Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Christmas Letter

A little tidbit about the Christmas letter. About four years ago I was tired of writing the same old Christmas letter. My kids did this, then they did this, and then we did this...you know how it goes, they are very informative, but lets be honest here, my 8 year old boy does about the same stuff as any 8 year old boy and my wife is in love with some vampire named Edward just like your wife...so there we go, the premise for the Griffith Top 10 list each year. I try and add photos that tell a few stories about the year and have a bit of fun. Some years we actually succeed in laughing at ourselves, and other years, well, we are just happy to get through. So here is this years letter for those that might not have seen it yet...

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas

Had a wonderful Christmas. We are trying to enjoy having such little kids as much as possible. We still have 4 out of 5 "believers" in the house, so it is entertaining nonetheless. The older kids all sleep in the basement and for the last three years I have had to set-up traps on the stairwell to stop the crusaders. This year's trap was pretty weak, but I was tired. I shut the basement door and put a bell on the doorknob. I taped the bell to the door jam and so it would "jingle" each time the door was pulled open. We only had three jingles during the night. At one point, Hanna was army crawling about halfway up the stairs before Tasha caught her. Why was it Tasha that caught her you ask? I guess I was sound asleep and never heard it!

Christmas Eve pajamas Lily Sue got a tutu from Aunt Patti and she wouldn't take it off for the rest of the morning.

Gracie got a Princess scooter.




Trip to Salt Lake

We went to Utah a few weekends ago to see the baptism and priesthood ordination of our niece Ellie and nephew Robbie. On our way down, we stopped at Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. It was snowing like crazy, but it stopped for about 10 minutes and that is when we snapped most of these photos. We spent the night in West Jordan at Tasha's sisters house then went down to American Fork to see the Eppersons.

It was dang cold. We had the whole crew pretty well covered up. We were cruising through Temple square and this older couple passed by us, the women stopped in front of us and turned around and starting counting our kids. You could actually see her lips moving as she counted; I'm not making this stuff up. Tasha just knew I was about to make some wise crack, something along the lines of "it's a good thing we don't have more than 10 kids because I'd hate to see you have to take off your shoes to keep counting." Nonetheless, Tasha gave me "the look" and I just smiled at the couple instead.

Gracie standing in front of the Christus statue. Anyone that knows Gracie well enough knows she was about to burst out in song and dance. There were quite a few people in the room on a Friday night and I had to try and contain the wee one just a little bit. She was still excited to be there.

Gracie in front of the reflective pools and the nativity scene.

Ellie and Grandpa John before the baptism.
Gunnar, Jake, and Gavin. The baptism was held at the American Fork tabernacle. It is an old tabernacle, pretty neat to explore and these three boys were trying their best not to get into trouble, but when I grabbed them and snapped this photo they were headed to the basement.


Thursday, December 18, 2008

Leishman Girls Weekend

We had our "annual" Leishman Girls weekend in Salt Lake City this year. My sisters Tamie and Teresa were there, along with my sister in law Monica, and an honorary sister Stephanie Shirley (she was our next door neighbor growing up/Tamie's best friend), and to keep us all under control was my wonderful mom, Chris. We literally shopped til we dropped, I am talking 13 hour days, followed by movies and hot tubing. It was so much fun just acting like we were in high school again (without the big hair, of course).


JD stayed home with all five kids for three full days and two nights. His biggest accomplishment was taking the kids to McDonald's and managing to feed the kids a total of 40 chicken nuggets and three large fries. He was pretty excited about that. He also got to sit with the kids in the congregation for Sacrament meeting for the first time in 6 months, he wasn't as excited about that though. All in all I came home to a pretty clean and happy home.

We always ate well, and never at one McDonalds. Mainly we were just happy to not have to cook even once for 3 days. - I can't wait until next year!
Tasha

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Gracie

Gracie loves to sing! She walks around the house singing and dancing. The other day she and I were at WalMart and I was pushing her in the grocery cart, she asks me "Dad, are we allowed to sing in this store?" I look at her and said, "sure, knock yourself out" and she pipes up and just starts singing like no ones around.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Tasha's Christmas Present

Seriously, what's wrong with a new stove, mixer, pots & pans? These are just a few things I've bought Tasha for Christmas over the last few years. The year I bought her a stove for Christmas, I even cut out a catalog picture of the stove and wrapped it up in a little tiny box, it was a really cute box. I know, I know, lame. Man I'm retarded.

Click on this link below, thanks to Doug Griffith I am hoping to stay out of the dog house this year.
The Dog House

Monday, December 1, 2008

Thanksgiving Day

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We had dinner at Troy and Monica Leishmans. They were great hosts and it was a great meal. Most of my wishes came true...pumpkin pie for breakfast on Friday and lots of football. We also set-up the Christmas tree over the weekend and transformed our house into the Christmas season so I wasn't able to bask in the Thanksgiving slumber for too long.

I know a lot of people were worried about Tasha's Black Friday shopping day. Yes, she did manage to go and took Hanna with her. Alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. (me thinking, sucker! as I roll over and fall right back to sleep
I think Tasha eventually walks out the door a little after 5 a.m.
Advantage J.D.
At about 5:15 a.m. Gracie shows up at my bed and says she had a bad dream me thinking, go talk to your mothe...crap! Ok Grace, jump in bed.
Deuce.
Gracie wakes me up at about 6 a.m. and tells me to stop talking, apparently I was talking in my sleep; I ask her what I was saying but she can't tell me, me thinking, was I mumbling something about your mother? I can't get back to sleep.
Advantage Tasha.
Gracie finally gets to sleep around 6:30 a.m. Lily wakes up at 7:13 a.m. Lily and I eat pumpkin pie for breakfast.
Deuce.
I look around the kitchen and realize Tasha made 4 pies for Thanksgiving and has yet to wash the dishes, me thinking, man I'm a sucker
Advantage Tasha once again.
At about 10:30 a.m., kitchen is clean, kids are downstairs watching cartoons and playing video games and I put Lily down for a nap just in time to settle in with some more pies and the beginning of the first football game of the day. Tasha calls from Target, she and Hanna have been tag teaming as they stand in line for an hour me thinking, oh yea, who's the sucker now?
Back to Deuce.
Everything else goes pretty smoothly for the day. Kids play lots of video games, I watch football, Lily sleeps until 1 p.m. and Tasha gets home at 1:30 p.m. Then I look at the car, it is filled to capacity with presents, I mean filled...me thinking, I wonder if I can get a Bailout from the government?
Advantage Tasha
And thus ends Black Friday. The retailers report a successful Black Friday and I am proud to have contributed to the bad economy, it's kind of a patriotic thing if you think about it although I'm trying not to think too much about it!

I took a picture of the Relish Tray on turkey day. This is an hour before dinner. It's a constant battle with the Leishman family as to whether or not one can "eat" before dinner, I've always thought the relish tray was for snacking on to buy some time. Is it just me? I need some help here people. Do other families set-out a relish tray to snack on before the big dinner or was it just my family and I need to keep quiet?


This is a picture of the spread (Notice the relish tray looks untouched.)

Hanna starting with the potatoes.

Tasha and Gracie going through the line.

Lily hanging out with a fresh home made roll.