Ha Ha Tonka Trip this weekend

Last weekend, we went to Ha Ha Tonka, it's a state park in Camdenton. It's a castle that burned down in 1942 and only the remains are left. It was such a beautiful day. Here are Kasey and I.

Here's a view from the top of the castle, looking down toward Lake of the Ozarks.

This is the river that runs from the Spring. The water was really pretty. We walked from the Spring to the castle, which seemed liked 2 miles, but it wasn't. There were about 300 uphill steps. Wheh!

Here's another view from the top of the castle.

Here's where we parked.


This is the castle walls.



Here's Nicky and Kasey on the window of part of the castle.

Another picture of the castle walls.


The water tower.

We're Back

Well, I haven't posted since we got back. After the last posting, my computer quit again! Can you believe? So I am on my other old trusty one.

It was a fairly quiet trip home, took us 12 hours on Tuesday and we made it to Oklahoma, then took another 6 hours on Wednesday. But it was a fun trip. We are glad to be home. All Kasey could talk about coming home was "Sissy", "Sissy", "Sissy". Nicky was really glad to see him.

We got Kasey a bag of sand toys at Wal-Mart and he had to carry them in to the hotel. He liked pushing the buttons on the elevator.

Here are Kasey and Daddy on the beach building sand stuff. Mark would make one of the sand castle forms and put it on the sand and Kasey would stomp it out. There were people laying on the beach close to us, just dying laughing at him. He was so funny.

This is my favorite picture of Kasey....

Well, hope everyone has a Happy 4th of July! We are going to shoot off some fireworks. Our neighbors behind us put on a big display which is fun to watch. We don't buy very many. I can't hardly stand the thought of spending money on something that you just burn up, so Mark has to go buy them and I don't even ask him what they cost!!!

Kelly

A Day at the Beach

Here's a shot of our friends, Sonja and JW with me and Kasey. They were the best hosts we could have ever imagined! We went away with snacks in the car - grapes, muffins, cheese, bananas, juice drinks. They were absolutely great! Thanks for making the last 2 days so much fun.


So after driving for about 6 hours, we finally made it to the island. Remember I can't use the p key on my keyboard and have to paste it in every time I want to type it, so I am not going to try to put that key in very often. So here is Kasey with his first time at the beach. This shot is almost the first few times the waves hit him. He abolutely loved it! He fell down several times, but now he just runs in it and runs back out and says "Here it Comes!" when he sees the waves.

The other thing I wanted to see down here was the Wyland wall. If you read my other blog entry, you will know that I really like his walls, I printed out a list of them the other day, he is painting 100 of them, I checked off the ones I have seen and there are now 22 to the list.
After staying at the beach for a couple of hours, we ventured out for dinner. I think it's funny that everyone posts what they eat for dinner. So I figured I should do the same. We ate at Jake's, just a small restaurant off the beaten path. It had an outside patio, which was nice because Kaseycan get messy sometimes. So here we all are waiting for our meal.
Mark and I had the shrimp appetizer. It was really good and I thought they did a nice job presenting it, don't you?

We also ordered the Macho Nachos. They were really good too.
Here was Kasey's meal.

HA! Just kidding!!! He had to carry his frog around with him and put it on his appetizer plate, so I just couldn't resist taking a picture.

Here's Mark with the sand castle he built. He is so proud of it. That has to be one of the best smiles I have gotten out of him.

Oh, he's smiling so much because he didn't really build it....

Well, tomorrow is beach, beach, and more beach.

Kelly

Day 1, 2 and 3 of our Texas Vacation

Our trip so far has been fun. I finally got my laptop back but it has a keyboard problem, I was supposed to get a replacement for it, but it didn't come in yet. So I put my old keyboard on it that has the bad p key. So anytime I have to type a p, I have to copy it from somewhere else and hit ctrl v to paste it in my word. Sure does slow me down, but you don't really use the p key as much as you think. It would have been much nicer if it was the q key, but oh well. But I am sure happy to have it!!

