Trippin'

I decided we all needed a vacation.

I mean, the high-powered, hard-charging, pressure-cooker world of frozen kool-aid treats can be very stressful. So I thought, naturally, that a fourteen-hour (round-trip) drive to the most traffic-congested tourist magnet in the entire southern region of the US would provide us with the perfect rejuvenating respite we needed. Yep. That's right. Me and the car-monkeys went to Branson.

It was not my idea, originally, but I quickly got on board. A good parenting rule is that if your teen-aged kids want to go to a family reunion, you drop everything and go. And I'm glad we did. We had a great time.

Should you ever find yourself in Branson, I highly recommend the Chinese Acrobats and Circus at the New Shanghai Theater. However, you may want to think carefully about who you take with you. We did not bring the littlest car-monkeys with us to that show. Because, while we were all thinking, "Can people really do handstands and back-flips off the top of six chairs crookedly stacked?" the little boys would all have been thinking, "Where can we get six chairs, and what if we crookedly stacked seven?"

Roller-skating on top of a table while twirling your partner over your head with a lasso held in your teeth is exactly the sort of behavior we discourage around here.

For me, though, I would have to say that the highlight of the whole trip was Silas' idea: He made me play laser tag.

Ohmigosh.

I had no idea how empowering it feels to charge around in the dark to the Star Wars Battle Theme soundtrack, blasting laser lights at every moving thing, maniacally giggling as your nemesis howls and his lights go out.

Yep.

Sweet.

Ten-year-olds fear me.

It was a great vacation.