411 The Walters Bunch

  Our ginormous 10 month old kitten! Well, for what feels like the 1000th time this year our family is one by one going down with a cold like virus. I know for a fact it is NOT COVID again. I tested and was negative, which makes sense since we have just very recently recovered from it, though my sense of smell and taste are still only at about 80% of where it was. I am starting to think it might be permanent. Last month D missed out on our 2nd round of illness, but this time around he was the first one to have it. Now T has also contracted it. Basically, the boys are just very snotty and tired. So far the girls and I have avoided round 3, but I did have to reach for a Kleenex a couple times today so I guess we will see what happens.  The weather is finally typical for a Texas summer. Hot and Humid. It is harder to get use to since it has been fairly mild for a Texas summer this year. Fortunately, it will only last about a week and then ANOTHER cold front comes through to knock us back

 This week was also a nice week.  We drew from the fun jar  go hiking and visit the Jurassic World Exhibition.  I have wanted to go hike a greenbelt that is near us since we moved here. Finally, after almost 5 years, we have. This area has over 20 miles of hiking trails and also allows horses. It was raining the day we went so we did not see anyone else, but it would be a fun place to take your horse for a trail ride. It's too bad we can't ride our horse! We managed to get our hike in between rain showers so other than the high humidity it was nice hike. It was pretty flat so it was a fairly easy trail. We have had to scale some mountains on a few of our hikes, but this was like a nice nature walk, though being as competitive as we all are it turned into who can speed walk the fastest walk. Spoiler T and I pretty much walk the same speed. It was a fun way to get a little exercise in and we spent about an hour there hiking. T proudly showing off how short Daddy is now. It was a

  Our garden is in full swing! T also has okra and corn. We are having a great summer, at least weather wise. It is starting the third week of July and it hasn't been above 94 ALL SUMMER! In fact, for the next 10 days there is nothing above 92 and 3 of those days will be in the mid 80's! I mean, I really feel for all the poor people in Washington and Oregon who are dealing with temps more than 40 degrees above normal. We haven't even hit 118 here ever! They aren't use to heat like that and without a/c, we KNOW it's brutal. Let's be honest, even with a/c triple digits are brutal. However, we are LOVING our lower summer temps! We are actually comfortable staying outside until about 1. Usually toward the end of summer we follow the rule of outside stuff is done before 10 or after 7. It still is hot, of course it's Texas, but compared to a "normal" summer we'll take it! I didn't see this zucchini so it got a little large! I put a normal sized o

  We have had a fun couple of weeks. Well, not only fun, but a well balanced couple of weeks of hard work and fun. I have tried to be better about scheduling time to relax and do something different and not just try to get projects done. For example, even though we need to bathe the horses and paint the barn, we still took time out to go to a secluded swimming hole, but more on that later. We had C and H over on July 4th to celebrate with us. It was a ton of fun. They spent about 8 hours over here and I can't remember the last time all my kids were together for that long! C is very good about keeping in touch. I usually see him at least once a month and he calls 2-3 times a week. While C was over here on the 4th, he asked T to be his best man at his wedding! T is so excited! T had asked him if he could be the ring bearer and apparently that was already promised to someone else so T thought he wouldn't get to be in the wedding. Boy, was he surprised. He is a little nervous about