411 The Walters Bunch

I can't believe we are once again at the beginning of another new year. We have a lot of plans for this year, including another long trip, though we might make a few alternate plans just in case of a government shut down. Several national parks are on the itinerary and sadly if there is one thing you can count on, it is politicians to NOT agree on anything other than disagreeing. We ringed in the New Year in our "normal" manner. We drank freshly pressed NO SUGAR added grape juice, played games, and watched a movie. Then we watched the ball drop in NYC. That is a feat in itself. It is really annoying to watch all the "Rockin Eve" festivities, but get switched to local station about 1 minute before the ball drops. No one cares about the Dallas festivities and it leaves us scrambling to find a YOU TUBE LIVE feed to try and watch the last 30 seconds before the ball drops and we can finally stick the kids(and ourselves) in bed. We are NOT a family that makes resol...

Cookie had the Force used on her. She apparently recovered by having a timed reading contest. Oh, what a fun season this has been! We have been so busy enjoying our time with family and friends. We went to Denison to see a wonderful drive thru light display. It was by far one of the best we have seen. It runs on donations only, but they had all LED lights that were well kept and very sharp looking. We actually drove through it twice because we loved it so much. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was really neat. I surprised my husband and kids by taking them to an indoor sky diving facility to celebrate my husband's birthday. It was fun. Basically a huge fan blows you up in the air. The kids had the wind at about 75mph and my husband and oldest son had it set about 94 mph. It is loud with that much wind blowing. My oldest daughter refused to try it and I couldn't because of my ears, but we had a great time watching them hav...

Yes, he does. While we are not officially on winter break yet, the kids and I have only been doing school when Daddy is at work. This way we can enjoy his days off without feeling stressed about school. This week we went to our Scout Christmas party at the skating rink. The kids had a blast and pretty much skated the entire two hours. They slept well that night! We continued on our Christmas show a day movie quest and the kids built (and ate) their gingerbread houses. We still love our tree and after the holidays we will get serious about planning our big fall trip.  Since this is probably A's last big trip with us before she gets busy with adulthood, she gets to pick the main focal point and then we will work in other stops around that. So far she thinks she wants the main stop to be a place in CT that the tv series Gilmore Girls is based on. We will see if that sticks. T has already picked his big trip for graduation (you know in 7 years). He wants to go to Alaska or an Af...

Almost two weeks after being shipped and definitely longer than the being fresh cut to door in  six days promise, our tree finally found its way to our doorstep. I was so excited I actually screamed and apparently gave my daughter "a heart attack". I was both happy it was finally here and disappointed I was probably going to have to return a dead tree. Once we opened it, it was obvious it needed water, but it had surprisingly little needles that had fallen off and it was still completely green. Most importantly IT SMELLED LIKE CHRISTMAS. If you have never had a real tree you won't know what that means, and no the candles and sprays are NOT the same. It has that wonderful fresh fir scent and I was so excited to not have to get a Texas pine tree; pine trees are notorious for having horrible needle retention and I can vouch for that assessment. After we took the tree out of the box and opened it up, we had to give it a couple of days to recover and hydrate before we ...