak for themselves. Icicles all over the place.

Oh, yeah...Darbye came home!

We were not technically late to the airport, but Darbye was already there, so we WERE late to greet here. Thankfully, Jeremy and Amy were there to greet her! But, we do have pictures to prove that we did get to the airport to pick her up! Here are Ramona, Caleb and Alyssa at the airport to greet Darbye.

Dad was happy to see his youngest daughter home safe and sound!

Another Ramona and Cousins picture!

It's been good to have Darbye home for the last couple of weeks. She is working hard and we are especially happy to have her here for Christmas! Woo-hoo!

Baby, it's cold outside!

The view from the front door - even deeper than last year! And it's STILL SNOWING! The only bad part was that we couldn't fly out on Monday, so we aren't in Philly right now.... Oh, well. It was a white Christmas, and we have had a nice, quiet time together with Darbye. The view from the back door...

I got a couple of musical gifts from Dad - this is my new guitar strap. And Darbye printed off some easy guitar carols for me to practice!

AND! I got two sets of really nice marimba mallets! REALLY nice ones! I've already used them to figure out how to play Silent Night - WITH harmony! They really sound great, so it's fun to use them.

Christmas Eve

Mom and Dad (aka Gramma and Grampa) at Suzie's house for the annual Christmas party. With jingle bell earrings, jingle bells on my shirt AND jingle bell slippers, I was jingling all the way! Grandma Shar read a story about Candy Canes, and then gave everyone a candy cane at the end!

The cousins all sang a pretty song. It was so fun to watch them all together.

One of the highlights was Tytan reciting his lines in the christmas program: "Fear not! Jesus is born. There's the star. Go find him!" It was SO CUTE!!!

It was a house full of people, but it was sure fun!

Special Chorus: Festival of the Trees

Blitzen's Boogie - THE favorite song of all time! Aren't they cute? Their parents all thing so, so it was all good!

Bishop got a really nice picture of one of his 'flock' - Katheryne!

I can even look like a choir director when I try hard! It was lots of fun, and I got to watch the programs of several of the other Special Chorus leaders in town - most of them new friends of mine...

Thanksgiving

The Crebs family visited for Thanksgiving. It was so fun to see them all! Ava discovered how to play the recorder. She's going to be quite the musician.

This is a cute picture, but Ava didn't like the looks of the Elf behind us, so she wasn't happy about sitting so close to him! We were lucky to get the picture.

The last 3 months: First, Coeurimba Bunco Party!

Sometime in October or November (it's been so long I can't remember exactly...) we hosted a Coeurimba Bunco party at our home for the members of 'the band' and their families. It was so much fun we kept talking about it for weeks! Dan Powel is showing off his prize globe.... Tina was hoping Bob would pick this fancy 'head scratcher' as his prize, but I think she had to take it back home with her and save it for the next Bunco party.

We had a house full, but we had a bunch of fun, too! Behind me is Bob, Eileen, Garrett, Garrett's Dad and sister, and Tina. What a fun time!

Dan, Lincoln and Bailey Powell posing with their 'v' is for victory sign!

It's been a long, long time!

Wow! I can't believe how busy teachers are! I've barely had time to sleep and get dressed between all the lesson planning and school time I'm putting in! But I am learning lots of fun stuff. I'll have to teach you all "Fuzzy Wuzzy". So far that's one of the coolest rhythm things I've learned! (and, no, it's not just the poem!) Anyway, all next week we'll be singing 'Pumpkin Carols', so I've learned one to the tune of 'Oh, my darlin' Clementine' on my guitar, AND I can play 'She'll be comin' 'round the mountain', too! We are going to do an exercise in composing and make new Halloween words to that song - should be fun!
OK, funny story: One of the little kids in a first grade class didn't realize that I attend church with him until I filled in for the absent chorister a few weeks ago. Then he saw me at school and said "Mrs. Griffitts, I never knew you ever went to church!" Then, Thursday he said "Mrs. Griffitts, I know something." When I asked him what he knew, he stuck out his chin and said "I know how to talk to you without raising my hand." When I asked him how he was going to do that, he leaned into the room and said "I can talk to you at church!" Funny kids!
Well, life is still good but busy! Gotta go!

Recorder lessons...

Too bad there aren't any pictures to go with this one! I was just talking with the music teacher I am subbing for, and I mentioned that I'd never played the recorder before, and I was hoping to get the knack of it before I began that teaching unit in October. I still squeek quite a bit. Well, she told me the FUNNIEST THING!!! She said she shows the kids that you don't need to blow with much force at all by playing "Mary had a Little Lamb" with her NOSE!!! I actually just tried it and ... IT WORKS! This could make an interesting party trick... Just DON'T try it with a cold! (EEEEEWWWWW, GROSS!)
Well, I'll leave you with that pleasant thought!
Gramma Jamma!

