#280 - Office Pranks

My coworkers have pretty good senses of humor, or so I thought. This morning, upon my return to work, I found I was the victim of an office prank: a snack drawer full of shavings from the shredder! They got my two bosses, also (they were both out of the office parts of last week, and suffered from shavings in their personal fridge, and all over their desk). Gee, as if it wasn't hard enough to go back to work...

#279 - A Nighttime First

TLG had his first nightmare last night. After a long day of traveling home, he went to bed late last night (very late, considering the 2-hour time difference). He woke us up, screaming and shaking, around 4:00 a.m. Try as we might, we could not get him to go back to sleep. So after I laid in his room for an hour, my hubby took him downstairs to watch his favorite movie. He promptly fell asleep on the couch for 4+ hours. I really hope we can sort this problem out, and soon.

#278 - Overpriced, But Necessary

On our last day in Branson, we used the last of our 4-day park hopper passes to re-visit White Water park. While we were standing in line for one of the family slide rides, the neck strap on my favorite bathing suit broke! (How embarrassing!) My hubby was able to tie it up for me for long enough to get down the slide, but once we got back to the main part of the park, I insisted on buying a new bathing suit from the gift shop and changing into it pronto. I would normally never dream of spending so much moolah on a suit, much less buying a suit without trying it on! *sigh* It's an interesting souvenir of our last day in a wonderful city, where we had so much fun.

#277 - TLG's Adventures in Rides, Part 2

After visiting the other local amusement parks, today we finally visited Silver Dollar City. Some friends who moved from Reno to Arkansas years ago drove up and brought their wonderful kids to spend the day with us, exploring this park. Again, TLG was fascinated with the rides (the photo shows us on the hopping frog ride, but he also liked the ladybugs, the butterflies, the teacups, the elephants, etc.) Everyone's favorite ride was a family ride called Lost River of the Ozarks, where six people at a time float down a ride and get all wet. This park has lots of craftsmen and shows, but we spent most of the time visiting with our friends and waiting in lines for rides. We skipped TLG's nap in favor of staying with our friends all day, and eventually he fell asleep in the stroller (at which time the two of us snuck off to ride a roller coaster, leaving him peacefully snoozing with our ice-cream-eating friends). Thanks, Grubbs, for driving in to see us - what a wonderful day we had!

#276 - Bring on the Wine

Branson has a couple of local wineries, and tonight I sampled a whole new kind of wine I've never heard of: Stone Hill Winery's Pink Catawba. This dessert wine was extra sweet, and a cotton candy pink color. Not being much of a connoisseur, it was too sweet for my tastes and definitely much better chilled than lukewarm straight from the store!

#275 - Feeding Stingrays

After our Ducks adventure (see below), we headed to Predator World, a zoo/aquarium that had a great assortment of mammals, reptiles and aquatic life to see. The photo shows TLG getting up close with a leopard! But the most exciting part of this visit was that we fed some sting rays! (Note: my hubby thinks they might have been mana rays, but I can't find any info on their website to confirm this?) In any case, the helpful employee explained where his mouth is (well under a flap that looks like it should be a mouth), and how to hold a piece of fish for them to retrieve. TLG just dropped his piece of fish in the water, but my hubby and I both got to feed fish directly into the ray's mouth. It was very smooth underneath his chin, and a pretty amazing experience.

#274 - Ride the Ducks

This morning we rode in an amphibious vehicle, based on the WWII DUKW, as part of Ride the Ducks, a local tourist attraction. This tour of town took us up into the Ozark mountains, showed us some other WWII vehicles, then went driving into Table Rock Lake and out into the water quite a ways. It's amazing to think that this vehicle/boat is 60 years old, and it was lots of fun to learn about them. The tour guide graciously let TLG "drive" the boat while it was in the water (see photo), which he loved... but his favorite part about this tour was getting a souvenir "quacker" noisemaker that does sound remarkably like a duck. It looks like a duck's bill and we all got one to take home, which was fun and will make for a nice reminder of a fun morning.