411 The Walters Bunch

Okay, that is a little misleading because T still has two weeks, but since I am no longer at the board doing the Slope Intercept Formula I will take his two digit multiplication without complaint.....or at least relatively little. The weather has gone from perfectly wonderful to the long humid very hot days of summer, seemingly overnight. Why is it North Texas goes from beautiful 70's to upper 90's without the gradual warm up of the 80's? You get use to days in a row of sunshine and mild afternoons and then the oven gets turned on one night and then it is 92 with 71% humidity by 11am. The temp isn't too bad. It is the combination of the humidity and heat that is killer. I do have to say though my wonderful country house with its constant gale force winds might just make this summer  not too bad. Don't get me wrong I expect skin melting heat and thick air, but a constant breeze should make a huge difference...I hope. We have done it. We have made the sprinklers wor...

Ahhh. The days of summer are almost here. It is so close we are getting antsy for the laziness of summer. I use that term loosely since anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty much incapable of being lazy. In fact, I have been dealing with a hematoma in my thigh for the past month and I am required to "rest" until it heals, which is about 9-12 weeks. I take that to mean no leg weights, running, or biking. I still have been doing my normal chores and exercises that do not involve a lot of legs, but it has been a month and it is only slightly better. My doctor may have something to say about that when I go in for him to check up on it. I wouldn't think he would really want me to just sit with my leg up for weeks on end, who has the time to do that? We finally called in the big guns to look at my sprinkler system and it STILL doesn't work right! He managed to find a control box we didn't know we had and hooked up all the zones (still unable to locate 2)to the sy...

So far this spring we have been very fortunate to avoid the severe storms that have plagued the surrounding areas. I kid you not: the storms pass a couple miles to the  north or a couple miles to the south. It is like the property is in some kind of vortex that is impenetrable to rain, which is great to have all the baseball size hail and tornadoes go around us, but my yard is starting to resemble the Grand Canyon with all the cracks running through it. Yes, we have that awesome automatic sprinkler system through the whole property and NO we still haven't managed to get it working right. This is our last weekend we will try to work on it ourselves and then we will have to bite the bullet and call in the big guns. The sprinklers have been our archenemy and I refuse to be bested by water. All I ever hear is "oh, automatic sprinklers are so easy.....". I am starting to think these people have never actually worked on sprinklers themselves, but just call someone out...

We had a wonderful Easter. No one had volunteered to have anything at their house so I decided we could do Easter dinner at our house. Normally, we have lunch, but this means that do not have time to go to church on Easter Sunday. This year we had the family celebration at our house and I made it dinner instead of lunch so everyone could come after church. It was great! We had a ham and a brisket and lots of yummy sides. We always do our egg hunt first thing on Easter morning, but once the grandparents and extended family get here we have another hunt with everyone. The weather was fantastic and the kids could run around on the property. We missed the eldest, but he had come over the day before to watch L's soccer game. It is kind of far for 2 trips. Yep. It is early. The Clan. First time in 23 years that the cat is not in the Easter basket pic. :(     We are still getting use to having so much space. It is great, but requires a lot of up keep. Mo...

This past weekend was our semi annual scout trip. This time it was at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX. As usual it was a lot of fun. We arrived on Friday about noon. Friday is a day for setting up camp and visiting with friends. Saturdays from 2-4pm is lesson time for badge work and then at 7:00pm  is a dutch oven contest and dessert bar. Afterward, we build a campfire and the scouts perform their skits and around 9pm we have a flag retirement ceremony. The next morning we have breakfast at 9am and then a church service at 10am. This year D was in charge of the dessert bar and bon fire and the girls and I did breakfast. Cooking for 186 people is challenging on  a good day, but take away modern conveniences like an oven and it becomes a little trickier.  We did it though, however I prefer to just show up and wait in line for breakfast instead of helping to prepare and serve it. The dessert bar is easier because every family contributes one desser...

The Last Party!!!!  Yay!!!! Birthday Celebration #4 We have finally celebrated with everyone L's birthday! Yay! No more birthday! L wanted a spring flowers theme so we decorated the house in artificial flowers and butterflies. It turned out really lovely. She is quite the inspiring chef and made a cookies and cream cake that was fantastic. She also made a homemade fruit dip and vegetable dip. She took the time to cut up and arrange the vegetables and fruit herself. She did a wonderful job and as a bonus I DON'T HAVE TO! The weather has been formidable lately, but so far we have lucked out and the really nasty stuff has skirted around us.  However, our yard is drowning! We have several "ponds" on the property now and while the birds have been enjoying their choice of a bathing area I just see a muddy mess where I have to wipe the dog's feet off  EVERY time she goes outside. If it ever stops storming for a couple of weeks, we will plant grass so we w...

Finally her big day is here! Today was finally L's actual birthday. This means as a family we HAVE to do something today. None of the other four days of celebration is good enough to NOT do something on your "real" birthday. The world will in fact end if a real birthday celebration is not performed. The kids are even serious enough about this unwritten sacred birthday rule that they willingly do school on Saturday to be able to have the "real" birthday off  to celebrate. It really is the same thing we do on most Sundays, but apparently performing these actions on your "real" birthday takes things up a notch. What did we do? We took the kids to get donuts (I hate donuts so this really is only a birthday thing), we went shopping, watched a movie (at home), went out to eat (at a restaurant where we eat  at least once a month) , and had a no bake cheesecake (which we do not usually eat{remember lactose intolerant}). So what is so special? On your ...