411 The Walters Bunch

Happy Popeye's Day!  What is Popeye's Day?  Pretty much anyone who isn't in our immediate family will definitely be asking this question. It has become an inside joke now. It all started about 2-3 years ago. First, anyone who knows our family knows that we do not eat out frequently. It is saved for special occasions. About 2-3 years ago Popeye's came out with their spicy chicken sandwich and the world went insane. People were waiting in hours long lines, stabbing other customers, and generally just going completely CRAZY for this sandwich. Our family had not eaten at a Popeye's in about 15 years, but decided if we had the chance that we would try that sandwich. A short few years later, the opportunity presented itself. Ok, it was more like an empty Popeye's drive through next to where we were Christmas shopping, but it was lunch time, we were tired and finally decided to give the sandwich a try. The kids all ordered the spicy sandwich and the new mac n cheese. A

The craziness of the past two weeks is finally over! It feels so nice to know that we get to slow down for a couple of weeks. We like that T plays ball on a team that wins and that everyone on it plays hard. Select teams are completely different than recreation teams. It is very competitive and we have to try drive ALL over North Texas. We have been as far north as Sivell Bend, which technically feels like it should be in Oklahoma since we had to drive a few miles past the casino to get there, and as far south as Duncanville, basically we play in about an 80 sq mile radius. Game days lately have been twice a week with a practice one a week. Game day generally means we have to leave our house by about 2:30 for a 5:00 pm game. We won't get back home until around 8:00 pm. It makes for long tiring days so this break is fantastic.  L even has a break from choir for a few weeks so our schedule is really relaxed for the holidays, which we love. L sang last week in the services. They combi

  Before game warm up We have been VERY busy driving all over for T's basketball games and to my in laws house to help put out hay for the cows. Basically, almost everyday we are in the car commuting somewhere for about 3-4 hours. After next Wednesday though we have a couple of weeks of no games or practice and we are ready to relax and enjoy the down time. T is still playing well, but our last couple of games have been rough. We have been playing older and bigger teams, which are like a team of T's. Our team, except for T of course, is very small. Most of them are younger than 12 and putting an 11 year old next to a 14, almost 15 year old, makes you realize exactly how much growing happens in that three years! T has had to play almost the entire time the last 2 games to try and even out the opponents size advantage. He has been beat after his games. Luckily, his next two games this week are in our age bracket. He was the only one on his team to score in one of the games last w

We are in the Christmas spirit. Yay! Our favorite time of the year is here! We have the outside lights up, the indoor decorations done, and have started our Christmas baking (we had to bake somethings early this year because the farrier comes in the first week of December this year and I like to give him some goodies. You take care of your farrier!). The younger kids just finished the fall semester on Friday and have started their Christmas holidays. A finishes her last exam on Monday and then we get to enjoy the holidays. Well, we have about 8 basketball games all over the metroplex and beyond so that will keep us pretty busy, but other than that we will be watching Hallmark movies and baking. Yay! Of course, we have the wedding coming up soon too, so we have a few things left to do for that, but all in all we will get to slow down a lot.  The tree was decorated with only non breakable ornaments this year, thanks to our cat. However, all the ornaments now sit on the top 1/3 of our tre

  We are starting our hike. We had planned to spend a few days out at Bonham State Park over the Thanksgiving holidays so we could check out the wedding venue before C's big day. However, it ended up being completely booked and so was almost every other state park within a hundred miles of us. We ended up getting the last available site at the lake that is only 30 minutes from our house. Since it was the last spot, I figured it would have something wrong with it, but as it turned out, it was one of our favorite spots. Not only was it fairly level, but it was extra wide, which was nice since we spend a lot of time outside watching tv and using our Solo Stove. We absolutely love our Solo Stove. It is nice to be able to move the fire around to where ever we want to sit instead of being restricted to where the fire pit is and because of how the stove is made it has virtually no smoke from the fire. The weather was almost perfect. It was a little chilly in the mornings with nice mild af