411 The Walters Bunch

  Though T had his friend party last weekend, his actual birthday was this week. We didn't do a whole lot since we had already had celebrated, but we did open presents and rent the new Jurassic Park (which I actually really liked). Since T is in his body building era we decided when I made my cake, a scrumptious three layer chocolate zucchini cake, that we would portion the leftovers into 8 slices and have four on T's birthday and the other  four on A's. We all absolutely LOVE the chocolate cake and this way we could cut down on sugar and treats. We will make the cakes they want a little later and space it out more. T wanted a pineapple upside down cake and A wanted a Boston creme poke cake so we will probably make those in October and November respectively. The chocolate cake froze great in slices and worked perfectly for T to blow out all his candles. He actually wanted 17 candles and not a number 1 and 7.  He blew them all out in one blow, but it takes a minute to ligh...

  Yes, my Mom had my name misspelled on the cake.😂 It was still yummy so it was all good. T, A, and I all have our birthdays within a week and a half. Which means there is a crazy amount of sugar within those 10 days. We always like to make whoever's birthday it is feel special for the day. We watch what they want,do activities they like, eat what they pick, do their chores for them, etc. It not usually too expensive, but just a fun day where it's focused on them. The kids use to use their days to rule like little kings and queens, but have become a lot calmer in their "old" age since they get to do whatever they want most of the time anyways. We are a pretty close family and do a lot of things together all the time anyways, but on birthdays we still make sure we defer to the birthday boy/girl. My birthday is first and the kids do so many nice things for me all the time, but they put forth an extra effort on my birthday. This year A even woke up early to turn the cof...

C surprised me with a visit and some birthday flowers 🥰  You know that kind of week where everything that can go wrong seems like it does, but it's not the worst week ever. It's just a wrinkle in your normally happy go lucky life. We normally have a pretty good life. Only the 6 month nightmare of alternate world craziness that L put us through is really the only truly horrible thing we have ever had to go through. Since then we have grown and healed (mostly) and are back to our normal chaotic happy life. Even after this week, we all still had plenty of laughter everyday. The first part of this we've kind of already mentioned...the dog. Everyone knows that Axl does NOT let us sleep if there is any kind of wet weather within a 50 mile radius (not kidding). However, we haven't really mentioned the issues we have been having with Maisy. Maisy is very old. She is 15 years old. We have taken very good care of her since we adopted her at 5. I really thought she'd only liv...

  T and I on our daily morning "walk". We're ready for fall at The Bunch household. We haven't been able to enjoy our weekly pickleball and frozen yogurt for the past couple of months. We're anxiously awaiting the cooler morning temperatures that come with fall so we can resume our friendly competitive matches. T has been busy doing school and enjoying time with his friends. D's procedures turned out to be a little harder than we were initially led to believe. Instead of a couple of days to recover after each one, it looks like it will take about a week and the first three or four days are so intense that he pretty much can't function at all. Unfortunately, the doctor refuses to write a note so he can take sick time for it so basically he is just using a ton of  vacation time. Luckily, he has a few hundred hours of vacation time so it's not a big deal.  T this week decided to make a mock apple pie. We learned about it a long time ago from our history b...

 It was back to business as normal in Cow town. The heavy police presence and bomb sniffing dogs were just a distant memory. Not that the protests were really any big deal the last time we were there, but everything was back to normal this time. D, T, and I went to see the new Superman movie while A went to go see the Musical "Shucked". She managed to get a box seat for this show and really enjoyed it! She said it was so nice NOT being squished between two strangers and that the seats were very comfortable. The show is all about a corn harvest, not kidding. The commercials made it seem pretty corny (😂), but A said it was actually really funny and she enjoyed it. Since this was the release weekend for Superman I made sure to reserve tickets online so we could definitely see it during the time A was at her show. I was the very first person to order tickets so we had our pick of seats. I usually sit towards the front, but since the theater is in an old historical building, the ...

  It was a great day at the lake. We were 3 of about 10 people that were there. After all the hard work last week, this week was all about having fun! We drew about 6 things from the fun jar and really just had plenty of fun family time. We played Life, went to the arcade, went swimming at the lake, played Risk, got slushies, and watched a movie. T starts school on Monday so we just didn't worry too much about chores and just enjoyed some down time. D didn't feel too great the past couple of days thanks to his procedures he is having done, but thankfully he was able to enjoy a few things with us before he started his treatment. Unfortunately, he has to go through pain for a few days about every 3-4 weeks for probably most of the rest of the year so he won't be capable of doing a whole lot for awhile. It's short term pain and suffering for hopefully many years of pain free living. We are still going on a few trips, but he won't participate in any of our hikes or acti...