Family treasures

"Wow, Jesus sure said a lot."

After looking through Rae's hope chest, the girls came across Great-Grandpa Ray's Bible. (Complete with notes and bookmarks and random clippings.)

Scenes from a comic con

This mermaid got K's attention by shooting her with a squirt gun.
And then let her choose a treasure from her chest.
Her other chest. Pervert.

Also known as" no one can resist a cute little girl asking if they can take a picture with her."

I walked away empty-handed art-wise — but scored big daddy points because I was friends with all these awesome characters. Bonus points for the fact that every one of these photos was her idea. She actually wanted to get her photo taken with the big scary "I'm going to eat your face alien.

She's a dork by osmosis. And dad couldn't be prouder.

K sought out the Preadator.
She's come a long way from being scared of stormtroopers.

What can I say? She likes Batman.
Even this Batman.

And she likes Catwoman. She takes after her father.

I think she's finally taller than R2-D2.

I'm not sure what I liked best about Spider-Man.
The fact that he jumped all over the place and made my girl laugh — or the fact that he was one of the few male cosplayers who understood that it's best to wear some kind of undergarment with your spandex.
There are some things that just better left unseen.

Even Thor can't keep a straight face when K brings out the gun show.

Funny that one year ago this weekend we were in Disney World trying to get photos with all of K's favorite princesses. And the one we couldn't find was Ariel. 
Who knew she'd be in Phoenix this weekend?

Again with the black leather. I swear this was her idea.
C'mon, look at her face and tell me she's not eating this up.

We still haven't let K watch the Star Wars prequels, so she only kind of knew who this was. But hey — cool dress.

We put K into a storytelling class where the kids got to offer up ideas, learn basic plot structure and put it all together with the help of an illustrator.
Somehow K was the one he pulled out of the crowd to show how to make something ordinary into something fantastic.

And thus the mermaid theme is continued.

Doing the Graduation Hula

Ham runs in the family.

It's official. She has donned the traditional plastic flower head dress and craft paper grass skirt. She has danced the Graduation Hula and grabbed her diploma.

She is officially on her way to Kindergarten.

It feels like we just enrolled her in the preschool program at this school — but that was two and a half years ago now. She's grown a lot in that time — I think she's going on 30 now. I seriously have to fight the urge to treat her like an adult.

Happy graduation day, kid. Pass the poi.

Dig the banana hats, guys.

Warning future educators — It's going to be hard to beat Ms. Wanda out for the favorite teacher status. Those are big shoes to fill.