411 The Walters Bunch

  Finally, everyone gets it  or at least stopped fighting it! In sticking with our normal tradition, we give pretty much free rein to the birthday person to decide what we do for the day. The birthday person can decide on the activity, food, and pretty much anything else for the day. This applies to both kids and adults. The only rule is that everyone has to do it and no one can complain about it. It kind of ruins the fun of your birthday activity if someone complains through it the whole time.     The only thing the kids asked me this year was NOT to go on my normal birthday hike. They don't like getting up early, hiking in the Texas August heat and humidity, and at least one of them will complain about getting dirty and bugs.....However, it's my birthday so they can suck it up and go. I have always wanted to go to the Gainsville Farmer's Market. It is in an old outlet mall and has so many fun vendors and activities. I planned a 4.4 mile hike in the area and then we would

 *** OOPS I FORGOT TO CONFIRM THE POST FOR LAST WEEK. SORRY! NEW POST IN A COUPLE OF DAYS. This was last weeks**** You can't really complain about rain in August in Texas. It usually doesn't happen and August is usually very hot and dry. However, we had an unusual event last week. There was rain for over half of the week! The first day it just kind of dribbled all day. We had about half an inch of a nice slow rain. Unfortunately, the next two days the bottom dropped out and we had about 5 more inches total! It is also in the forecast to rain again this afternoon. Everything is a muddy mess. We have standing water in the yard and I won't even mention what the horses look like! I'll just say I have quite a project with them once things dry out a little. The humidity from all this rain is almost unbearable. It really slaps you in the face when you go outside. However, it should only last about a week and then another cold front comes through; this time with no rain. It wil

The official "I am waiting for a treat" corner. We started back to school on Monday as planned. Since A doesn't start school until the 23rd, she was my helper this week. It felt weird doing school with just the younger two, but everything went well. It is easier on me this year since A is finished and L is taking her geometry class online. After the horrible experience of having to do geometry with A, I decided to save what little sanity I have left and let someone else deal with proofs. I wish Texas didn't make kids take geometry. I think a business or consumer math would be of far greater value to the students. That's why for our 4th year of Math in high school the kids take Consumer Math instead of Trig. Trig isn't a requirement so I tried to pick something that would actually be useful in life. I loved the consumer math so much that I really wish we could replace geometry with business math, but for some reason Texas wants geometry. At least my kids will g

  The Bunch 2020 Olympics This has been pretty good week.  We finished drawing last of the fun jar items and everyone was able to do 5 things they wanted to do this summer. The weather was nice (for Texas anyways). We had a good summer. We did not camp as much as we did last summer since a significant portion of it was spent either ill or in quarantine.  However, I expect us to have more frequent little get-aways as fall arrives. It will be weird that A probably won't make all the trips with us, but that's life.  The boys have felt a lot better and other than a couple of sneezes the girls and I have been doing very well, though I did  lower my activity level just in case. However, it seems that we were lucky and missed this latest round of illness. Since T was feeling better and the girls had a church function  that they were attending, T and I decided to head to the lake by ourselves and have a little fun of our own with a picnic and a swim. I even participated in his handstan