vacation - day 2

We left town later yesterday than we were planning - because of Mikayla's appointment and then waiting for her prescription to be filled, etc... it just seemed that things weren't working out well. It was 4:00 before we left. So then, we hit Kansas City at rush hour. It took forever to get through there. We got to Branson about 9:30 last night. The kids did really well on the drive. Good thing for portable dvd players! We splurged on a hotel. We wanted this to be a nice relaxing vacation and didn't want to stay at our typical Super 8. The hotel is awesome. We have a great view from our room, and we have a balcony. There is an outdoor shopping center below us and there is an awesome fountain. Every hour they do a light show with the fountains and there is fire coming out of other things. It is so cool that we can see if from our room. I will have to post pictures after we get back home. oh, and the bathroom is huge! But there is no bathtub (which is not good when you have kids) - there is just a big shower.

We went to some dinosaur exhibit thing today - that's what Dakota really wanted to do. It was not very big and cost us about $40 to go through. I can't believe how expensive everything is around here. And I mean everything! John was wanting to go see a show but the average price is $30 for 1 adult ticket. I think a ticket for Dakota's age is around $17. So, that's $80 for my family to see a show. Crazy! We just did McDonalds for lunch. Then we went shopping at the historic downtown area of Branson. There were lots of unique little stores. Oh, but before that we realized that we forgot the stroller so we went to Walmart and bought a cheap stroller. Then after all that we went back to the hotel area and walked around the shopping center there. But they are mostly upscale stores so we didn't buy much. We ate supper at a place by our hotel called Texas Land & Cattle Steakhouse. Dakota was happy about it being a "cowboy restaurant".

Branson is not quite what I remembered though. Since this is the off season - it's not quite the happening place that you would think. It's nice that's there's not a ton of traffic. But things are just kind of dead. There's a lot of things closed down. I was wanting to do the Ride the Ducks thing, but that's closed until March. There was a restaurant that had a sign in front of it that said "Closed until Spring". Since it IS the off-season, it would be nice if the things that actually are open would be cheaper.

Anyway, we are having a lot of fun and wish that we didn't have to head back home tomorrow. We are thinking about doing something tomorrow before we come home. Not sure what else to do that won't break the bank!