The Walkers

Ben is obsessed with Disney's Cars and Thomas the Tank Engine, so after looking at some ideas online (and not wanting to compete with this ), I decided on a Cars themed birthday party this year.  It turned out pretty cute and was surprisingly easy to put together.  I am a little proud of the invitation. Alicia and Blaine couldn't make it to the party, so they came to visit earlier in the day to deliver Ben's gift.  He is pretty excited to have his own Thomas, but not nearly as excited as Jake was while giving it to him. It was like he was initiating him into his club. The whole scene was seriously adorable.  Ben was moving around so fast during the party that most of my pictures are blurry or just plain awkward.  But the food table held still :)  Here's one of several shots of Ben getting plenty of "help" opening gifts from his cousins. Brad and I gave him a train table for his room (we were kind of sick of tripping over the tr...

I have neglected this blog for far too long.  Sorry 'bout that. The last couple months have been busy. Good busy. School began in August for Kaiya and me.  My job is the same crazy, exhausting, loud, sometimes embarrassing song and dance it always was.  I love teaching.  I don't love grading and parents and the occasional inappropriate haiku read aloud in Creative Writing, but I love teaching. Little Miss Kaiya is going to preschool two days a week and loving it. And I love picking her up and hearing about who played with whom and the entire plot line of the story book "Miss Amy" read that day.  She is so excited to be learning her letters and it's cute to see how proud she is when she recognizes them.  She's obsessed with rhymes and always asks me which words rhyme with which.  We may have a little poet in the making :)  She also brings home the cutest little projects; it's hard to determine which Elmer's glue/sparkles/constr...

How much did you love seeing this screen as a child, huh??  Much better than "You have died of Dysentery."  Anyway.... Be prepared for a slew of pictures from my kids and my most recent tour of the Pacific Northwest. For starters, I'm so glad I went to the reunion.  They divided it into two events: an adults-only dinner and a family picnic the next day.  Both were blasts.  Here are the Papermaker girls all grown up. Love them.  My kids mostly just played in dirt at the park on the family day... I love this picture of Ben. Mostly because it looks like the picture of my big brother, Scott, getting caught eating the gingerbread house at about the same age.   (Megan - I could have sworn that picture was on your blog somewhere but I couldn't find it... can you send it to me so we can compare?)  We always joke about how Ben looks like Amy Walker and Scott Lee had a baby.  Don't think about it too hard, though... that's just weird....

The end of June marked the third biannual Lee Family Reunion.  This year was super special because we welcomed home this guy... My baby brother,Matty, is home from his two year mission in Montana! He is still as stellar as ever and will be returning to BYU Idaho this fall.   And Isabel and Kaiya (aka: Laurel and I) spent  way  too long coloring that sign. Alicia documented the whole event on her blog a month ago.  I'm perpetually playing catch up.  Here's a highlight from the "talent" show. And the most recent family photo. Good choice on the colors, Mom! Moving on... Clint and Jen hosted a ginormous Fourth of July party.  Here's Boston and Kaiya in the three legged foot race.  I love how annoyed he looks by her presence. Of course Ben spent most of the evening bugging and attempting to communicate with the puppy. I'm never going to buy you a dog, Ben.  I'm serious.  Pretty Kaiya a midst the chaos. ...

High school reunions are totally lame.  And yet I'm travelling 800 miles to attend my ten year this weekend.  I figure it's as good an excuse as any to buy a new outfit, right? So, recently, my friend Greta insisted on seeing my photo albums from high school.  I think she just wanted to make fun of my bad haircuts and unflattering jeans. (Why oh why were they SO high waisted and baggy?) But when we came across this picture and I got really sentimental.   Some of my best memories of high school were made senior year with these girls. We had so much fun. I see this picture and I'm reminded of the voice-over in the closing sequence of Never Been Kissed , when Drew Barrymore is talking about her second high school experience and says, "Those girls are still there. The ones that, even as you grow up, will remain the most beautiful girls you have ever seen close up." That is how I feel about these gorgeous girls.  I was lucky enough to tag along with...

I love everything about this group of people.  Our "game night friends" have been getting together once a week at the Bradfords' house for over six years and every once in a while we get to go on kick-a vacations too.  A couple years ago we went on a Caribbean cruise (as seen here ) and this year our destination was Mexico.  We also got to add two more couples this go-round, which was awesome.  We had an absolute blast.  Here go the highlights. Before we got on the boat, the season passport holders had to make a kids-free trip to Disneyland -- why not, right?  We quickly discovered how awesome it is to run from ride to ride without strollers and height requirements.... we also discovered that we are getting old and very prone to motion sickness when we try to run from ride to ride without strollers and height requirements.  It didn't help that we rode Space Mountain first and then seven more rides before lunch.  And then we jumped right onto ...