Saturday Play Day

Our AirBnB was just about perfect, except: they did not have NEARLY enough silverware for so many people.  So here's Ryder eating his cereal with a ladle...

There were no real plans for Saturday morning, so we decided to explore Beautiful Downtown Branson (not to be confused with Bronson!!!  😂).  Craig took Ryder, Colton, Camille and Nicole to hit the go-kart tracks and an arcade!

And Kendra and I went to the Butterfly Arcade!  I took approximately 100 pictures, so consider yourself lucky that I am NOT posting them all here.  But you just feel so chosen when a butterfly decides to hang out with you for a bit!!!  How can you not want to document that???

Before we even got to the butterflies, we spent a few minutes in the aquarium area with various amphibians, reptiles, and skinks.  My favorite were the poison-arrow frogs-- don't these just look made up???

I want them!

Then we went to the butterfly and spent at least an hour there, maybe longer?

This lime-yellow guy!

For most of the time we were there, a man was sitting against the wall aggressively playing a harpsichord.  Then he went on a break and we were like-- We need that music!  It really added to the whole atmosphere in such a lovely way!  Thanks for making it even more magical, harpsichord guy!

Not the prettiest butterfly, but I loved those purple spots

This glasswing with his see-through wings was one of my favorites

Kendra's comment, "Aw, he's so ugly!  I love him!" 

Someone else "caught" this one, but she was very nice about letting me take a picture of it!

There were these huge blue butterflies that no one could catch.  You'd only see the blue when they opened their wings but butterflies usually rest with their wings closed, so you really needed to see them in flight to see how gorgeous they were.  The best I managed to get was this:

See it flying away from me???

And I also liked these two, perusing the rotten fruit:

So, yes, we thoroughly enjoyed our time with the butterflies!  Once we'd finally gotten our fill, we went to their mirror maze and I was surprised at how totally disorienting the experience was, but it was kind of awesome!  I'm pretty sure if you could see the entire maze, it was actually really simple, but those mirrors do make it confusing!

There are two of each of us in this shot

While we'd been doing this stuff, Natalie and Cameron had driven back to St. Louis.  They managed to time it just right so that Natalie could drop Cameron off at the airport (he had to get back to work) AND pick up Caleb (who had been in Annapolis attending a water polo camp run by Navy Seals).  Let me tell you-- my boys were SO EXCITED for Caleb to arrive!  And Rachael & Ian and Tracy & Adam had decided to buzz over the state border so they could check Arkansas off their list of states they'd visited.  Apparently they managed to eat at a diner with a very friendly, toothless man sitting on the porch encouraging them to watch out for the "squirrelly" waitress (who turned out to be married to his nephew)!  They said it felt exactly like how they thought Arkansas would be.

Most of us then met back up together to see Dolly Parton's "Stampede" Show!  

We got there plenty early so we could see all the horses-- they were so pretty!

Happy Camille!  (This may be the horse who patiently untied all his ropes while he was getting saddled up?  It was very impressive!)

Pre-Show entertainment

And then we were finally seated in this huge arena, just like Medieval Times, for the actual show!

It was a fun show!  I could have used more horses and less corny jokes, but it was still a fun experience, and mostly I loved how excited Camille was about ALL the horses!

We'd gone to the matinee show, so when we were finished around 5pm, it was like no one knew what to do.  The show included a full meal, but somehow you still kind of wanted dinner?  It was weird.  Rather than eating, we all headed to the neighborhood pools where we were staying and hung out (and occasionally snacked on string cheese and pirate booty) and had a grand time!

Tracy and Nicole

Ryder and Camille on the sides, Caleb, Nolan, and Harrison making the pyramid

Harper, Cora, and Claire

Rachael, Jenna, and yours truly!

Everyone stayed until the pool closed.  Nothing beats sitting around talking with such great people!  All the kids were starving by this time, so Tracy whipped up a huge pan of scrambled eggs and all was right in the universe again.