411 The Walters Bunch

Wow! Time flies by so fast! I can't believe Christmas has already come AND gone and that the New Year is upon us.   We have been very blessed this year. We had a wonderful time (now that we have recovered from all the driving and togetherness I can say this) on our month long trip to have a southwestern adventure. We LOVE LOVE, LOVE our new house and super cute extra small town. We have all been healthy (the worst is my new lactose allergy...I MISS YOU CHEESE!)  and we have a large loving family to share our lives with. Yep, life rocks on the Bunch home front.  As we sit up on New Years Eve doing our family traditions of making a treat, drinking sparkling grape juice, and watching a movie, we reflect on what 2016 brought us and what will be for 2017. We pray for health for all our friends and family, that we are able to share many happy get togethers with those that we love, that we find a new church home, and that we maybe as blessed as we were for this year. Happy New Years eve

Well, we survived the extremely cold weather of the past 3 days. The wind was extremely high and wind chills were in the single digits. Thank goodness it is over and back to shorts weather for the next few days. Today was gorgeous: light winds, blue skies, mid sixties....lovely. The forecast for Christmas is mid seventies and as long as a cold front doesn't come through bringing severe storms, it will be a great day for all the kids to play outside with their cousins. We celebrated D's birthday and he was very surprised. We started with breakfast at an Old West Cafe, then I surprised him with a massage. Afterwards, we went to eat lunch a mexican restaurant he has wanted to try. Unfortunately, it was closed on Mondays so we instead went home and heated up leftovers and went to have mexican lunch on Tuesday. The final surprise for him was I had gotten tickets to Stars Wars Rogue One. The kids were excited about this as well. I am not even a little bit of a Stars Wars fan so I e

We are still becoming familiar with our new location so our Christmas traditions are having to change a bit this year. Driving around looking at Christmas lights is much harder when everyone is on multiple acres. Also, when you are on a lot of land the displays seem smaller. Our house use to look over done for Christmas and now it looks like we barely have decorated the outside. We went to Ardmore, OK last week to see the Festival of Lights. Oddly my in-laws are about 80 miles away, but Oklahoma is only about 40. This will probably become one of our new traditions. It was really neat and we all enjoyed the displays. It was about a 2 miles drive through exhibit.  My husband has his birthday next week and for the first time I have a ton of things I think he would love so I have planned a whole day of surprises and fun. I hope he enjoys it and will let everyone know what we did next week. He has worked so hard moving and building the fence that he really deserves some fun and relaxation

We have been very busy during the past month that we have been home. D has been tirelessly working on fencing in about 3/4 of an acre so the dog can be left off the chain without terrorizing the neighborhood, which unfortunately she did escape twice. One of those times she came back pretty tore up and bloody, but I haven't heard from the neighbors that they are down a little yorkie or a llama so I assume she lost the battle with the barb wire fence. We hosted Thanksgiving at our house and it was great to finally have a house and driveway to easily accommodate everyone and their cars! Our street started decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving! Usually we decorate the day after Thanksgiving and use to always be the first on our block. We weren't able to get some of our stuff up until Dec. 3, and I really felt like the scrooge on the block.  We still do not have roof lights up, but that will probably wait until next year. We do have the yard decor up and at least we are no long

Day 16---Today was a travel day. We left the cramped quarters of our Anaheim stay and headed north towards Sequoia National Park. A was excited to be going through LA and the Hollywood Hills, but it was so dusty and gross we couldn't even make out the hills, much less the Hollywood sign. Everyone here has to have some sort of lung issue. The amount of dust and stuff in the air is disgusting. California has NOT impressed us so far. In fact, we can't wait to leave it and breathe fresh air. Travel day was only 4 hours, which is great, and the new KOA is fantastic. Maisy has a nice run that has actual grass, never thought that would be a plus, and the spaces are spread out. The weather is perfect and other than being down wind from a cow holding area, we really like this spot. Day 17----Today we went to Sequoia National Park. The long winding switchback roads made me EXTREMELY nauseous. Flashbacks of a car sick childhood driving through the mountains to visit grandparents came