A week of To and Fro..

This will be a week of to and fro -destination, High School. Makenah has band camp all week from 9 AM until 5 PM. Madisen has band camp all this week from 2:15 until 3:15. Both the girls are at the high school and by the end of the week, I will have made no less than 21 trips(there was an extra one because Makenah forgot her lunch yesterday). I also should point out that Scott will be making some of these trips because I leave Thursday morning for the airport. I will be going back to Boise for the Scentsy Convention and I am so excited!! My team has really grown in the last few months, and I can't wait to get some training and to see the new warehouse. I will be back Sunday evening, so it is a pretty quick trip out and back. Makenah has recently switched from flute to percussion, also making the switch from Jr. High to High School. I'm not sure how it will all work out, but she will be playing her flute for concert band, then percussion for marching (except that she is part of the PIT, so she won't have to march at all -lazy girl. She is playing what is called a vibraphone, something I have never heard of until a few days ago. This is what it looks like: This is what it looks like when it is played: Notice both hands have two mallets in them (apparently called "Steven's Grip"). A bit tricky if you ask me. About the "vibe": The vibraphone looks similar to a xylophone and a marimba. The difference is that the bars of both the xylophone and marimba are made of wood. In general terms, the xylophone is a soprano or high register marimba (the difference being in the tuning and timbre). The bars of a vibraphone are made of metal. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal like a piano that when depressed allows the notes to ring until the pedal is lifted again. The vibraphone originally got its name because it has a motor that turns metal discs, called pulsators, located under the bars at the openings of the resonators or tubes. The rotation of the pulsators gives a "vibrato" (more accurately tremolo) sound to the instrument. Without this motor the vibraphone could just as easily be called a metalophone because of it's metal bars. Madisen joined the 6th grade band, and she is at the high school everyday for an hour this week. She is very excited. We found her a nice clarinet (which is what she really wanted to play) on Craigs List, hardly even used.