411 The Walters Bunch

  Our KOA Basketball brought us to Springfield, MO, but I was NOT going to let it be the only thing we did while we were there. The Branson area is my most favorite place to go and Springfield had some of the beautiful Ozark appeal, but only in certain areas. There was still plenty of stuff for us to do. I remember in one area we were driving around D mentioned that he did not expect there to be so many Mexican restaurants there. I looked around and I saw about 4 off the main road. Honestly, it took a second to realize we weren't in Texas because of all the Mexican restaurants and the majority of the license plates did in fact say Texas! It could have been any street in North Texas. The first two days in MO was jam packed with basketball. We had two games a day starting at noon and then early evening, which basically allowed for no time to go and have fun. However, after that we had only one game a day and we were able to go have a little fun. Unfortunately, a cold front came throu

  We won third place! Despite all that went on in the weeks leading up to going to Nationals, we went and everything went seemingly well. Or at least it could have been worse. We left at 7am on Sunday morning. It was about a 405 mile journey, which is weird since Branson is about the same, but is 50 miles south of Springfield. I guess taking different routes CAN make a big difference. Driving with the travel trailer considerably slows down our pace. While most highways are now 70 or 75 (compared to the standard highway speed of 55 from years gone by), we have to drive around 60. This makes it take about 10 hours to get to Springfield. It was insanely windy when we left too so that made travel even more interesting since D kept getting pushed around with the gusts. The evening we arrived the weather was pleasant. It was windy, but still around 70. However, the cold front came through that night and it was FREAKING COLD the rest of our trip. The KOA we stayed at was really nice and very

I got groceries for our trip from Aldi and the cashier actually didn't just dump all the food in the cart on top of each other! I had to take a pic for proof b/c that NEVER happens. Worst part about Aldi. It has taken a lot of work to get everything ready to go for A while we are gone and with D still on a 10# restriction I have literally been doing most of the heavy lifting. T has been my helper. First thing we had to do was stock up on feed for all the animals, even if they might not need it while we are gone I still bought some so A wouldn't have any issues. This required multiple 50# bags since we have layer chickens, baby chicks ( yep, require different food than the layers), and the equine. We were taking the dog with us, but left the cat to keep A company. She has the cat, 21 chickens, the donkey, and the horse, which she is absolutely terrified of, so that creates another issue when preparing. I have to arrange it so she can take care of them without entering the pen, w

  Apparently, two back to back wind storms proved too much for his 400 lbs chained beast! I pulled it off of the top of A's Car. What a nice week! Practice was cancelled this week so we got to enjoy a much less hectic schedule. We had been waiting almost a month for the farm store to get in our new baby chicks, but they ended up being 4 days late and so many people are wanting chickens now thanks to the high price of eggs that they completely sold out in about 3 hours. Luckily, Tractor Supply had several types of chicks in so we still were able to get 9 new babies. Hopefully, their track record will be as good as our local farm store, which has never given us a rooster in 2 batches of chickens. There is always a 10% of getting a rooster in a sexed batch, but I am hopeful these are all girls. So far they are really quiet and it is my experience that the boys are super rowdy. Baby chicks are so sweet and adorable! We got 3 each of 3 different kinds. Even though my kids are pretty muc