Gramma Goes To School

I have officially finished my first week of school. I tried to take a picture of myself before I left for my first day of classes, but the flash kept going off in the mirror and it didn't take a good picture. Just believe Steve when he says I look pretty funny biking down the road with my red helmet on and a guitar on my back!
But this is really fun and will surely make me a more interesting gramma! I'm learning all kinds of kid songs and rhymes - not to mention that I can now play "G", "D" and "A" chords and switch pretty well on my guitar- and I'm working on "C" and "E" now. I hear that will make me able to play just about any kid song ever written! And to think I've only had my guitar for one week! It's really fun to learn new stuff, though.
I met with Barb Windisch (the retired music teacher) and Julie Johnson (the sick music teacher) this afternoon, and they were being SO NICE, but pretty much FLOODED this old head with new information! I'm taking on Special Chorus (we've already gotten the request to sing at Festival of the Trees - a bit of a scary thought!) and I've learned about how to get the 4th graders started on playing their recorders and stuff! YIKES! Anyway, like I said, it's a great learning experience for me and I'm having a blast with the kids.
Anybody know how to play the piano? I need an accompanist for Special chorus....
We drummed today!

You want me to do what???

Holy cow! What a morning! I got a phone call this morning that really revved up my heart rate! The school district called to see if I would agree to take on a long-term music sub job at Hayden Meadows school! I was set to sub for a few weeks for that teacher (who is new there since Mrs. Windisch retired last spring), but I had heard that her son was coming in to help for the semester. Well, he can't do it, so they asked me if I'd fill in for her...until January! Well, after consulting with Tamar and local music teacher Julie Powell, I decided to go for it. I had to cancel my sub job with Jerre Coleman at LCHS teaching French in October, and I'm sad about that, but it's going to be fine. Julie Powell is sure I can do it! The poor teacher has just been diagnosed with cancer and is hoping to be over the hard part of therapy by January. I'll sure be praying for her, too! I guess we'll see if I really am 'Gramma Jamma' after all!

WHAT A WEEK!

You have all probably seen our anniversary pictures by now, so you know that last Monday we spent the afternoon on the Hiawatha trail and had a picnic lunch. Well, here's the 'rest of the story'.
On the way home Dad suggested that we go to a new Italian restaurant for dinner. OK, but I wasn't hungry yet since we'd had a late lunch, so my mind started working, and I said "we can ride our bikes to the restaurant (it's by Albertsons, so not too far...) and then we can bike up to Zips and have a dip cone for dessert!" Well, we finally came to the conclusion that we didn't need to have 'real' dinner, and since we are adults now, we opted for having dip cones for dinner instead! Good thing we didn't ride our bikes, though, because Zip's doesn't sell them anymore, so we had to go all the way to Dairy Queen to get them!
Tuesday was pretty busy with golf and Coeurimba practice that lasted until about 10:00 since we were preparing for TWO gigs in one week! Then, Wednesday was spent having a massage and cleaning house. Thursday I played about 6 holes of golf before we got rained out, ran out to the fair grounds for our first gig of the week and we got 'rain delayed' twice (both times having to quickly dismantle the instruments and run with them for cover from the rain and hail into the poultry barn!) Then, we picked up Sarah and Josh (our adopted young adult kids - since we don't have any of our own here in town...) and went to dinner at Bonsai and then to see Les Miserables at NIC. That was great! Darcy Wright was Eponine and she did a great job! It was really fun to see her.
Friday I baked cupcakes for Brad and Jessie's reception and then got ready to leave for Pullman in the afternoon. We got to the hotel about 5:30 and then walked through the lentil festival and got some food and had ice cream for dessert. Tina actually got a whole scoop of lentil ice cream! She let us taste it and we were glad that we'd gotten more traditional flavors....
Saturday we got ready for our gig in the park and we realized we were pretty much the main event musically speaking. That was fun! We played for two hours and had a great time! Then we packed up and headed up to CdA. I got home just in time to get ready for Brad and Jessie's reception and it was really a nice time! The weather was beautiful and we sat in the back yard and had hot dogs and chips and cup cakes! It was really fun. I think we were the last group to leave - we stayed quite a bit past dark!
Yesterday was Stake Conference and it was nice, too. Lots of good messages - a few that hit a little too close to home, so we have to be humble and accept the counsel from our leaders! Then we pretty much spent the day with Alan and Sandy and Brad and Jessie and TJ eating left over hot dogs and cup cakes! But it was all good. Then we played up & down the river and watched the closing ceremonies from the olympics. Good week.
Here we go again: it's Monday!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is our 31st anniversary, and we decided it would be fun to take a bike ride in Montana and Idaho! This is the coolest trail - we recommend it to anyone who loves the outdoors! Check out these pictures! Here is the end of the 2 mile Taft tunnel. It was DARK, wet and pretty cold - but it felt good in the 90+ degree weather! This was really cool, but next time we do this, we are taking our own lights! The ones we rented weren't quite good enough, but we managed to make it through to....
...This beautiful sight! A pretty waterfall that sounded as good as it looks. Of course, the camera can't quite capture the absolute beauty of the place, but this is a good representation anyway!

