Silver Dollar City

Mark and Kasey spent the last week at Silver Dollar City Campground in Branson, MO.  Every year at the end of the school year, they try to go on a trip together.  They stayed down there Monday through Friday.  There is a shuttle bus from the campground over to Silver Dollar City, so they would spend several hours over there every day.  Just enough to have fun but not to wear them out.

Here's a few of the pictures they sent me from the week.

Where have I been?

Well, I have just been lazy about blogging lately.  There has been a lot going on in my life right now, most of it with work.  We sold off 3 locations of our company and one of the locations was the one that provided all of our IT services to our remaining 3 companies.

So, that meant I had to get busy getting our email setup for 120 employees or so, a new Internet site built, a new Intranet site built, our new Internet lines installed for 3 locations.   Setting up a new server and several new applications.  Overall, everything has gone really well and I think everyone has been happy with the results.  The funny thing about working in IT is that if you’ve done your job right, you hardly ever hear from anyone to say that you did a good job.  I’m sure some of you understand that.  I probably had 2 or 3 people tell me thanks for all the work I did.

Other than work, I’ve just been busy with Kasey and Mark.  Kasey is going to 4 day a week preschool in the afternoons.  I think he enjoys it.

Our big project now is that we bought another camper!  Last year, we fixed up my mom and dad’s old camper, here’s a picture of it at Johnson Shut-ins.

Ours is a 24’ 1984 Rockwood.  We really like it and did a lot of work to it, but 24 foot just wasn’t big enough for us and Mark didn’t like the engine on this one, had the old style carburetor on it. 

So my dad found a 32 foot RV on eBay and called me up and said, you HAVE to get this one, it’s a steal and the auction ends in 20 minutes, hurry up and make up your mind!  Well, we bought it, went and picked it up.  It’s a 1998 model and has a really good motor in it.

I need to take a picture of the outside of it, here are some of the original pictures of the inside from the guy we bought it from. 

Here’s a list of what we’ve done to it so far:

1. Took all the blinds down to clean
2. Took all the living room furniture out (won’t be putting the old back in)
3. Ripped all the carpet and linoleum out
4. Took all the drawers out of the cabinets to clean
5. Replaced the latches that hold all the outside storage doors open
6. Tightened up the mirrors
7. Took out all the light covers, vent covers and any cover that I could figure out how to get off the camper in order to clean them

My dad has done a bunch of work to it also:

1. Fixed the turn signal that didn’t work (it had a wire corroded in the middle of the camper somewhere)
2. Installed a new radio that he bought Mark for Christmas for the original camper
3. Fixed the automatic step that didn’t work (it also had a bad wire)
4. Working on straightening the back bumper that is bent

Today we bought wood flooring for it, a new kitchen faucet, bathroom faucet, shower faucet and a bathroom sink.

So it’s Spring Break week, I’m on vacation all week, Mark is on Spring Break and Kasey is hanging out with us all week.  We’re going to work on the camper.  I decided it was time for me to get back into blogging, it would be fun to show our progress. 

Camper Quilt

Here’s a quilt that I finished recently.  I put minkee fabric on the back of it, it’s really soft and cuddly and everyone fights over it in the camper.  Kasey likes to get in the picture anytime I take a picture of one of my quilts. 

Camping Trip to Johnson Shut-ins, Missouri

We went on a camping trip a couple of weeks ago and I’m just getting around to posting some pictures. 

Here is Annabell and Kasey in the camper, coloring.

Kasey sleeping on the way down to Johnson Shut ins.

At the shut-ins.

 

This is the visitor center at the Shut-ins. 

Here’s our little camper, setup at the campsite.  This was a really bad site, because it had lots of sun.  As long as I have air conditioning, I’m pretty happy.

This was at the park, we were getting read to go hike.  They had this pretty shelter and this was a time line around the center of it, with dates, starting out from the dinosaurs, fossils, first things discovered, etc.  Kasey liked running around the circle.

This is a little lake.  This area was called the scour.  It’s where the Amerun UE dam collapsed about 5 years ago and all the water washed down this area and ruined the park.  Amerun UE paid a lot of money to the state and they rebuilt the park and the campground, so it was really nice.  The campground had just opened in May of this year.

This is the new water dam that they built (I don’t think it’s called a dam but a reservoir).

This is a better picture, we hiked quite a ways to be able to see this.  It was really hot too.

If you look closely, you can see that shelter house and visitor center where we started from. 

Back at the campsite, Kasey riding his tricycle.  He got some new water shoes too. 

Kasey and Annabell liked to go to the store and buy things.  Especially since Daddy gave them some money! 

This was the second campsite we had at the campground, we stayed at the first one 2 nights and this one a 3rd night.  It was a really nicer one, was actually the camp host site.

This is back at the Shut-ins with Annabell playing.

This was part of the Shut-ins.  Where that guy is at on the big rock, they would jump down into that water.  It doesn’t look deep in the picture, but it was.  You just had to maneuver your way through all the rocks and water, it was fun.

Mark went to Johnson Shut-ins when he was in High School when he lived in St. Louis.  He said that he would jump off the top of this cliff into the water.  They fine you $500 if they catch you doing that now. 

I thought this was a neat rock.

Mark and I went on a hiking trip without Annabell and Kasey, we followed the river down for a mile or two.  It was really hard to get around because the rocks were so big.  It’s really a pretty spot.

Well, that’s our camping trip.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Post a comment if you’re reading this.  I don’t know if anyone reads this besides my mom!   My mom bugs me all the time that I don’t keep this updated.  She enjoys looking at Grandson pics.  :)