Vacation Notes: Day 1

Well we have returned from our big family fun-cation to Table Rock lake near Branson. I had a ton of pictures to share, so these blogs will be in a series of 3 days. We are moving D to the upstairs bedroom with T (OOOH, the two sloppiest kids living in one room). So I uploaded all of my pictures between trips to the trash and between bedrooms. Now just need to journal a little! Thurs night found everyone trickling in the late afternoon. We had left on Wed to do some eye appointments and school shopping, so we were around Branson around lunch time. Mom and Dad and Kristi's family arrived mid afternoon, so we took a tour of Stone Hill Winery before supper. The kids got to sample some of their grape juice, which is excellent! J and I went to Branson on our honeymoon 15 years ago this week, and Stone Hill was one of the places we went then. We sampled about 13 different wines, and we bought several bottles of our favorites. My pick was a Spumante Blush--I sure like the bubbles.

Colton had a butterfly land on his shoulder!

Friday was our first day together. We really didn't have much planned so several of us took off and went to the Butterfly Palace. My boys wanted to hit the pool, so just C and I went with my Mom, Kristi and Nick's families, and Tina and her girls. What a fun place. It took C a little bit to catch on to what we were looking for.



They let the kids release the butterflies by dumping them out of little plastic containers. C caught on to that right away and she made sure that she got her turn! Kadon was not too impressed with the whole dumping out thing.




Colton caught one off of his arm and shared with Grandma and the girls. C wasn't sure what to think of having one on her fingers!



Haley, Cami, Taryn and Colton are checking out Grandma's butterfly

Taryn's smile says it all doesn't it!! The kids had a blast

and it was fun to watch them all

The kids were waiting with Uncle Nick to release the butterflies

The afternoon found several little girls and boys napping. Dad happened to know some people that were out there with boats, so they graciously came and picked up Jeremy, Nick, Brendan, and Dad and took them out on the lake for some skiing. I believe it was a LITTLE rough, but they enjoyed it anyway. (Oh, except maybe for Brendan, who put his back out and was a LITTLE sore!)

Dad rented a pontoon boat for the evening hours and so everyone took turns cruising the lake with Papa. The first trip was quite uneventful. But the second trip after dinner was memorable, at least for the kids! There get to be some tremendous wakes (or big ole waves for you non-lakers) on that lake. Apparently as they went across one and came down onto the lake, a large amount of water crashed onto the front of the boat, knocking the front gate open, threatening to swallow the cooler of beverages (I must say however, that no one was drinking alcoholic beverages). The adults on board who were in the front of the boat promptly returned to the back of the boat (you know who you are!) leaving the children to drown first. Tristan, being the quick thinker he is, saved the cooler, which was loaded with capri sun and beer, from dropping nearly 200 feet onto the bottom of Table Rock Lake, thanks son! Then my sister, being the quick thinker she is, thought to yell to the children in the front of the sinking ship to run to the back of the boat. By then the drama was over--no sunken ship, no one injured--just a little paranoid after that. From a bystander viewpoint--the children were hilarious. They came back up to the condo's a one to a few at a time. Each time one of them entered, they would sigh and roll their eyes and say something to indict PAPA. Like Grant "You will NEVER guess what happened to us!" Colton "Papa nearly killed us." Kristi "- - - " Oh yeah, Kris didn't have anything to say, because she was laughing so hard she could bearly speak!

So the first day ended well, we had lots of fun visiting. No major kid fights. The boys were pestering throughout the first 2 days about going to play laser tag. Plans for Saturday included Silver Dollar City. More on that later.


Papa is saying "Look Grandma--No Hands!!" (really, he was using his hands to steer during the aforementioned boating incident!!)