Branson Trip: Silver Dollar City

We've been enjoying some time away as a family {+ Nana!} in Branson, MO. Our experience here has made us fall in love with the 'South'. We didn't even realize we've been missing hospitable, kind hearted, friendly people until we encountered them at every possible turn. In general, the people here seem to still care about ... well, people. It's hard explain really, it's just a feeling of family that you get and it's been refreshing!

Besides all that, we are enjoying some fall-ish weather, good company and tasty food. Our first full day spent here was at Silver Dollar City. Such a fun place to go with the family! {Note to self: wear walking shoes, it's hilly.} The landscape is gorgeous, trees every where. In a couple of weeks all the leaves will be changing color and I'm trying to figure out a way to transport myself so I can see it! I love fall time of the year!

Even though we didn't get to experience the colorful leaves on the trees, they are having their Harvest Festival at Silver Dollar City and the decorations made me crave hot apple cider somethin' fierce! They had scarecrows and pumpkins on display. And so much more. We really enjoyed just being there. We love that it's a family friendly place and they aren't ashamed of their faith in Jesus! That goes for most of Branson as well.

Here are some pictures from our day at Silver Dollar City with explanations below.

{From left to right}

1. Little Lady posing with a scarecrow. Her adorable piggy tails rarely last long...

2. Little Lady and Nana rode the carousel. Little Lady named her bear 'Go fast' but he didn't listen, apparently.

3. Little Lady waiting at the train depot to ride the choo choo. We are really into choo choos right now. Really into them.

4. Little Dude with daddy. He is Little Dude's preferred person at the moment. All day long he says 'Daddy' and it's really pretty cute how much he loves his daddy. :)

5. Little Lady covered in sticky, gooey mess but loving every second of her 'ya-yee pop!'

6. The littles having a rare moment of sharing something good time on the ladybug!

7. I might be slightly obsessed with little wooden rocking chairs and would desperately love to find one at a steal of a good price!

8. Some people just can't follow the rules and must pay the consequences... but not these two, they're just having fun! :)

9. Can't resist a good photo-op with my three four favorite people!! {Thanks Nana}

We can't wait to bring our littles back to Silver Dollar City someday!!

California Vacation

Last week we had a wonderful time in Southern California visiting my dad and step mother. The kids did amazing on the plane ride and slept better than they do at home most of the time! Now that's what I call vacation!!

We took our camera and our camcorder but either left both at home when we went on an adventure or forgot to charge the battery. Darn! So we have gaps in pictures to reflect all the fun stuff we did. :) Hubby made a slide show of the best pictures we did take so instead of posting a huge long post full of pictures, I'm just going to put the slide show in this post. Your welcome!


And I'm going to do a quick summary of what we did each day, mostly for our record of memories for the littles. Feel free to skip it if you aren't interested.


{make sure to have your sound on :) }



California Vacation 2011 from Katie B on Vimeo.



Day 1


My dad and hubby went scuba diving @ La Jolla beach and the littles and I tagged along. We hung out on the grass near the sand where there was a play ground for the littles. When I learned that the temps were over 100 deg back at the house I was really glad we chose the 70 deg temps where the beach breeze was so refreshing and relaxing!


Day 2


Hubby stayed at the house with the littles and I got to go do some shopping by myself! We met up with my dad after he got off of work early and headed to the Disney store at the mall. We wanted to get a Mickey and Minnie mouse doll for the littles since we were going to Disneyland the next day! Little Lady had a blast, she's really into the princesses and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.


Day 3


Disneyland!! It was a gorgeous day in the 70's and we just went with the flow and did the things we wanted to do first, then what ever we had time for we'd try and do too. At least as long as the littles were content. :) They stuck it out until 7pm, and even then it was more their tired mama who was ready to get back to the house. Little Lady was so excited about the choo choo so we rode two different ones! We took them on 'It's a Small World' and I thought about my grandma the whole time {It was her favorite! I really miss her}, and 'Pirates of the Caribbean', and the Jungle tour. We also went through Goofy, Mickey & Minnie's house and Little Lady got to meet both the mouses!! {Little Dude slept through it all...} She wasn't scared at all! She went right up to both of them and looked at them like "Aren't you going to say something?!" The only princesses we saw were in the parade but Little Lady loved it all the same. Can't wait to go back when she's a little older. :)


Day 4


On Wednesday we decided to stay close to the house and recoup a little bit. We took the littles to a children's museum and hubby and Little Lady throughly enjoyed themselves!! After lunch we headed back to the house where the kids napped and we got some laundry done. That evening we played and enjoyed the clubhouse pool where my dad lives.


