The Walkers

A Lagoon employee, or as Brad likes to refer to them - a "carnie", actually said the above words to my family and me as we got on the Mousetrap ride last Friday. I don't know if he is paid to parrot the slogan "x" times a day, or if he just really loves his job that much... either way, I was thrilled. I laughed about it the whole ride to avoid peeing my pants, seeing as the Mousetrap is the scariest ride at park BY FAR. Jason hooked up the family last Friday with free tickets to Lagoon and, as always, it was amazing. Brad was on call (not to mention the fact that his reaction to the invite was reminiscent of the Grinch's to Whobilation), so Brett took time out of his busy freshman schedule to be my date for the night. All-in-all, an excellent trip. I urge all of you to embrace the child, or carnie rat, within and take a trip to Farmington soon. Bask in the atmosphere of cotton candy, caramel apples, broken bumper cars, lousy pavilion entertainment, pre-teen ...

Amy just sent us a bunch of pictures that I am in love with! Just wanted to share the love and the copyright infringement.

So, in a recent chat with a new acquaintance at church, I was asked the question: "Tell me about your family." (I guess that really isn't a question, per se, but bear with me.) Naturally, I spouted off about how great my parents are and how sad it is to be far away from them, about all my siblings that live here and how fun it is to get together, about Brad's fantastic family and how they've accepted me (and all me eccentricities) as one of their own... blah, blah, blah. Well - turns out I'm an idiot and this person was referring to MY family, as in, he assumed I had kids and was just being friendly. Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a really smooth conversationalist. (HA! Please note the sarcasm in the previous statement.) And as soon as I realized my blunder, I felt awkward and somehow felt the need to continue to ramble on and on, overcompensating with lame questions, lamer jokes, and a super-lame conversation ender. I don't know why I j...

I figured it's been a while since I've actually put any photos of Brad and me on here. Creepy online stalkers wouldn't even know what we looked like. Actually, Laurel just emailed me some pictures she took during the most hilariously awkward family photo session last week... I'll have to upload the "official" family portrait when I get it. Now, back to the "hilariously awkward" part... taking pictures with my family is always hard because a) there are a lot of people, and b) all of those people are very opinionated and want to be in charge. (We are Lees, right?) But the night went well, even though we lost the light and Brett lost Scott's car. HA! Seriously, half of our train of cars followed some poor guy through half of Riverton and into his driveway. Apparently there was one too many silver Xterras on the road. P.S. I just think this is funny. One of my students missed school today because he had a court date with none other than Mr. Gary Cole...

I know I need to get new pictures on here, but we haven't done anything cool lately. And since I don't think anyone wants to look at pictures of Brad mowing the lawn, me reading Eclipse , or either one of us taking a Sunday nap... I got nothin'. But... Dave, DeAnn, Brett, and Matt are coming out to visit TODAY! (Brett's officially a BYU Cougar and Matt's just awesome.) So I'll get some good family activity photos on here soon. I'm so excited to get some quality family time with everybody! It's becoming more and more rare that all of us are able to get together. But any time we do, it's a guaranteed blast. Brad and I spent last night sweeping sawdust off the basement floor to make room for the ping pong and pool tables. Let the tournament begin! (Melinda, you're invited by the way.)

School officially starts tomorrow! I get the feeling that I should be a lot more nervous than I am, given the fact that I secretly don't know what I'm doing. All the other new teachers seem to be freaking out, but honestly, I'm okay. Except for the fact that I can't pronounce half of the kids' names on my roll (mothers of the world, please name your kids phonetically! "Unique" spellings are just confusing). But I'm not super excited either... is that weird? Have I already reached the veteran, near-retirement, bored, dead inside stage? I hope not. Maybe reality just hasn't set in yet. Hmmm... we'll see how I fare after tomorrow. Any advice to get me pumped up?

I think the sure sign that you have "made it" in the entertainment industry is when The Simpsons immortalizes you in yellow. I mean, take a look at the greats... Paul McCartney, Conan O'Brien, Alec Baldwin, Bono, all the N'Syncers. Well, I sent Matt Groening an audition tape, but I don't think he's interested in a high school teacher slash novice karaoke singer cameo for next season. Even if I do know all the words to the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" rap. Needless to say, when I saw the Burger King posters advertising the opportunity for Brad and me to become Springfielders online, I swallowed my Whopper Jr. (and Duff Beer) whole and skateboarded home as fast as I could, racing my whole family to the couch, where something kooky happened to the tune of some familiar music... you know the rest. If you can't resist the temptation either, www.simpsonizeme.com