411 The Walters Bunch

Wow. Have we been busy this past two weeks. I am really big on making a gift for family for Christmas. We also buy store bought things, but I like to make at least one thing that shows I thought about them for awhile. This year my eldest daughter also thought of something she could make too. I won't ruin the surprise by saying what we made since we have not celebrated with everyone yet, but know we thought of you and I really put my back into it. Seriously, I killed my back, but I think they turned out nice and hopefully everyone likes them! After we finished making our gifts,  we went to Grand Prairie to see the lights. Since we were by the national cemetery for DFW, we went to visit Papaw and put some flowers on his grave. Almost a year later, it was still very emotional.  We had fun at the lights festival. Because of all the flooding this year about 25% was literally underwater.  We still enjoyed the lights and the rides. This is no joke the fastest carasel I have ever seen! T

It is finally here....Christmas break. I am so ready for a break...umm I mean the kids are so ready for their break.  We have big plans on doing all sorts of Christmas fun.  We have already been to see ICE at the Gaylord and watched the LIVE play, which was the WIZ this year, and decided not to go to Bethlehem Revisited. Well, we really wanted to go to Bethlehem Revisited, which is a really neat live reenactment of what life was really like in Bethlehem the night the baby Jesus was born. They set up the entire town complete with housing, stables, and market to look exactly like it should have over 2000 years ago. You even see Caesar's guards on patrol. We just couldn't bring ourselves to drive the 3 hr round trip drive so soon after we just got back from such a long trip, but we will definitely try to go next year. It was really neat last time we went and we would love to go again. We plan on enjoying building our gingerbread houses, watching lots of Christmas movies, and looki

Had a lot of fun at the Gaylord's Ice exhibit. We did it. We took three kids and one crazy out of control dog on a 1300 mile round trip excursion to visit family in Kearney, NB. We travel a lot, but this was our first trip with an animal. We usually leave our animals at home and hire someone to care for them, but our new shelter dog is beyond clingy and I couldn't even ask family to deal with that! We did discover she travels much better locked in her kennel than out loose with us. We took the Navigator and the third row just barely accommodated her kennel with room for one kid left over. Being able to freely get in and out of the car without psyco dog tearing everything up was great. The trip up was cold, but sunny and with limited stops took about 11.5 hours. We were treated to a snowstorm just in time for Thanksgiving. We spent great quality time with our family and had a blast watching 3D movies on their new movie projector. Our dog wasn't too bad and it helped th

D and his dad working. We had an enjoyable weekend this week. We headed out to what use to be the country, but is rapidly becoming developed, to visit with my husband's parents  and to get some help working on our SUV. Our SUV is about 16 years old, but only has 95,000 miles on it! We are in the process of making sure it is ready for a road trip. We normally take the truck, but decided the extra space on such a long trip would be appreciated, plus the dog crate fits in the last row so she will NOT be able to bounce around on all of us. Since my Father In Law was a mechanic for years we enlisted his expertise in doing brake work and the door lock. Unfortunately, he couldn't fix the door lock so we will take that to our mechanic to finish, but they did spend the entire day working on the brakes. It was a beautiful thing to watch father and son work side by side. While they worked on the brakes, I installed the new seat cover......which was a pain, but they look way better.  I

C turns 22! We went to the pumpkin patch for what will probably be our last year.  I never thought I would see the day ALL my kids are too old to go to the pumpkin patch! It is a little sad, but also exciting. As they get older, it opens all new kinds of experiences for us that they use to be too young for, like museums that have actual art work. It works out well that they are too old. The area where the pumpkin patch is has become over run with neighborhoods and all the nice farmland has been taken away. I am really tired of over development. Progress is NOT the samething as more shopping and doctor offices.         I had fun trick or treating with the youngest two. We walked about 1.5 miles and the kids had about 10 lbs of candy. It should last until next Halloween.  Our eldest turned 22. It feels weird to say that. It feels like I was just 22! Time with the kids at home goes so quickly. I try to relish it more with the younger ones since before I know it, they will be gone

D helping T with his troops campfire skit. T and L goofing off by the campfire at our site. We just returned from Cooper Lake State Park. This time we went with our scout group and our group rented out the entire park. It was so much fun and such a different experience to realize I did not have to worry about the kids yelling and screaming through the park because EVERYONE had kids doing the same thing! We even felt comfortable enough to let our kids ride their bikes around the loop by themselves. The scouts put on campfire skits one night and they were really cute and entertaining. On Sunday morning, the venturing crew served breakfast for all 200 of us and then had a worship time. It was a lot of fun and we are looking forward to the spring camping trip. D has become the assistant Den Leader in T's troop and I have been teaching a badge for the past three weeks to their youngest group of American Heritage Girls. The dog did better than expected, but could o