Day 5


Beach day! We took the littles to Oceanside, CA and after enjoying a delicious lunch at In-n-out we played in the waves and in the sand until we couldn't take it any more! Which for Little Dude was much sooner than the rest of us, considering he made a face plant right into the sand and got it up his nose, in his mouth and all over his body. Poor guy had sandy snot for several days. He recovered and ended up taking a cozy nap snuggled up to his mama while hubby and Little Lady continued to play. Hubby even got to boogie board some and had great waves to catch. The one time I went out to enjoy some waves a wave caught me and knocked me off my feet. It shoved me to the shore and drenched me in sand! I was over the water after that. :)


Day 6


Opa and Oma were off work so we headed up north from the house to the Long Beach Aquarium. Little Lady enjoyed sticking her hands in the water where they had sharks and rays you could pet, but she wouldn't pet any of them. No, she just wanted to taste the water... She ran and played in the little splash area they had and we saw lots of different fish.


Day 7


On our last day we headed down to San Diego were the weather was perfect and the breeze was refreshing! We took a Seal tour on one of those bus/boat thingys. It drives on land but turns into a boat when we get in the water... Lets just say I was glad I took a motion sickness medicine before hand, I actually got to enjoy it! It was windy but the littles did pretty well. They were over it close to the end. We headed back to the house and packed our bags for an early flight home.


Thanks Opa and Oma for a great time and thanks California for a lovely vacation! Until next time...

Wish you were here...

Away

Little Lady and I have been away since last Sunday. We have been visiting Nana and enjoying relaxing and playing away from home.

Stud Muffin has been away doing some training for work so I decided it was a good opportunity to come stay with Nana before The Sequel is born and we aren't traveling.

We've had lazy days, lunch dates with Nana, and play dates with friends. We even had the opportunity to spend a day with my grandparents, Little Lady's great-grandparents! Before then they had never met. But we had a wonderful time with them, visiting, having breakfast for lunch and taking lots of pictures!

{I love this little sweetheart!}

Vacation: The Weekend

Friday:
We went to Sea World! I think we were there 5-6 hrs. Little Lady did outstanding. She even sat through a couple shows! Ok, so she actually got her nap through one of them. :)

It was a great experience though and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Watching the dolphins while they swam underwater. 

Playing with Opa {my dad} while we waited for the show to start.

Probably my favorite show of the whole park, Shamu!

Truly amazing creatures!

Playing with Oma.

Saturday:

The guys had another fun day of SCUBA diving off of Catalina Island. They have a dive park there that is set up and blocked off specifically for divers to enjoy! I heard stories of huge crab and lobster, they really enjoyed the day.

So that left the girls to fend for ourselves! 

We first went to the children's museum, Pennypickle's Workshop. It was such a neat little place!

It was set up as a professor/scientist's house with quite a few different rooms. It was as if he had conducted all these experiments and left notes written on the walls for the kids to try them out as well. 

She loved this piano! It was wired to other instruments that would play when certain keys on the piano where hit.

If she were a little bit older she probably would have gotten more out of it, but there where buttons and switches and gadgets all over the place. Plus there wasn't anything in there she couldn't safely touch! 

Here she is dancing to some music.

She fell in LOVE with this jukebox! With the colors and the bubbles going up the side, and of course the music!

A hot air balloon basket that you could get in a play around.

And after all that hard work play, we were ready for lunch!!

Sunday:

Our 4th of July was relaxing and I wouldn't have it any other way! It was a great way to have to end our lovely vacation.

We woke up late, even Little Lady, and then headed out to Ihop from some breakfast! Yum. Little Lady is so social and loves to yell "HI" at every person that walks by and if anyone will stop and give her some attention, well they are her new BFF!! She isn't shy. At all.

