Back to Branson?

Okay, so it's like this. The Muley family (at least, at this point, Muley and Mrs. Muley) is trying to figure out where to go on a family vacation this summer. We had thought about just doing a few weekends close to home, but the more Mrs. Muley and I pondered this, we realized that we won't have too many summers left to travel together with our girls, and that we need to try to take as many trips as possible while our kids still want to go places with us.

Last year, thanks to a generous, unsolicited financial donation from my parents, we were able to splurge and take the girls on their first visit to DisneyWorld, which they absolutely loved. Well, we don't have the financial resources to do that again, so we are thinking a bit more economically. With the increasing expense nowadays of air travel, we want to go somewhere we can drive to instead of fly to. Even though the price of gas is outrageous, it's still somewhat cheaper to drive instead of fly (unless you plan on driving to Cape Horn in South America, which thankfully is not one of our contenders. I hear it is almost impossible to get Dr Pepper down in Argentina).

So, we are at the moment thinking of returning to the vacation oasis of Branson, Missouri. We were just there three years ago, but there are some advantages to returning so soon. First, it's definitely cheaper than DisneyWorld or Colorado or New York City or Hawaii -- some other spots on our ultimate family travel wish list. Second, we can drive there from Waco in a day's time. (That would give our girls a chance to catch up on all their DVD watching in the car). Third, we all had a good time in Branson the last time around, and if we go again this summer we'd be doing things we didn't before, such as possibly going to a huge amusement park and doing some cool stuff on the lakes.

The problem is that as we do some investigating on the Internet, it seems that in the nice places we would want to stay, the cheaper rooms and packages are mostly booked up. (ARGH! What's with these annoying, well-organized early vacation planner types?) We haven't looked very long at this, but hopefully we won't be faced with a choice of staying in a huge multi-bedroom suite in a nice place (and paying through the honker for the privilege) or staying in a budget one-room efficiency in the Ozark Outhouse Motel out beyond the city water treatment plant.

Have any of the three or four regular visitors to this site been to Branson recently? If so, any suggestions?

St. Patrick's Day Jokes

I apologize for being such an unfaithful blogger lately. A lot of strange stuff involving home improvement projects, spring break and injury-inducing neighborhood dogs has taken up my time and kept me from regular computer time. I need to tell some of those stories on a good blog post, but until then, I'll share a few Irish jokes I received from Mrs. Muley today, in honor of St. Patty's

NUMBER ONE

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place.  Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me.  If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!" 

Miraculously, a parking place appeared. Paddy looked up again and said, "Never mind, I found one."

NUMBER TWO

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut . The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"

"Just water," says the priest. The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"

The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

NUMBER THREE

Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, "Pour me a stiff one - just had another fight with the little woman." 

"Oh yeah?" said Charlie, "And how did this one end?"

"When it was over," Mike replied, "She came to me on her hands and knees.

"Really," said Charles, "Now that's a switch! What did she say?" 

She said, "Come out from under the bed, you little chicken."

AND, NUMBER FOUR

Flynn staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Mary. 

He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful. 

Managing not to yell, Flynn sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his "cheeks" were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood. He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed. 

In the morning, Flynn woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Mary staring at him from across the room. 

She said, "You were drunk again last night weren't you?"

Flynn said, "Why you say such a mean thing?"

"Well," Mary said, "it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly.....it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.