Even with all of the house and harvest chaos we were able to squeeze in a four day vacation with our good friends, the Noel family. John and Ryan knew each other in high school, lived together in college, and have remained close. Their family relocated to Holton a few years ago and our kids are close in age and truly enjoy being together.
We stayed in Kimberling City, but spent the majority of our time on TableRock Lake and in Branson. First stop, The Ducks.
We bought combo tickets and hit up the Dixie Stampede that afternoon. The Stampede is owned by Dolly Parton and is dinner theater with horse show. We were able to see a lot of the show horses on the way in.
The amount of food they served was crazy! Lucy was young enough she did not have to have her own ticket and she and I shared our meal. It started with a crock of soup and a cheddar biscuit, was followed by rotisserie chicken, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and pork tenderloin, and then apple turnovers for dessert. The catch was, no silverware. We all looked around for a bit, confused, and then dug right in. For a person who doesn't eat meat off a bone, it was kinda hard to start picking the chicken apart, but it did taste good. Even with three meals for four people, we still had leftovers.
Lilly and John would happily have spent the whole time in the lake.
The littles, Lucy and Gavin loved the boat.
And I think we all had fun tubing.
We had a private dock we swam off of. One evening we were one lifejacket short so John borrowed one from another slip. Little did he know he was sporting a doggie life jacket. Was kinda funny when the owner of it showed up. Luckily it was our neighbor and he got quite the chuckle out of it.
Since it was such a short vacation, John and I felt it best to do all of the driving in the evenings, to maximize our time. We were exhausted by the time we got home, but would go back in a heartbeat!
