hillbilly heaven

awhile back i was lamenting with some of the behrs about the fact that we haven't been able to take our annual beach vacation the past couple years. we decided that if we couldn't make it to the beach we should at least do the next best thing, which is obviously branson. we took a short but sweet trip to the ozark mountains to eat deliciously authentic mexican food and play at silver dollar city.  

waiting in line to see the pretty girls at the saloon show

megan . jacob . shelly . matthew . gracie

words can't really describe what was going on here. it was voted hands down the best part of the trip. there is a fairly large ride at silver dollar city called the giant barn swing. as someone who is not especially a fan of roller coasters, i would personally rank this as a medium level thrill ride. you would think that a macho high school graduate would be able to handle such a ride, but you would be wrong. soon after the ride began matthew started crying like a little girl. he was hanging on for dear life saying things like "no, no, no" and "please make it stop". it was hilarious.

jacob . matthew . gracie . kim

he did manage to pull it together and we all got gangsta-fied and took one of those old time photos.  i just don't know why so many guns are pointed at me.

matthew . gracie . jacob

marilyn . chris . kim . shelly . megan

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33 pennies

it's pretty standard for my birthday to last longer than just one day and this year was no exception. the free food started rolling in about week early, but the best part came on my birthday eve. we rolled in from omaha around 9pm and the most spectacular birthday penny scavenger hunt you have ever seen was waiting. there were thirty four pennies hidden all over the house, one from each year i've been alive. (yes, technically that makes the title of this post incorrect, but i'm only thirty three...it's confusing) donald left me a note and a game board and the search was on. i was a penny finding machine, and i was pretty good at finding the bonus prizes too. i blazed through the first half in about thirty minutes and then it started getting tricky. kim and my mom helped a bit, but there were a few stragglers that we couldn't find until the next day. it was SUPER fun.

after a breakfast of gas station donuts on my birthday morning we headed to the pool for a bit before my mom "threw me a birthday party" at noodles for lunch.

mom . donald . kim

shelly . christy . tommy

the nighttime festivities included a super fun game night at grant & erica's house. we feasted on cheese ball, funky punch and peach crisp/cobbler/pie and played the night away. it was hilarious and fun. the best birthday game night i ever did have.

donald . shelly

erica . grant . missy . kim

i just love birthdays. and i'm so thankful i have family and friends that know that and try really hard to make it special and fun. i enjoyed lots of birthday wishes and had a perfectly lovely day. happy 33rd birthday to me!

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we're cheering for the umpire

kim and i have had quite the string of house guests lately, the most recent being christy (my second cousin), tommy (my second cousin once removed) and my mom (still my mom). my house was the halfway point on our journey to visit matt (christy's brother) and watch him work. but before we headed north to cheer on our favorite umpire, we had a little fun kansas city style. since tommy is a big fan of all things lego, we hit up the new legoland at crown center. we played, built, rode and watched...my personal favorite was miniland. lots of kansas city buildings and icons made entirely of legos. it was pretty sweet. once we had partaken of the full experience we headed over to fritz's for hamburgers delivered by train.  

christy . tommy . lego conductor man . donald . shelly

saturday  morning we loaded up the car and headed to omaha for a weekend filled with america's favorite pastime. it was a fierce rivalry between the omaha storm chasers and the iowa cubs, but we were more interested in the guys in black and blue. matt worked the plate on saturday night and third base on sunday afternoon. it was by far the best umpiring i've ever seen. as an added bonus we had wonderful weather...it was cool and breezy all weekend long. (that's not true)

mom . me

mom . matt . shelly . tommy

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july 4th @ the twogoods

ah the fourth. america. freedom. hot dogs. explosions. as the great jim gaffigan once said..."it's what the founding fathers would want". and no one i know does explosions quite like kelly twogood. with lots of food, lots of friends and a table overflowing with fireworks we celebrate america in what i can only describe as uncontrolled chaos. which i suppose is what you get when you put a bunch of dads in the street to set things on fire with an innumerable amount of small children running around vying for the chance to help. the good news is that we all survived. happy birthday america!

kim . shelly . donald

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