411 The Walters Bunch

My favorite time of year is once again here! I was well planned this year so most of all the shopping is already done and I have been really able to relax and enjoy the holidays.  We went to see ICE at the Gaylord Texan, unfortunately this was one day after my buy one get one free coupon expired unbeknown to me. It was about 80 when we were going so we literally carried two bags of clothes in with us to change into right before we went in. I knew the kids would be able to use a snowsuit in Texas! They do give you a parka when you enter, but a word from the wise....it is 8 in there. You will want to have layers on, gloves, ear muffs, and maybe a face mask if you plan on staying more than 30 minutes.  We were mesmerized by the sculptures. The kids loved the ice slides.  Slide was definitely the best part!  My little monkeys with their little monkeys.  Not sure what he was doing, but it works.   Please note our faces are starting to redden. ..onl

Hmmm, I guess I am not getting any better about updating, since I almost missed November completely. We had a great November. Our extra classes wrapped up until January so I have some extra time. My oldest celebrated his 19th birthday. It feels really strange for him to be so old. It seems I was just 19 not too long ago. We had a great Thanksgiving. D had to work, just like every year, but the kids and I have our traditions now. C and I ran the Turkey Trot in Double Oak. I was really impressed that he beat me by almost a full 2 minutes! The hills really slowed me down. I am not use to quite so many in my normal 5k. Afterwards, I bought McDonald's for the kids. I figured that I just ran so why not treat myself! Afterwards, the kids and I headed home to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the dog show, and a very hard to watch Cowboys game. It was a great day. We went for a family Thanksgiving on Sunday and I enjoyed both sets of grandparents there for the first time in I d

 Aren't my boys cute?  I know it has been almost a month since the last post, but to be fair I had some some oral surgery done that has had some complications in recovery and I am preparing for my first 5K race coming up next week. I know that a 5K really isn't super far (3.1 miles). However, since I have been dealing with the surgery recovery and had to take off several days, I am really working on getting back to a respectable time. I really do not understand why they like this cartoon? Love the Flintstones!  Is he ever going to slow down on growing?   We love the pumkin patch!   Before I was laid up for a week, we took off from school and had a fun week. We went to the Pumpkin Patch. It is always a great place to enjoy some of the festivites of Halloween. I know several of my friends do not celebrate Halloween, but we do. I do not think of it as a religious celebration, obviously (unless you want to get into the All Saints argument

     L has  been counting the days down until wedding for the past 6 weeks. Everyday I have heard her mutter the phrase ___ days until the wedding.  I think the only thing she might be more excited about would be if her Aunt was having a baby, only because she is aware that mommy will NOT ever be having another baby. All of our family flew/drove in for this wonderful event. The invitations went out well in advance and we had ours prominently displayed on the refrigerator. When dining with my husband's Aunt the night before, I was alerted to the fact that he did not know exactly where the building was that the wedding was suppose to take place in the next day. I had assumed he knew its location. Why did I assume this? When we received the invitation a couple months ago, he went into a long lecture of how old the building was and that it was a landmark in downtown FT Worth. So silly  me, he knew so much about the building I figured he actually knew where it was. I realized durin

Admittedly, I have not been good about giving updates. I will work on that, but you know how busy life can get. Since it has been two weeks since my last update, there is a TON of stuff to talk about. First of all, I had a fabulous birthday. The kids made me some spectacular cards and everyone pooled their resources and gave me a really beautiful turquoise ring that I have admired for awhile. I also received a new tent so next time we camp and it rains there should be no worries. We love camping and the next adventure should not be to far off. I also got a Kindle and I totally love it! For those of you who are unaware, I am an avid reader and this will make my life so much easier! I have read 2 books already on it. I loved my birthday.  The kids did great about not fighting amongst themselves. It. Was. Great.  The only thing I regret was not realizing I was turning a year older than I thought. I was. My ever loving husband was quick to point that one out. Oh well, I tell everyone I a

Well, our summer was interesting. We went on a nice long trip and had a blast. We had countless day trips and throughly enjoyed not having a schedule at all. Okay, I admit it. I was the one who throughly enjoyed not having a schedule. I wasn't spending nights planning out curriculm, scheduling appointments around our school schedule, shuttling the kids from one enrichment activity to the next, and planning every minute of our upcoming week so that I could make sure we were able to accomplish everything that needed to get done. The only bummer was that we kept getting sick every couple of weeks and the kids showed extreme sensitivity to the heat, which is weird because last summer was much hotter.   While we are in week 4 of our school schedule, the neighborhood public schools are starting on Monday, which means T heads to his Pre-K class, too. This is both a blessing and a pain. On one hand, I can actually teach the girls in peace and quiet two days a week. There will be no Cat in

