411 The Walters Bunch

  Our site was really big. It was nice since Maisy had plenty of room AWAY from people. One of our most favorite spots to camp is at Eisenhower State Park. The park is not only huge, but has beautiful views. There is many different trails that take you to rocky cliffs that overlook Lake Texoma. It always reminds me of the Ozarks, albeit a smaller version and we all know how much I love the Ozarks. We stayed in a great site and while the weather was a little hot during the late afternoon and early evenings, the mornings were great! The rving craze has finally slowed down and the park was mostly empty. I did still make reservations, but I only did it 2 days ahead of time and there was plenty of sites to pick from. The goal this time was to finally finish a really long trail we have been hiking for about our past 3 trips to this park. The trail is only 3.2 miles long, but it is NOT a loop, which means if you want to get back to where you started it is about 6.4 miles. However, that is...

Ok. So I accidentally took us on the wrong trail. We figured it out about a mile in. In my defense the Greenbelt has like 5 entrances, covers 10 miles, and has multiple trails. Scenic outlook, I guess we will try to hike you again next time! It has been quite awhile since we have taken the rv out. After our April trip, we caught Covid and and then another illness which took us about two months total to recover from. Once we were finally physically well enough the kids were busy with camp and sports. This brought us to August which is usually just too hot to camp, though this year probably would have been ok. That brings us to our trip this week. Almost 5 months to the day of our last trip, we finally went camping again! Did we go somewhere super fun and different? Nope. Not at all.We went to the state park that is literally 20 miles from our house. We did this for several reasons. The most important was that this was A's first time staying at home alone for an extended amount of ti...

  She said she was tired of eating cake from birthdays so she wanted vegan ice cream. It is my favorite ice cream too! So Delicious sea salt caramel ...yummy! A was able to finish school early on her actual birthday so we celebrated a little more with her that afternoon. She also started her volunteer hours at the animal shelter. She went to walk the dogs for a couple of hours and said that just while she was there that two more animals were dropped off. Most of the dogs didn't want to walk with her. They just wanted to be loved on and cuddled for a bit. She took pics of EVERY single dog she walked. They were all so cute and so happy to have her paying attention to them. I want to go and help her love on the animals, but I actually have the power to bring them home and I don't really want any more animals. We'll see if the kids and I start helping her out at the shelter. A is doing well in college so far. She has two A's in English and an 85 in Alegebra.  She takes her ...

  It really happened! WE SAW WICKED at Fair Park!! We had waited in unsettling anticipation for our event to be canceled. Covid cases started rising again. The ICU bed count was higher than the magical 15% for more than seven days. Cities were starting to revert back to plague level preparations, but thankfully none of that mattered! Our play we had been anxiously anticipating all summer went off without a hitch. Ok, maybe a small hitch on our way home where an apparently abandoned wrecked car blocked 2 lanes on 75, but we'll talk about that later. What matters is we FINALLY saw our play and, just as everyone had told us, it was freaking fantastic! I had paid for really good seats which were still kind of far back, but were the closest I could get 5 seats together. When I bought the tickets three hours after they went on sale and  row E was as close as I could get 5 seats, I had a feeling it would be packed and it was. I chose to go to one of the 1:30 pm showings because we li...

  Finally, everyone gets it  or at least stopped fighting it! In sticking with our normal tradition, we give pretty much free rein to the birthday person to decide what we do for the day. The birthday person can decide on the activity, food, and pretty much anything else for the day. This applies to both kids and adults. The only rule is that everyone has to do it and no one can complain about it. It kind of ruins the fun of your birthday activity if someone complains through it the whole time.     The only thing the kids asked me this year was NOT to go on my normal birthday hike. They don't like getting up early, hiking in the Texas August heat and humidity, and at least one of them will complain about getting dirty and bugs.....However, it's my birthday so they can suck it up and go. I have always wanted to go to the Gainsville Farmer's Market. It is in an old outlet mall and has so many fun vendors and activities. I planned a 4.4 mile hike in the area and then we...

 *** OOPS I FORGOT TO CONFIRM THE POST FOR LAST WEEK. SORRY! NEW POST IN A COUPLE OF DAYS. This was last weeks**** You can't really complain about rain in August in Texas. It usually doesn't happen and August is usually very hot and dry. However, we had an unusual event last week. There was rain for over half of the week! The first day it just kind of dribbled all day. We had about half an inch of a nice slow rain. Unfortunately, the next two days the bottom dropped out and we had about 5 more inches total! It is also in the forecast to rain again this afternoon. Everything is a muddy mess. We have standing water in the yard and I won't even mention what the horses look like! I'll just say I have quite a project with them once things dry out a little. The humidity from all this rain is almost unbearable. It really slaps you in the face when you go outside. However, it should only last about a week and then another cold front comes through; this time with no rain. It wil...

The official "I am waiting for a treat" corner. We started back to school on Monday as planned. Since A doesn't start school until the 23rd, she was my helper this week. It felt weird doing school with just the younger two, but everything went well. It is easier on me this year since A is finished and L is taking her geometry class online. After the horrible experience of having to do geometry with A, I decided to save what little sanity I have left and let someone else deal with proofs. I wish Texas didn't make kids take geometry. I think a business or consumer math would be of far greater value to the students. That's why for our 4th year of Math in high school the kids take Consumer Math instead of Trig. Trig isn't a requirement so I tried to pick something that would actually be useful in life. I loved the consumer math so much that I really wish we could replace geometry with business math, but for some reason Texas wants geometry. At least my kids will g...