411 The Walters Bunch

  It was COLD 🥶  First off, this will be a short post since our wifi went out in the rain on Saturday afternoon and we won't have it fixed until at least Thursday so I am trying to do this all on my phone. The most important thing that went on this week was C continuing to heal. Back to back heart surgeries aren't easy and the healing is a little slower this time. He said that after about 5 days the pain is about half of what it was and the most painful part is sitting and standing, so basically lying down is good. His wife, H, says he is getting a little better everyday and that the best part is he has had NO episodes! Time will tell how well it works, but so far it seems to be very promising. After he gets use to it, he should be able to get back to a fairly normal life. He won't be doing marathons or anything, but I don't think he ever really planned on that anyway. I just hope he can live a long fairly normal painfree life now. A, T, D, and I went to go see the cou...

  The hospital was actually really nice. It sold sandwiches and other food, provided Wifi, and had free valet parking. It better. They billed the insurance company $83,000! Healthcare is out of control!!!! There were so many ups and downs this past week that it's hard to know where to start. I guess we'll start with the most serious and that would be with C. He had his ablation this week. Well, he was supposed to. Let's back track a little. C had known his surgery was scheduled for March 23 for about 2 months. He had been reluctantly excited about getting "fixed" and not dealing with the crazy episodes and feeling horrible. He had been to the emergency room numerous times in the past few months because of his heart issues. He was scared to leave the house and go to work functions because he honestly never had any clue as to when he would get an episode. He could just be sitting there and have his heart rate jump to 185 for minutes on end and then plummet to 43, le...

  Pickleball is always fun! Now that the weather has been nicer, albeit super windy, we have been trying to do our weekly pickleball match. Basically, this week whoever was playing with the wind won! We still have fun playing even when it is windy. In fact, playing in the wind probably makes us have more fun. The wind gusts sometimes pick the ball up and make it do some funny things, like getting the ball and pushing it back onto your side so you lose a point or blowing it three courts over! Luckily, we are usually the only ones there so it doesn't matter if we play across 4 courts. Afterwards, we usually go get some ice cream/ frozen yogurt and just enjoy our outing.  T went camping this weekend with his troop. They worked on orienteering, which I was super happy about since T needs to work on that something fierce, but unfortunately the boys in troop aren't much better than him at orienteering and the first guy oriented them upside down on the first one so they basically was...

  That's not fog. That is how dusty it was at 3 pm in the afternoon on the high wind day that came from the West. We have a nice coating of red West Texas dust on EVERYTHING. I even had to change the water in the horse trough because there was so much dust in there it just looked muddy! So gross!!! Well, it's finally over! D's crazy week and a half that had more than 43 hours of over time is through! D is tired from everything he had to do and I am exhausted from holding the fort down. The weather has been beautiful, but a little crazy! We have had two days of high winds, like crazy high winds. Basically, one day for about 12 hours the winds stayed at around 37 mph with guests around 65 mph. The second high wind day was a little better with winds sustained at about 27 mph and gusts about 45 mph. However , even though we didn't have any damage from the higher wind event, we did have some damage from the second event. Most likely because it came from the southwest. We alw...

  He is such a  sweet big baby❤️ This past week was wonderful! The mornings were slightly chilly and the afternoons were picture perfect. So of course we have to have a cold front come through that drops the the afternoon highs by about 40 degrees! It is rainy, cold, and miserable now. I have switched back and forth so much from heater to a/c  I am surprised my system hasn't freaked out! Unfortunately, Axl is still a big baby so we haven't had a lot of sleep. We have been needing to give Axl his anxiety meds, which helps, but he still pants and paces ALL night long. While that is annoying, it is actually an improvement from when he first arrived. I just can't understand why he is so upset every time there's any moisture in the air. It's really sad to watch a 100 lbs dog literally shaking because he's so scared. I really hope as he gets use to his new home that he continues to be less scared of EVERYTHING. It was a pretty long week since D was gone 12 hours every...

