Megan and Paige visit for a week.

We are back in Texas. We had Megan and Paige stay with us for a week at Tyler State Park, a very nice park with a lake, trails, swimmning beach etc. It was 100 degrees or more every day so it was too hot to do a lot outdoors but we did go swimming in the lake almost every evening. We still managed to do some fun things and I think they had a good time with us. By the end of the week though Megan had determined that our internet connection wasn't good enough to play her games so she was ready to go home.

There is a big cat sanctuary near Tyler that has rescued about 40 Tigers and Lions so far. We visited with a couple of famous safariers.


The girls have gone home and we will be moving about 25 miles south to Whitehouse in the next day or two.

Showboat

After everyone else went home we moved back to our slightly smaller house for a few days. Yesterday we went to the Branson Belle Showboat for a dinner cruise. There is only about 100 other shows in town, I don't think we can make them all so we'll be heading back towards Tyler, TX tomorrow.

Family fun in Branson

Everyone from Illinois and Texas showed up and we all moved in to our rented house for a week. We just made a couple of the shows here, the Titanic exhibit and took the kids to the Dixie Stampede one day. The rest of the group went to those and other shows, Silver Dollar City, etc. but we had the most fun just staying at the house visiting with everyone. Each night a different family cooked their "specialty" for the whole group. I think we ate better than anyone in town. Tonya did a fantastic job of finding a great house in Branson for the whole family and I think everyone enjoyed it.

Here is the front room on a typical day.

The whole gang.

Back row: Grannie, Leah, Sonja (trying to hide behind Stephen), James, Grandma Bonnie, Terry, Nick.
Front row: Paige, Megan, Stephen, baby Zack, Carrie, baby Christian, Kaleigh, Kearstyn, Tonya, Nathan.

More fun than walking.

Before everyone got here we learned how to ride Segways while touring beautiful Dogwood Canyon just south of Branson.