Walker Weekend

A couple weeks ago, all of the Walker girls met up at the family cabin for a little crafting and quality time together! We hardly ever get to spend too much time together anymore these days! We have the best group of girls in our family! All of my boy cousins have married great girls too so our family is always getting better and better! (which is hard to top, I think!)

We all met up at the cabin on Friday. Dinner was at 6:30. My family got there a couple hours earlier so we could add a few girly touches to our rustic getaway. Erin + I packed up our cars with anything (and everything) we thought would fancy the place up! I grew wheat grass in different containers, Erin made that glass frame (below), and we decked the halls with many other little things!

Mary's family was in charge of our treat table! They had all sorts of delicious treats: red velvet cupcakes, rice krispy treats, taffy, m&ms, licorice....

For our first craft, we made these candy jar stands. (the red, green, blue & gold jars)

Steph (single!! does anyone have a cute guy to set her up with?), Aunt Kris, Mindy, Laurie

After the candy jars, we all brought up fabric and Mike's wife Alli taught us how to make skirts! They were so cute and so easy to make! Thanks Alli!

The next morning we made 'Happy Birthday' signs out of paper. One of the best parts about the trip was staying up until 2:30 am just laughing! I think it's been a long time since I've laughed that hard. It's always fun hearing our classic family stories and remembering all the things we did when we were young. We have so many fun memories and I'm so glad that we spent a lot of time together as cousins! I'm thinking this will have to be an annual event!

Love Letter

(Letter from Paityn to Presley)

I love you. you are the Best Sister iN the Hole iNtier Wold.

theis is watt you Do for Me. you Help Me clean My room. She Loves Me. She Lets Me Play with Preseses (Princesses)

Priceless I tell you. I found this letter in a princess sticker-ed envelope! Paityn is into writing letters lately! She will sometimes come up to me and ask "did I spell this right mom?" And I have to lie sometimes and say "yes!" because I seriously can't handle how adorable her spelling is!!

These little letters are a mother's treasure!

5 mile run

I decided to join the family and sign up for the Moab 5 mile race.

*Thank the lucky heavens I decided against the 1/2 marathon! *

My sister Abby and 5 of my cousins ran the 1/2 marathon, and my sister, brother and 3 other cousins ran the 5 mile race. I have never been to Moab before, but I LOVED the race! Running through the canyon was breathtaking! I was so busy looking around and taking in the fresh air, that I almost forgot we were running a race. Until I couldn't breath, then I was reminded. What a fun race! I hope to do the 1/2 marathon one of these years!

{Here are the 'lovely' photos taken throughout the race, no makeup = scary!}

...Erin and I running through the canyon...

Here's the cheer section

Here's our group of runners! (surrounded by a million paper water cups)

Meg, Jamie, Abby, Nicole, Chad, me, Steph

Erin, Tyler, Whit, Kramer, Shawn

My family all stayed in a nice condo together.

Here's my dad teasing the girls.

He put a pillow and a blanket in the tub and then brought them in to show them where they'd be sleeping. :) Paityn was all over it, Presley on the other hand was bugged!

After the race, we checked out Moab Main Street.

I'll see you next year Moab! Hopefully ready to kick some 1/2 marathon butt!

once was old, now is new

Although this isn't the greatest picture, I thought I'd share what I whipped up one

night!

This shirt sat getting all dusty in the back of Devin's closet and was he was finally ready to part without it. It was headed straight to a garbage bag ready to be shipped to the DI.

...BUT... was luckily saved by muah!

After looking at it, I thought, "I've always liked those Lacoste shirts. Maybe I could

make this shirt fit me..."

I figured it was worth a try. I mean, if I messed it up, it was on it's way out anyway.

So I took it downstairs and started cutting the sides of the shirt.

I sewed up the sides.

Realized it needed to go in a little on the side more...for those lady curves.

Cut and sew again.

Then onto the sleeves. Oh those boxy-boyish sleeves. I cut a triangle out of those and sewed those together.

Tried it on and realized I needed a little more off the sleeves.

Cut again and sew up the sleeves.

And voila! A new, form-fitting, long, 3/4 inch sleeves Lacoste polo shirt!

(since then Devin has been taking notes on the clothes in his closet. Probably making sure I haven't made plans for any of this other shirts!)

Oh and as a side note: we were headed to Moab the next day with my family and I wanted to test it out on my stylish sisters! We know each other so well and usually notice when someone has something new on, so I wanted to see what they said when they saw me wear it. Long story short: it passed the tests with flying colors. :)

When the Boys are away...

THE GIRLS LIKE TO P L A Y!!

Erin and Dane went to St. George for the weekend

and asked if I'd watch

my niece LottieMay!

of course.

Devin was in Vegas for the BB tournament.

So it was a girl's weekend.

We tried to busy ourselves by

going to McDonald's,

local St. Patrick's Day party,

the park,

lots of coloring!

We had so much fun!!

Love you Lottie!!

Spontaneity

2 weeks ago we went to Disneyland on a total whim!

{A little background info: we told the girl's for Christmas that we would go to Disneyland. In fact, we really planned on going in December. BUT, every time we looked at the calendar there was always something going on! Even when we would look ahead on the calendar, we always ran into a problem. I thought we were never going to make it there and I had postponed even thinking about it any time soon!}

Now here comes the spontaneity.

So after we got home from church, Devin said "why don't we go to Disneyland today?" (as in 2 hours)

It sounded C.R.A.Z.Y. We had absolutely nothing packed, planned, no tickets, hotel...nada, but we decided that if we didn't just GO, we'd never make it there! Less than 2 hours later, we were packed and out the door!

We bought tickets, reserved a hotel (and called our friends to tell them we were coming to stay with them in Vegas), filled up the car with gas and hit the road!

No exaggerating: Beautiful weather. Short lines. Great drive. Happy kids. Forever memories.

BEST TRIP!

To be honest, I don't think we could have planned it any better! It was kind of a meant-to-be trip!

{The traditional family picture}

Cruella Deville was SO funny! (or really so rude)

She played her part perfectly. Even Devin was intimidated by her!

This is how a 'real princess' travels around Disneyland

Maybe a little spontaneity in life is a good thing!!

(Thanks Brady & Jen for letting us crash your beautiful place!)

Photo Booth

It's turned into a tradition to take a photo at our Valentine's Party.

(It also comes in handy that my friend Meghan is an excellent photographer)

Here is our 2011 photo shoot

(with a few inside jokes and a little *ahem* humor)

and of course: the craziest group of long-time friends!!

There's a lot of love love love in this group of friends!!