And just below the waterfall was this pretty stream. We looked down on it and had to take another picture!

Just another 'ho-hum' scene from the trail.... WOW!!!
Didn't I marry one handsome dude? He is so good looking that he made the background look good!
And WHAT A BABE! (that's a quote from Dad...) This is while we were both still relatively clean!

Cool picture of the end of yet another tunnel. There were several on this trip of varying lengths!
This picture was taken on one of the many trestles we biked across. This trail was built over the old "Milwaukee Road" train tracks. Since the train doesn't run anymore, they made it into a bike trail, and it is SO COOL!If you look through the trees you can see a picture of one of the trestles that we crossed. And below is a clearer picture of that same trestle. Can you believe we biked across it? The view was just stunning!

And here I am at the bottom of the trail - slightly dusty but still ready to dig into the pic-a-nic basket full of sandwiches, veggies and fruit that we'd carried with us the whole way down the trail!
And here is the handsome man I married after getting off the shuttle bus and going back up through the tunnel where we'd started so we could get to our car. The second time through the tunnel it didn't seem so dark and dangerous, so we went fast enough to get a good sized mud stripe up Steve's back!

Truly, you all NEED to make this trip. It was fun and beautiful!

Lookie what I found!

When I got home from church this afternoon my neighbor was outside and said 'hello', so we started talking since we hadn't seen eachother for a while. Well, pretty soon, I heard a 'buzzing' sound, and I looked around, and there was a humming bird flying really close by my head. I looked, and the bird was hovering by a tiny nest in a tree limb not a yard to the left of my head! And, inside the nest, there were TWO baby humming birds! Well, I ran into the house and got my camera to take a picture, but when I got back there was only one baby in the nest. But I waited patiently and sure enough, the other one came back, and here it is, hovering next to the nest. How cool is that? I went out just now - at dusk - to see if I could get another picture - and I got a good one, but I can't get it to download onto the computer. Where's Riley when I need him?
Anyway, cool pictures. But if I can get that other one to upload, I'll include it, too!

QUICK trip to Rexburg...

Well, after getting home from Philadelphia on Monday, I vowed I wouldn't travel for a while. However, after seeing my hair in the mirror I became desperate, so I called my friend Janet Shirts and asked if she was willing to take a quick 7 hour drive to Rexburg to get our hair done by Lindsay. (I happen to know 2 important things about Janet: 1. She won't let anyone but Lindsay cut her hair - unless she gets really desperate, and then she does it herself, usually with disasterous results! and 2. She had already done her own hair twice since Lindsay had done it last, so she was in need of a 'fix'.) She was agreeable to the journey, so we left for Rexburg at 2:00 Wednesday afternoon - I'd talked to her about it at 12:45... - and we arrived at 10:00 PM Rexburg time. *Remember, we loose an hour going to Rexburg from here... This is a picture of Ava getting the request for services from Janet and me.
This is a picture of Ava checking Lindsay's schedule to see if she could fit us in on Thursday morning. Good luck! She had room for both of us! (she also let us use the couch and floor on Wednesday night!)
And this is the final result of Lindsay's work. I feel MUCH better about public appearances now! I don't have a 6" wide stripe of grey down the middle of my head! I'll have to see her again before I go to Tahoe! Janet looks good, too, we just didn't think about getting a picture of her before we parted ways this afternoon! (we arrived back in Hayden at about 7PM Thursday evening!)

And the finishing touch!

Here are the 'little princesses' or 'Fancy Nancies' dressed in their dad's duds! I think they look a little more like cute hoboes here! Cute hair, girlies!

more posts for Rob!

Water balloon toss at the ward picnic. Emma isn't so sure she likes to play catch with a water balloon! The sack race was fun, but a little strange using plastic bags that tended to blow out at the feet about half way around the tree!
And our team came in second in the egg-white whipping race! Go, team!
Does it look like Abby likes to swing? The higher the better!
Emma is all smiles here! Higher, Grandpa!