411 The Walters Bunch

It has been very nice lately temperature wise, albeit 40mph winds are a little much. We have decided our land has only two levels: completely muddy or so dry there are cracks in it. Apparently, whatever soil type we have now is just weird. It will stay so muddy for days after it rains that we are having to wash the dog's feet every time she comes in and out.  I kid you not, we have our "doggy foot washing station" on the deck by the back door. It is a pain and I often wonder how can she get so muddy just prancing 30 ft from the deck to use the potty and immediately coming back in. It's not like we let her go play in the muck for hours, but literally 5 seconds or 2 hours, it makes no difference. She gets mud caked all in her nails and paws and we spent about 10 minutes cleaning her feet before she comes in. Needless to say, when it is muddy out; she goes out VERY little. The other end of the pendulum is after a few days of horrible mud; we will wake up the next morni...

What a roller coaster of weather we have had! For a couple of days we will have highs in the 80's and then followed by a couple of days where it is 6 with wind chills below zero. Then back to the 80's, which is quickly followed by snow. My allergies are going crazy! We have started back to school, though if I am honest no one really wants to do it, including myself! The kids just started their gymnastics class and we are trying to get back to our pre-move schedule. It has been harder than I thought. I can't decide if time stands still in the country or moves at the speed of light. It is really weird. I know that doing things pretty much revolves around when the sun is up and everyone has their own special way of telling time. It isn't 2:00pm, it is "sometime this afternoon". Also, "down the road a piece" can mean anywhere from 10-30 miles. It is strange to get use to, but I love our house and how quiet everything is.  T starts flag football in a coup...

Wow! Time flies by so fast! I can't believe Christmas has already come AND gone and that the New Year is upon us.   We have been very blessed this year. We had a wonderful time (now that we have recovered from all the driving and togetherness I can say this) on our month long trip to have a southwestern adventure. We LOVE LOVE, LOVE our new house and super cute extra small town. We have all been healthy (the worst is my new lactose allergy...I MISS YOU CHEESE!)  and we have a large loving family to share our lives with. Yep, life rocks on the Bunch home front.  As we sit up on New Years Eve doing our family traditions of making a treat, drinking sparkling grape juice, and watching a movie, we reflect on what 2016 brought us and what will be for 2017. We pray for health for all our friends and family, that we are able to share many happy get togethers with those that we love, that we find a new church home, and that we maybe as blessed as we were for this year. ...

Well, we survived the extremely cold weather of the past 3 days. The wind was extremely high and wind chills were in the single digits. Thank goodness it is over and back to shorts weather for the next few days. Today was gorgeous: light winds, blue skies, mid sixties....lovely. The forecast for Christmas is mid seventies and as long as a cold front doesn't come through bringing severe storms, it will be a great day for all the kids to play outside with their cousins. We celebrated D's birthday and he was very surprised. We started with breakfast at an Old West Cafe, then I surprised him with a massage. Afterwards, we went to eat lunch a mexican restaurant he has wanted to try. Unfortunately, it was closed on Mondays so we instead went home and heated up leftovers and went to have mexican lunch on Tuesday. The final surprise for him was I had gotten tickets to Stars Wars Rogue One. The kids were excited about this as well. I am not even a little bit of a Stars Wars fan so I e...

We are still becoming familiar with our new location so our Christmas traditions are having to change a bit this year. Driving around looking at Christmas lights is much harder when everyone is on multiple acres. Also, when you are on a lot of land the displays seem smaller. Our house use to look over done for Christmas and now it looks like we barely have decorated the outside. We went to Ardmore, OK last week to see the Festival of Lights. Oddly my in-laws are about 80 miles away, but Oklahoma is only about 40. This will probably become one of our new traditions. It was really neat and we all enjoyed the displays. It was about a 2 miles drive through exhibit.  My husband has his birthday next week and for the first time I have a ton of things I think he would love so I have planned a whole day of surprises and fun. I hope he enjoys it and will let everyone know what we did next week. He has worked so hard moving and building the fence that he really deserves some fun and relaxa...

We have been very busy during the past month that we have been home. D has been tirelessly working on fencing in about 3/4 of an acre so the dog can be left off the chain without terrorizing the neighborhood, which unfortunately she did escape twice. One of those times she came back pretty tore up and bloody, but I haven't heard from the neighbors that they are down a little yorkie or a llama so I assume she lost the battle with the barb wire fence. We hosted Thanksgiving at our house and it was great to finally have a house and driveway to easily accommodate everyone and their cars! Our street started decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving! Usually we decorate the day after Thanksgiving and use to always be the first on our block. We weren't able to get some of our stuff up until Dec. 3, and I really felt like the scrooge on the block.  We still do not have roof lights up, but that will probably wait until next year. We do have the yard decor up and at least we are no long...