411 The Walters Bunch

Home Sweet Home. We love Christmas in our household. In fact, on Thanksgiving Day it is a tradition to make our gingerbread houses and start decorating. All our shopping is finished and we just relax and take in the holiday by Dec 10. This year is no different. We finished shopping and wrapping on the 13th. Yay! Shipping caused a little bit of stress about our angel gifts arriving on time this year, but literally the day they arrived the kids and I set up a gift wrapping line and we had everything wrapped and at the church within an hour. Talk about stressful. We all take turns having Cookie the elf do different things each night. When everyone gets up the next morning we see what she was up too. Sometimes she has a wii party. Sometimes she wraps gifts Sometimes she has an accident. Sometimes she makes a mess.....I mean cooks. We all have fun seeing what Cookie does each night. We started our vacation on Dec. 11th this year and have been so busy each day so

It's tradition to make gingerbread houses on Thanksgiving Day. We had a fairly uneventful Thanksgiving this year. D had to work on the actual Thanksgiving this year so the kids and I stuck to our normal routine. We got up and took the day off from school. We enjoy a leisurely breakfast. This year L made Chocolate Muffins. She is turning into quite the little baker and I really enjoy her love of cooking. Mostly because that means I don't have to. After breakfast, in order to feel good about our serious plans to lounge around and eat all day, we did about half an hour of cardio. We then watched the Thanksgiving Parade because is it really Thanksgiving without watching the parade? The girls and I then watched what they wait for all year long to come on........the National Dog Show. I am not sure what they find so fascinating about this , but they love it.  We were disappointed the whippet didn't win. We grilled some steaks and tried not to eat ANY traditional Tha

I grew up heading off every summer to spend a month in Missouri with my grandparents. My poor grandfather would spend all day long dragging my cousins and I around the lake behind one of his many boats. We would solemn ski, tandem ski, ride inner tubes, and whatever you could think of. We were water rats and I loved it and I loved the Ozarks, though in full disclosure I did get car sick nearly every time I was in the car. The Ozarks were always a beautiful relaxing destination. Being so close to Branson, we made our way there several times to enjoy the shows and to visit Silver Dollar City. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away when I was only 15 and I have not been back since. I had honestly forgotten about this little gem until the kids and I saw a commercial for Branson not to long ago and it reminded me of all the fun I had and the kids thought it looked like fun also. The seed was planted and 6 weeks later we arrived at the Branson KOA. The week before Thanksgiving was per

Our beautiful 3/4 acre rooster resort was NOT the blissful end for our roosters that we had envisioned. After only 3 days the dark ones, what we had come to acknowledge our 4 easter egger roosters as, became EXTREMELY violent with the  2 sweet roosters we had originally planned on keeping.  We couldn't have that so as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland said, "off with their heads". D took that literally because we had plans for the meat. However, the kids were completely traumatized by the whole ordeal and would not stand for us eating what use to be their chicks, regardless of how mean they became, so it was just wasted meat .  Lesson learned. Kids cannot cuddle and name their dinner animals.  Our two remaining roosters have lived the past week and a half in blissfully harmony, just as rooster lodge was intended. The girls have still yet to lay their first egg, but hopefully will soon. So far, the chickens have just turned out to be glorified expensive pets. T