Labor Day Weekend 2011 in Branson, Missouri

Labor Day Weekend 2011 in Branson, Missouri

Shortarmguy's Diary Update for September 11, 2011

For Labor Day Weekend, we drove down to Branson, Missouri to see Grandma Joyce , my sisters, and their families.  Pandemonium ensued.

Of course, we couldn't all get together without the dogs, so we brought them as well.  We like to make them fight one another and then bet on the outcomes.  

On Saturday, we rented a boat and headed out on Table Rock Lake.  We like to all hang on the rope and be dragged around the water.  We do it until one of us gets an enema and then demands that we stop.  It's very fun!

After that game, we decided to throw the kids on the tube to see how fast we could get them off it again. This is hard to do with a pontoon boat.

When we didn't have luck sinking two of them, we thought we'd try our luck with 3 on there at the same time, but we weren't able to fling them off very well this way either.

Eventually we realized that the pontoon just wasn't fast enough to terrorize our children, so we started doing more reckless things like driving them really close to the Branson Belle Riverboat.  We laughed and laughed as their feet came dangerously close to the large paddle wheel in the back.  What fun is a vacation if you can't fill the kids with fear during the trip?

Eventually we gave up on the tube and took the kids cliff diving instead.  Only Cousin Mallory and Uncle David Kelley were actually brave enough to scale the cliff and jump.  I probably would have done it also, but felt obligated to drive the boat instead.  Thank God I had a good excuse not to do it!

After boating, we decided to crash an old folks home and join their Karaoke Night.  It was pretty mellow until we arrived, but we rocked the joint.  My rendition of Jump by Kriss Kross seemed to be a big hit with the old people, but it was hard to tell because none of them started jumping along with me.

Since we figured we'd mastered the water on Saturday, we thought we'd better tackle the land on Sunday.  So we mounted up our trusty steeds and started exploring the prairies around Dogwood Canyon Nature Park.  Luckily, none of us were Bucked Off.

It was a rewarding experience to go for a trail ride although the view of the horse butt in front of you did get a little boring.  So we tried to turn around as much as we could.  

All in all, we had a lot of fun together.  I wish we all lived a little closer together so we could do this more often, but we sure do make the best of it when we get the chance!