Testing out the Boat!!

After months of the husband working on

the boat getting it water ready, he finally puts the finishing touches on it. He did spend quit a bit of time on this boat. The night before we took it out I woke up around 2 am and he was not in bed..... hum..... out in the garage working on the boat. Good thing I'm an understanding wife!

The Summer sun and fun at the lake. And we're off with the boat in tow to the lake.

We're on the water!! yea!!

made a pass around the lake (it is kinda of a small lake)

We stopped and decided to take a dip in the water for a while.

Water was pretty warm! Didn't cool us off much. But the kids had a blast. Madi i think was a fish in another life. She was happy as Pooh with his honey!

Madi had her 20 questions of why she had to wear her life vest and no one else had to (except for me cause I can't swim for nothin'). But we managed to answer all her questions and she still had to wear her vest.

She loved jumping off the boat. Dad and Ray tried to teach her how to dive but this is about as good as it got

Turned out to be a pretty good day for everyone but the husband. Seems the propeller thingy didn't work quit right. He tried to fix it in the water but with the kids jumping off the boat and horsing around, just couldn't do it. But he sure tried, he gets an A for the effort. We did have to idle back to shore, once again it was a small lake (thank goodness) and we weren't to far away anyway.

P.S. Husband says to much horse power for the prop!! About 150 to much!!

Saturday, Trip home

And we are on our way home.

There is no place like home,

There is no place like home,

There is no place like home!

To bad it isn't that easy to get home.

Pretty uneventful trip home, Madi still had 100's of questions of "are we there yet".

Jeff found this place on the way home and we had to make a stop here.

but didn't have what we were looking for.

And the show begins. Couldn't take pictures of the shows.

But the shows were great.
Madi and the Temptations.
Markie and the Blues Brothers.

Friday

We did the old car museum after dinner and before the show. Way to many pictures of all the old cars (Jeff made me take a picture of every car there). The little car was more my speed.
Madi and Bugs!!
We taught Madi the right way to hitch hike!! took 3 pictures and we had to pose her, but she has it down now.

Friday, Our last night of Vacation

The girls played a little while we waited for our food at the Dick Clarks AB Grill. See they can play nice together.
We did find our first drinks in Branson. Yea!! I so need that one.
And Jeff needed that one!

Friday, our last night on vacation

We decided to do the Legends show for our last night in Branson. Madi seemed very interested in Elvis. She had 20 questions about him and why he died. Wow, good thing that happened in my life time cause she wanted to know a lot!!! But i think we got her covered.
Madi checking out the menu and the show information.
Sisterly love. Aren't they great?

Madi did get her back with a little sisterly love herself. She may be small but she is creative.

Mom's store

This is a general store and cafe close by! had to take these pictures because of my mother!!

Didn't know she had her own business?!

And She even has gas!!! (you can thank Jeff for that one mom)

Thursday night, Dixie Stampede

This is as far as i made it with the camera! No cameras inside, i tired to take a couple with my phone but they didn't come out very clear.

GREAT show and dinner!

Dinner was a dinner roll, veggie soup (and yes, i ate almost all of it, it was very good, Ken will not believe it.), a whole Cornish hen (biggest ones I've ever seen), pork, potatoes, and corn on the cob. And you get NO silverware to eat with! you get to eat with your hands. (Should have rethought the white dress). You would have thought Madi would have loved that part but i don't think she knew what to think at all! She wouldn't touch her chicken but she ate the pork and corn. Even had apple pie for desert!

The show was great Markie and Madi yelled and stomped the whole time! They both loved it and I think we all had a wonderful time.

This is now my favorite.

Lisa, this is where you need to work! They ride horses all day and the PRETTIEST horses too!

Oh by the way, I did make it through the night without getting one thing on my white dress! :-)

I think Ken needs to do flowers like this!

Doesn't look that hard!!

Thursday, SDC

We finished up at SDC with the petting zoo!

This rabbit is 5 months old and weights 15 pounds. This is the largest breed of rabbits and can get up to 75 pounds.

Jeff says "Looks like it will make for good rabbit stew!!"

Madi about feel over when he said that.

and this is a goat! They even had chickens.

Can't we see this in Oklahoma???

ha ha ha

Thursday, SDC Cave dwelling

A beautiful waterfall inside the cave!
The cave did have alot of tight spaces and the stairs were very small!

I think this scared me more than Madi.

Thursday, SDC Cave dwelling

Marvel Cave is the cave inside of silver dollar city! Madi was a little afraid of the bats hanging around but after seeing the steep incline and all the stairs we had to go down she soon forgot about the bats. there was almost 700 stairs on the way down. Very big cave.

And of course Markie to advantage of every opportunity to scare her little sister.

On the way back to Silver Dollar city Thursday, we spotted something on fire on Table rock lake.

Boat, maybe?

Never did hear what it was, but is sure was big!

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Markie drinking at SDC!!!

This is the beginning of the SDC Trip!! We all look happy in the beginning!

But by the end, lets just say we are all happy to be done with Silver Dollar City.

We did miss the cave tour, will have to come back tomorrow!! Yea!!

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Madi having a drink when we got to SDC!

And the fun Begins!! a whole 9 hours of F U N!!!

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Madi hates roller coasters, so we told her it was a train ride.

It was one of the smaller roller coasters, no loops and it didn't go very fast.

She loved it and talked about it all the way up to the log ride.

We finally told her it was a roller coaster. She wasn't to happy, but she was a little distracted by the log ride. :-)

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Markie in line for the log ride.

