The Adventures of Mark and Emma!!: BRANSON

To be clear, there is not much in this post about actual Branson itself. Rather, what happened during the week we were supposed to be in Branson. Here are the chain of events.

Wednesday morning we awoke to leave for Branson. About the time we woke up, a woman was found dead right behind our back fence. Helicopters and police cars were everywhere. They ruled it a homicide. DeAndre had been sleeping in Hannah's room, with a view of everything. Thank God he slept through it all and didn't see anything.

Did we know her?
Was she taking a morning jog?
Was she leaving for work?
Do they have a suspect?
How did she die?

These were all questions we did not get answered before we left later that morning.

We got to Branson, and it was Mark, Izaiah, DeAndre, and me plus my parents and siblings. Our condo was awesome! We tried to relax for the next 24 hours. Then our next door neighbor called to tell us our house was broken into and trashed.

Great.

So early the next morning, off Mark and I went to go deal with that mess. Not only did they take TONS of stuff, but they also trashed the place. They cut things up with our butcher knives, and they took our food out of the fridge and freezer and left it all over the place. Thankfully they did not take Ezra. She watched the whole thing from her kennel. Also to be thankful for, our neighbor caught them in the middle of looting, so they didn't get to take everything they planned to, one of which I am sure would have been the puppy. We took Ezra to a co-worker's house and tried to clean and work things out with the insurance company and police. Details details.

The next morning, back to Branson we went. We were so tired. The next day we came home to our pillaged house. They took our TV, DVD player, Computer, several game systems, toaster, smoothie maker, can opener (?), cash, all our car, house, and work keys (including all spares), and even our alarm remote and code. We couldn't get into Mark's car, and had to have it towed to get a new key made. Not quite the vacation we were needing. We are learning over and over that material things do not matter. People matter. Love matters. Goodness matters. Kindness matters. We are still figuring out the things that the thieves took. If it is taking us weeks to figure out what they stole, then my view is that we had wayyyy more than we needed anyways. We are sosososo very blessed. The autopsy report showed that the woman found dead died of a drug overdose. Still very sad, but definitely reassuring that there is not some crazed killer roaming our neighborhood. Oh life! Why are you so stressful?!

Eating yummy sundae's at our family friend's restaurant, Mel's Hard Luck Diner!

Thanks Mel!

Of course we stopped at St. James Winery on the way back from dealing with our ransacked house. A little stress relief in the form of Red Velvet Goodness! Mmmm!