We got to San Antonio and the our friend's house around 9:30. Made it in about 13 1/2 hours, which is good for the stops we made, it was 775 miles. We stopped several times for gas and one to eat lunch at the Cottonpatch restaurant in Denison, Texas.

Sonja and JW’s house is out in the middle of nowhere outside of San Antonio. It is a beautiful house. There is sand all over the yard so it really hard to grow grass. They used to live right across the street from us, then had to move because of JW's job. We were sad to see them leave.

There are these plants that are poisonous. I do not know what they are called. But if you touch them, the burn like fireants have bit you all over. Sonja said even if you wear gloves to pull them out, they hurt. I stayed away from them.

I couldn’t wait to get to Sonja’s to eat her special German noodle dish. It has sauerkraut, bacon and spaetzle noodles (which is a German noodle). It sounds nasty but it is WONDERFUL! Hmmmmm. Kasey even ate some of it. We got up Friday morning and headed to Sea World, San Antonio. Tickets were $120 for both of us and Kasey got in free. Parking was $12 and we bought 2 waters that were $3 each. Isn’t that ridiculous? Oh my gosh, it is so hot here, it is crazy! It was about 100 degrees.

We went to the dolphin show first. That was really neat. Then we went to the ski show, they have a big lake there at Sea World. It was ok, but Kasey was starting to act a little crazy.

Then we went to the Shammu Whale Show. That was really worth the whole trip here. The whales are so cool. I just love them. They would swim around and jump out of the water. Then they would jump on the stage. Kasey enjoyed watching that. The last show we watched was the Sea Lions. Kasey got a little crazy there and ran up and down the aisles. He finally calmed down, but he was so tired.



This is Kasey and I all hot, tired and grumpy!

We left around 2:30, it was just too hot and Kasey was too sleepy. So we let him sleep in the car and headed for downtown. We decided we would just go ahead and go to the Alamo and the Riverwalk. The Alamo was neat, but there wasn’t a lot there. I am glad I got to see it.




Then we walked to the Riverwalk. It’s like a river under the streets of San Antonio. We walked around for a little bit, then decided to go on the boat tour of the river. It’s about 2 ½ miles long and took us 30 minutes. The boat was really crowded and Kasey moved around a lot, I worried he was annoying everyone, we were so crowded, he was kicking others. The tickets were $7.75 each.

Here are the boys on the boat. Mark has his eyes shut, but it's a great picture of Kasey.

Then we headed back to Sonja’s. I had some more German noodles and Mark had tacos. Sonja bought Kasey all sorts of toys, some toy trucks and cars. She got him grapes and bananas and some juice box drinks, some string cheese. She sure knows how to spoil that boy.

Saturday is lazy day, we got up and walked down the road a little ways, then came back, ate a huge breakfast of biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage and juice. Sonja says that JW’s next assignment with his company will be in Germany or Hawaii. Ah, another trip maybe!!!

Kasey played in the pool in the morning. I think he enjoyed that more than anything we’ve done so far..

This is all I will post for today, we are not planning on doing too much. Tomorrow we will get up and head to South padre Island and do a little swimming at the beach!!

Kelly

Vacation Time!!!!

Well, I am off on vacation and taking a laptop with me. I got my laptop back, still have a few problems with it, but I can use it. I made a DVD copy of all the files on it, so I think I am ok. We are heading for San Antonio, Texas to visit our old neighbors, Sonja and JW. We are so excited to see them and show off our little darlin, Kasey! I am hoping the 12 hour trip won't be too bad with him, we'll just stop every couple hours. Will probably have to stop at some quilt shops.. HAA!!! Mark doesn't know what he's in for.

We are going to spend 3 days at their house and leave Sunday morning, heading to South Padre Island, Texas. We have a hotel by the ocean.



Doesn't that look nice? It will be fun to walk out on the beach and hang out!

I am trying out a new thing on blogger.com, I am sending this from my email account. I am hoping it works well. (not sure but the email thing didn't work, maybe it will show up later, then there will be a duplicate - oh well!)

I hope to post what's going on each day if I can...

Kelly