You can already tell by the title that  we did not have a good week. Well, I take that back. We had a good expensive week. We have always made sure to follow the "you won't get termites if" advice. We did not keep firewood by the house, filled in cracks, and treated every year. Apparently, these termites did not get the proper etiquette guide for termites because they are in an abnormal spot away from moisture and wood. The only reason we noticed them was because a few months back I repainted the ceiling very white. I noticed a few very small brown spots on my pretty ceiling(yes ceiling NOT baseboards) last week and called someone out. Yep, worse case scenario confirmed. At least, we caught them very early and so the structural damage is not quite as severe as it could have been. I know God always has a plan, but does this mean I should go ahead and move? I have been thinking about it a lot lately. Most of our friends are doing missionary work over seas or throughout the

In what has become an early August tradition, we have already started back to school. I figured since we home school and live in Texas that we might as well be doing something educational and structured while the heat of the end of the summer makes us virtual prisoners of our house, only after 10am of course. Essentially this means that all outdoor activity, a.k.a. recess, is done first. Lately, we have been riding bikes/jogging, jumping on the trampoline, and doing yoga as our physical education time. The hard part about starting "early" is that the home school activities we are involved in do not start until September. This is truly the only time I feel the HOME in home school. After that, we are rarely at home to do school. I prefer a hands on approach and while we follow a fairly stringent curriculum, I add all sorts of fun trips to it so that the kids can have a more hands on approach. We have been know to go on a trip for a day, a few days, or even a couple of weeks

As we sit here and prepare to start the next school year, I am starting to wonder if the world is actually any worse than it has always been. We definitely hear about more, thanks to social media sites and complete access to anything at our finger tips, but is it actually worse?  In recent memory, we have had the infamous 9/11, Oklahoma bombing, Columbine, and of course now the Colorado shooting in Aurora, along with daily accounts of smaller instances. Since I was not around 50 to 100 years ago, my only ability to understand the past can come from history books and newspapers. I also have to take in to account the population increase and realize that while the overall numbers of violent crimes maybe higher that the percentages  when compared to the population increase are about the same. I would venture to say that the world is no worse in violent crimes than it has been, but that as an overall population that we have GREATLY diverged from the reasons this country was founded.  This

I cannot believe that summer is almost done. We will start back to school the first week of August. We have been busy the past couple of weeks. We attended the Independence celebration in Coppell. It was a lot of fun. The kids jumped in bounce houses, rode a train, got balloon animals, and danced to the live band. This year they handed out 3D glasses to view the fireworks with. The kids loved it and so did we.      We also had tea at the American Girl Doll Cafe again. I ordered each of us a dessert sampler there and expected it be pretty small because lets face it, places like that charge for the ambiance not the food. I was wrong though. We had huge servings. Next time, we will all share a couple of dessert plates. The kids weren't even able to consume all that sugar and definitely did not need it.      We put a little pop up pool in the backyard for the kids. They love it. On that same note, I never realized my yard was so unlevel. It took many bags of dirt to achieve a mostly

     We had a fun, albeit long, week of VBS. This year I did NOT do the toddlers. Last year I had 14 toddlers ranging from 12 months to 2 years. I have never felt so exhausted and that includes walking the ENTIRE island of Grand Cayman, as I did after 3 hours with 14 toddlers. I had a first grade class this time. I had 21 in our group, but usually only 16 showed up on any given day. I will have John 14:6 in my head, along with several VBS songs, for the next few days. 300 kids can be VERY loud. Overall, it was a lot of fun and I am fairly certain I will do it again next year. God has blessed my life in so many wonderful ways and I enjoy teaching the young ones how great His love is.        A. has been enjoying her horse classes. We have been thinking about joining 4H, but haven't decided completely. After her class yesterday, we figured while we were up that way we would cool of at the beach at Ray Roberts. The water felt great and the beach was fairly empty. We played for about 2

Tent site at Palo Duro.        Well, lucky for us the cool weather held out for our entire trip. Our first thing to do in Palo Duro was to tour the camp grounds. This camp ground is the 2nd largest in Texas, the first being Big Bend. There is a gas station, restaurant, and store on the premises. We went and enjoyed some homemade ice cream. The next hour was spent driving to the end of the camp grounds and back. They have 5 flash flood spots and because of all the rain, every single one had water on the road. They were passable still though. Oh, the canyon also has its own horse stables.  It was really cold and rainy.   We wrote Walters.   The next day we headed a short way up the highway to Amarillo. We did what all tourist do. We stopped to take pictures at Cadillac Ranch. Now remember, it was 10:30 am but about 60 degrees and misting. The pictures do NOT show the kids whining about being cold and wanting their jackets. Sorry, we had limited room for packing an