After a delicious late breakfast and an afternoon nap we headed to the club house for some fun in the sun! I was surprised that it was pretty bare from being a holiday, and a warm sunny one at that. But we weren't complaining to have the spray park all to ourselves again. :D

Daddy enjoyed making his own splash going down the slides at the pool!

After drying off we started the grill and enjoyed a delicious summer dinner of beer brats, potato salad, beans, grilled corn-on-the-cob and ice cream for dessert! Yummy in my tummy :D

Thank you Opa and Oma for the wonderful vacation and visit! We enjoyed our time as a family and getting to spend time with you! We look forward to the next visit with great anticipation. Much love.

The County Fair and a Beach Day

Part I: The County Fair

We took Little Lady to her first county fair... and it was in Southern California! I never would thought that would be the case. Stud Muffin and I both grew up mostly in the mid-west so I imagined taking her to the fair sometime out there. 

The first thing we did when we got there was find daddy a turkey leg! He was dying for one and he left a trail of drool all the way from the parking lot :D Little Lady enjoyed a little bit of it too, the little bit she could persuade daddy to share!

We also saw some animals and other booths. They also had a really neat pavilion that was all plants a flowers! Little Lady is our nature girl, she LOVES flowers, plants, trees - all of it!! So we ventured through there with her. It was not only gorgeous with vibrant colors, but it was a break from the smell of grease and from the crowds, we practically were the only ones in there!

Daddy found a photo-op and took come really cute pictures of our flower child ; p

{This was just moments before she reached out and ripped a petal off of these purple flowers...}

After we walked through the rides and had our fill of fatty deep-fried foods {Stud Muffin even ventured to enjoy a deep fried Snickers!} we headed home for the day!

Part II: A Beach Day

Yesterday we took little lady to the beach! It wasn't her first time to the beach. We took her the last time we came out to the west coast at Thanksgiving.

{Please excuse the quality of these photos as they were taken with my iPhone. We decided against taking our DSLR out in the sand but I couldn't bear to let the day go unrecorded!!}

It was overcast on the shore because of the marine layer that looms in most of June. It was cooler also. But we didn't let that stop us from enjoying the sand and waves!

Stud Muffin hit the waves and boogie boarded like a champ!

{He's such a stud!}

And Little Lady spent most of her time diggin' in the sand although she did venture down to the water and even enjoyed getting her feet wet! She is rarely timid or afraid of anything really, at least for very long!

She started out staying on the towel and checking the sand out from there...

And before long she was full fledged IN the sand, digging and playing! I had to keep telling her not to eat the sand and she had a tendency to want to put a pinch or two on her tongue. I must say I am looking forward to the day, with great anticipation, when she will not want to eat or taste EVERYTHING she can get her hands on!!!

She loves putting her head down and looking between her legs. I think I'm going to start teaching her how to do a somersault! ; D

She even helped daddy dig a hole in the sand. They are so cute together!

My two cuties!

Even though we took quite a bit of sand home with us and we didn't see much of the sun while on the beach, our beach day as a family was, in my opinion a success! 

Family vacation

We got to San Diego on Saturday morning. We thought we had landed in the wrong place as the temperature was cooler than back at home! It was a nice break from the 90 deg weather we had come from though.

After we arrived back at my dad's place the guys got ready to go SCUBA diving. Us girls hung back at the house and settled in. We walked over to the neighborhood clubhouse to take part in Fourth of July celebration they were having. We stayed for the BBQ and then came back to the house to put little lady to bed. She had a busy day with traveling early in the morning!

{She's blowing kisses}

Sunday was another diving day for the guys and us girls stayed close to the house. In the morning I went to the store for a few things we needed and then I got to do some shopping, little munchkin free! I throughly enjoyed it. :D

Later in the afternoon we took little lady over to the clubhouse to play at the spray park and go for a little swim with mommy!

We really enjoyed ourselves!

Don't you just love those chunky legs?!?!

My little nature baby wanted to stop and smell the flowers.

She loved playing in these little fountains from up above them. She would kick her feet in them and splash her hands in it.

The water was on a timer and would turn off after so much time, until someone would turn it back on again. So little lady wanted to see where it went...

She's one smart cookie ; )

Then baby girl and I took a nice refreshing dip in the pool.