Home Sweet Vacation Home

This is the view form the top of the lighthouse. It's over 5 stories tall, and it's all stairs to get to the top. It does have a nice view though...

So here we are again, another visit to our favorite vacation spot - Branson. This time we are staying in our nicest timeshare, a small 2 bedroom house in a resort out west of town. We bought this 2 years ago, but this is the first chance we've had to stay here.

HO HO HO!

The kids and the yearly visit with Santa. My brother-in-law spent a great deal of money a few years ago buying a very nice Santa costume. It turned out to be one of the best things he's ever done. On Christmas Eve he goes around to several families and does the whole Santa routine for them. No one can say he's not a nice guy - at least at Christmas.

A Black Gospel choir in suburbia...

This is the part of the choir from the Broadview Missionary Baptist Church - here to perform for us before Christmas. They are a very typical African American church choir, and we are a very typical very white church. Still, it is nice that we can get a group like this to come all the way down from Chicago to sing for a bunch of stiff suburban white folk. I hope they aren't too disappointed in us - we aren't as stiff as a bunch of Episcopalians, but Lord knows we aren't the most demonstrative of groups.

Still working on things...

I have a new phone -- the third since I started this blog going. The first was a Moto E815, the next was a Samsung Alias, and now I have an LG ENV2. It's a nice enough phone, but I"m still trying to figure out the camera and messaging. Sometimes, it will shrink a picture before sending it, and sometimes it won't -- and I can't figure out when and why it will.

Alex's Christmas program

These are the 1st and second grade classes at Alex's school. You probably can't see him, he's kind of short and we're in the back of the crowd.

Update: You actually can see him, he's in the first row, about 4 kids to the left of the one wearing a white shirt and red sweater. Alex is wearing a red sweater vest...

a Christmas song come to life...

All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth, my 2 front teeth, my 2 front teeth...