Give It One More Try

Top Row: Khursten, Jasmine, Allie
Bottom Row: Audrey, Carson, Nyah

Notice Sarah's cute oval sign she made to dedicate our playhouse.

Carson and Audrey are loving testing out the new equipment.

OK, so that picture worked. Let's try one more time. Hey, I think it's going to work. Are these the cutest kids or what???

Did I mention that I love my new computer?

Happy Birthday to Brandon!!

Well, I uploaded the pictures and it said they were done and there they aren't. Oh, well, time for a new lesson from Mindy.

I had to add one more thing before I went to bed. Today marks the 33 year anniversary of one of the happiest days of my life--becoming a mother. We had tried to have children for 5 years and we were finally rewarded with a cute little 41/2 pound baby boy, who within 6 weeks went from tiny and scrawny to having several chins. (I didn't know I wasn't supposed to nurse him for an hour each time.....) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRANDON. We love having you for our son!

Playhouse Pictures

I am now going to attempt to put a few pictures on here of my grand children playing in the new playhouse/swingset.

Trying To Keep Up With the New Generation

When we got home from Branson, there waiting on my (really messy) desk was a brand new shiny black computer! Brandon and Ryan had worked to download all my stuff onto it. Butch helped me get some programs set up on it. And now I can USE it. It is so WAY FASTER than any of my old things. And it is all mine. Never been used. In honor of my new computer, I cleaned my desk off and several other areas in my office. (Actually, I was trying to locate my Adobe Photo Shop cd so that Butch could load it on for me. I had put it in a "SAFE SPOT". It was so safe it took me about six hours to find it.) Anyway, it's up and running and my emails work so quickly now. (It took 30 minutes to download a 2 minute video on my old computer and then the computer would randomly freeze whenever it felt like it.....) Now if only I were as efficient as my computer. Although I was able to find my printer software and load it all by myself.

Our next leap into the younger generation is that we got Mike a Wii for Father's Day/Birthday. Mindy came over last night and set it up. We golfed, bowled, played baseball, raced, fished, and did many other fun activities until about 1am. It was WAY fun. We can see that we will need to get more remote thingees. (I don't know what they are called.....) I will have to practice during the day to even come close to keeping up with Mike, Mindy, or Michael.

Today I got to go to a 3 hour scrapbooking class put on by Cosmo Cricket. They always give prizes and I won one of the best. You get much more stuff than the cost of the class so how can I NOT go. It was lots of fun.

Happy Birthday To Me!!

Well, it is our last full day in Branson. This morning we went to The Hughes Brothers--5 brothers and their wives and a zillion children (all LDS). They were very good. There were even babes in arms and one pregnant mom. It is the largest performing family in the world or something like that.

In the afternoon we went to Golden Corral for lunch and then suddenly realized that our next performance was an hour sooner than we had planned. In our hurry to get there, we got a little lost, but finally got to it (late). It was Noah, the Musical. It was amazing. The first part showed them building the ark from the outside--it was huge and tall. They loaded tons of real animals into the ark two by two down the the center aisle of the theater. When we came back in after intermission, we were inside the ark. There were 5 or six stories high that surrounded the entire theater with sections for real and animatronic animals. It was hard to tell which was which. It was really a wonderful production. (I'll try to post pictures when I'm home with Mindy's help.) Appropriately enough, as we left the theater, it was a huge downpour. (I wonder how they did that????)

We stopped for a funnel cake (my favorite) for my birthday. Mike had ice cream. We went home to watch a movie. I fell asleep and got a little birthday nap.

For the evening (and sadly our last) performance, we went to Hamner Barber--a variety show with a ventriloquist and a magician. I carefully kept track of Mike so he wouldn't be able to tell them that it was my birthday. But during the intermission performance they came down into the audience looking for a volunteer, and ended up giving me a balloon bracelet and I thought, "Oh great, how did Mike work this out." Just when I thought I was going to have to go on stage, They grabbed Mike and took him up. Was he stunned or what???? They put a magician hat and coat on him but had him put his arms behind himself, not in the coat sleeves. Then the magician put his arms around the back of Mike and into the sleeves. So there Mike was performing magic tricks right before our eyes. And me with no camera. (They were not allowed...) He did a great job, in fact, too great and the magician told him that he (Mike)was not supposed to be the one telling the jokes..... A fun night!

And now it is time to toddle of to bed. And off to Little Rock tomorrow.

My Last Day at being 58!!

Today we went to 12 Irish Tenors (only there were only 11 Irish Tenors as one was home sick).
In the afternoon we went to SIX (six brothers who do all of the instrumentation with their voices). It was really awesome. Then we went on a 2 hour train ride. Mostly all you could see were trees out of the sides and an occasional valley but it had two tunnels and reminded us of our train trip when Brandon was only 4 and went in search of a flashlight--and found one.
We did not go to an evening performance ecuase Mike was a little under the weather and could not stray too far from the porcelain precipice. I went shopping. Duh, where else would I go? But I asked Mike if I could have the money we would have spent on the performance and dinner, which he gave me and I put it to good use. One more day--3 more performances and then we leave on Saturday to drive to Little Rock. Then home on Sunday.

Wednesday in Branson

Well, it quit raining. It was a beautiful day. We started out the morning at the Andy Williams Theater with a production entitled "The Entertainers". It was a group of musicians and singers that did music from several decades. It was very sad that there were only 3 rows of people. They just barely got the show together and didn't have fliers out in the town.

Our afternoon show was Shoji Tabuchi, a Japanese violin/fiddle player. It was excellent with lots of addition entertainment. The restrooms were VERY decorated with a pool table in the men's room.

At night we went to The Magnificent Seven--seven decades of hit music 40's, 50's, ...up to now. Mike and I didn't know any of the music for the 90's or now except the presentation of STOMP which we had just attended in SLC. It was fun to sing along. AndMike told them it was my birthday so I had to stand up in front of everyone. (it's not really for 2 days.)

So now it's time for bed. Or tv. Or computer games.

Another Day in Branson

This morning we went to a production entitled "Island Fire" with Polynesian culture dances. It was a lot like the show at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii but on a smaller scale. But we had closer (front row) seats. This was followed by a Luau put on by the same people. Then we went to a Magic Show (Kirby and Bambi Van Burch. Mike went back to watch his war movie and Cindy found a scrapbook/rubberstamp store. And now we are getting ready to go to The Haygoods (an LDS Family that has been performing here for 17 years-10,000 shows). Mike also found time to slip a visit to the hot tub in while I was typing this blog. Fun! Fun! Fun!

Just Haning Out in Branson, Missouri

We are having a very relaxing, do-basically-nothing vacation in Branson. We flew into Little Rock. Arkansas on Saturday (by way of Albequerque and Dallas....) and then drove to Branson.
On Sunday we went to Church in the morning and the Irish Spirit of the Dance in the afternoon, followed by a production called The Promise about the life of Christ. (It seemed like a good choice for a Sunday...) It was very realistic and impressive.

Today(Monday) we went to Amazing Pets, Pierce Arrow, and tonight to Jim Stafford. (He sang "I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes" back in the day. ) He was great. His two kids played the piano, also. In between shows we eat. We have a studio condo with a kitchen so we try to eat two meals here and one out. We stocked up on groceries on Saturday night when we got here.
It rained all day today, but we were inside for most of it, so it didn't make much difference. The traffic is worsethan we remember, but the townfolks say the numbers are way down on attendance. (Gas prices too high for travel.) We haven't had time to try out the pool or rec. room yet. We have 3 shows per day scheduled, so we are fairly busy. But it is an easy busy.