She was telling Madi "it isn't scary!!" Don't think Madi will listen to her or Jeff again.

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Madi after the log ride. She was still a little mad that Jeff tricked her into riding it.

funny thing is she couldn't stop talking about it. Think she might secretly like the log ride.

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Markie and Jeff rode the Fire in the hole roller coaster. No way was Madi getting on there, she already had her roller coaster ride.

Wednesday, Silver Dollar City

Markie and Madi on the elephant ride.

This was on of the last rides!

All i can say about Silver Dollar City was it was nice to see, but i'm soooo glad it is over!

It seemed liked it was a 120 out there and all those people make it even harder to breath!! :-(

Tuesday night (4th night)

Since it rained and ruined our Silver Dollar City trip for Tuesday, we decided to do the Shanghai Circus that night.

Unfortunately there are no pictures allowed inside the show. So this is the only one we got was Madi in the lobby!

The show was great!!

But we do have the DVD now!!! for the low price of $20.

Memories in Branson,,, can't beat it right?

Madi's favorite is still the Duck. I do have a favorite now,, the showboat was mine.

(and the quacker has come up missing)

Monday, The Showboat, Branson Belle

Monday was such a busy day that this is Madi about 3 minutes after we got into the car from the boat trip! She slept all the way back to the camp site and all night. Matter of fact I had to wake her up Tuesday morning. She even slept through the morning storm we had.

Poor kid...... but no matter how tired she was she didn't close her month until she passed out.

The girls are having a blast!!

This was the "Grease" bit!

They did 29 songs from musicals in 10 minutes. I have it all on video! it was a great show and a very busy day.

Madi, Markie and me on the boat at Table Rock Lake.

This is a 3 hour dinner and entertainment..... can you guess how many miles we go in 3 hours.............

8!

The Branson Belle will get up to the fast speed of 6 miles an hour!!! Top speed of 11 when it is empty!

Good thing we weren't in a hurry!

This is the river boat The Branson Belle.

We had dinner and two shows. One was a musical and the other was Todd Oliver and his dogs.

Tuesday

We woke to thunderstorms about 7 am on our fourth day!

We were suppose to do Silver Dollar City, but we got rained out.

So we hung around and took it easy. It cleared up about noon, so I took Madi to the pool to Swim and she had alot of fun there.

Monday, our third day!

We went to Ripley's. It was alot of fun! Madi was hard to keep up with. She has way to much energy.
Markie and Jeff at Ripley's. They had the most fun here. Madi's favorite is still the Duck ride.

Monday was a big day.

We did Ripley's, then we moved on to the Titanic and then on to the Show Boat.

More pictures to come.

Madi started the day out with her Quacker!! However, shortly after that it came up missing. :-)

Madi went swimming for a little while Markie and Jeff got online and updated.
Breakfast went much better on our third day!!!

Sunday

Markie and Jeff

Our First day in Branson and we took the Duck ride! This was a great tour around Branson and through Table rock lake. Great views too!
See the yellow quacker in her mouth, they are nice enough to give everyone on the ride one of these quackers. They are very loud too. This is all we heard the rest of the day from her.

The Duck ride is Madi's favorites! She says the best part of the duck ride was when it went into the water and made the big splash!!

Our second day (Sunday)

We made it through the first night with only one big thunder storm!! Always seems to rain sooner or later.

Turned out to be a pretty bad morning. Breakfast was a disaster. Went to make biscuits and gravy. Got the biscuits cooking and the sausage cooking and remembered what I forgot...... flour! yea! So Jeff had biscuits and sausage. The girls wanted pancakes, so I got everything going for that (i had a box of pancake mix). Got the griddle hot and batter on and apparently put to many pancakes on there and they all ran together, which made for one heck of a time to flip the stupid things. They looked really strange. And I burnt the stupid biscuits! No one was aloud to take any pictures of any breakfast items.

Wow! what a morning! So glad to get back on the road.

But we got on the road and headed to our Branson destination. and it rained all the way there!

On the way we went through this town called Blue Eye, Arkansas. Population 38.

Madi, Markie and dinner at the Whopper Stomper!!!

and Whopper Stomper IS the name of the place, an all you can eat shrimp, crab legs and lobster and yes, this is what the lobster looks like.

Our waiter, Ivan, demonstrate how to peel a lobster!!

Madi picked up a bow and arrow at the Onxy cave and has been practicing on how to use it.

She has mastered it!

As I was trying to get things to download and off in my own little world, I hear a wwssp by my head and looked over and that $@*^ arrow is stuck right by my head. She missed it by not even an inch......

and she says "Look, I'm getting better!"

The bow and arrow have been retired for the night!! :-)

Onxy Caves and train ride

We did go downtown and ride the train and hit the stores.
The train stopped half way and let the kids put coins on the tracks so the train could run over them....... Madi now has 5 flat pennies and i do have alot of pictures of those as well, she wasn't happy until i got a picture she liked.
She loved the train ride though!! She smiled and giggled all the way through it. All i have to say is they need air conditioning on that Train!!

Markie and Madi inside the Onxy cave. We learned as we're entering the caves that Madi is afraid of small dark spaces. Mainly caves and completely FREAKED out on us. almost had to carry her through! She came around a little and was able to smile for a picture or two.
This is the dragon inside the cave.

I have taken 145 pictures today....So here are just a few!!

And so today is finally at an end!! and I can finally go to bed! We're on our way to Branson tomorrow!! So maybe not so may pictures, but probably a funny story or two!!