The insane cold snap is now just a distant memory. The weather has been absolutely perfect! We have been outside and getting some things done. Basically, we're just enjoying the great weather. We know before too long that summer will be here and we'll have to deal with all the crazy hot weather.     We have not made it out to look at the house we're interested in seeing yet. D was super sick the week we were going to go see it and then the crazy cold snap came and we needed to stay close to the animals plus we didn't feel like getting out when it was that cold and windy. Now, training season has started for D and over the next couple of weeks, he will only have Sundays off. T and I will probably go drive by and look at the outside of the property to see if it's flat enough for what we want to do with it and if it is then D and I will make an appointment to go check it out. We're getting some projects done in the meantime that will help get the house ready to sel...

Happy Birthday Grandma!    While T was away having a fabulous time on his youth group trip, D and I prepared the animals for the extra cold. It was only going to be for a couple of days so I really didn't want to move the chickens into the garage. We added more tarps to the chicken coop so that even the south facing side was covered, which we normally don't do. I also put a heat light out there, just in case the girls started getting way too cold. I didn't want to use it unless it was an emergency for two reasons: 1.) I don't want them to acclimate to the warmth and then have the electricity go out and then they are extra cold and 2.) it smells a little weird and I don't want to burn my house down! The tarps made the coop so dark that I put a night light out there and ran it 24/7 for 3 days. The tarps worked great and the girls were happy just clucking around in there. We put extra chips in the horse barn and came out every 4 hours to make sure nobody's waters w...

  I made a special breakfast for the kids that they like and gave them some special sodas. Neither of them really want a lot of candy, but they both love their occasional soda. Cracker Barrel has the best selection of soda bottles.  You know D feels pretty bad when he texts you in the middle of the afternoon that he's coming home from work. I had no idea he was even feeling bad. It hit pretty fast and was pretty brutal. He came home early, went straight to bed, and didn't get out of bed until I physically made him after about 24 hours. I did wake him occasionally to eat, drink, and take some meds, but he pretty much just slept that entire time. It's almost been a week now and he still isn't 100% but he is doing a lot better than the first couple of days. He only worked one day this week because we had taken off to take the dogs on a practice camping trip together. With D being sick though and it being so cold we decided not to go. Instead we are going to take the dogs o...

It's official, she has a college diploma!! Besides totally enjoying a drama free year, we have been consciously spending time doing things as a family and spending time with each child doing things they enjoy. D has been playing ball and watching movies with his larger "mini me" while A and I have been spending a lot of time in Dallas going to the theatre. A absolutely loves going to see off Broadway productions! I won't be surprised in the slightest if she ends up getting season tickets. Dallas Broadway does a lottery to each show where if they draw your name you have 3 hours to buy tickets for $39 each including all fees! That is an absolute steal! She actually won the lottery on Tuesday so we went that night to see the production of "& Juliet". The seats she won were FANTASTIC! They don't give you cheap seats in the back for the lottery. You win good seats. The seats we ended up with worked out to be only about a quarter of the regular price! We h...

We made it to Fair Park with only a little bit of an issue.  What a fun week! For Christmas A bought her and I tickets to go see Shen Yun. I have seen advertisements for this over the past 20+ years and have slowly come to want to see what it is about and how it has managed to last so long. What it is about is China before the rise of Communism. It showcases traditional Chinese dances and songs along with traditional instruments. While some of the story was a little corny, the costumes, dancing, singing, and instruments were very interesting. We had a wonderful time and since we were out and about in Dallas we went ahead and made a visit to Trader Joe's. Which in a complete power move, the girl scouts had set up a cookie booth right in front of the gym next to Trader Joe's! There was a literal line to buy cookies. Lol. Dallas actually kept to their word and put up fencing under the overpasses and bridges to keep the homeless encampments at bay near the Fair Park area. Most of t...