Carlie's Bday present from Lois:)

Carlie has a wonderful friend, Lois, who traveled all over Europe and NYC this summer and did THIS for my daughter!  I was sooo touched as I watched this.  SUCH a cool idea.  I can't believe how many people she got to do this.  We love Lois!

Last of Branson:(

We made sure to cram as much as we could into our last full day in Branson.  We hit the water park first thing in the morning!  White Water is full of awesome water slides.  I was surprised at how LONG our kids lasted there!  Chris and I pooped out an hour and a half before they did:)  

We then hit our last dinner show of the week--The Dixie Stampede.  We once again ate WAY TOO much good food and were entertained the whole time with amazing horse stunts and tricks.  The theatre was divided up into 2 side--The North and The South:)  They called people out of the audience on each side to come and participate in fun competitive activities.  We were on The North side and The South ended up winning that night:(  But that's okay, we all know that The North REALLY won back in the day:)

One of the winning "North" cowboys threw this flower to Carlie:)

We then headed down to "The Landing" which is an outdoor shopping mall mostly because we needed to walk off some of our dinner:)  This is Tatum in King Kong's hand:

We were gone a total of 11 days (NM + MO) and I would have thought that I would have been ready to come home but I wasn't!!!  I was actually quite depressed!  I could have easily spent another 2-3 days in Branson!  My kids are just growing up so fast that I absolutely treasure these times we have together.  But we had an AMAZING time and we sure hope to go back again someday.  WE LOVE BRANSON, MO!!! 

More Branson stuff!

Our first full day in Branson left us quite exhausted!  So we slept in the next morning and had a more relaxing day.  We hit the outlet malls to do some back-to-school shopping and then headed over to one of Chris' most favorite places to eat--"Steak and Shake."  Max got a really cool hat:

Ethan with his foot-long hot dog!

Then we headed over to see "Jonah" and the Sight and Sound Theatre.  Now I've seen a lot of plays in my life but this one blew me away!!!  It was like a broadway show on steroids!  The sets/costumes/talent was AMAZING!  My favorite part was when the whale (which was like a huge blimp/balloon managed by 2 people) came swooping through the audience!!!  We could have touched it if we had stretched our hands out!  But it was spectacular.  If anyone is going to Branson between now and December 31st, I would HIGHLY recommend catching this show!

After dinner we headed over to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum!  Isn't this building just the coolest thing you've ever seen???  (Perfectly safe to enter by the way--Max wasn't too sure:)

The kids LOVED this place!  We were amazed, disgusted, horrified, and wowed over and over again.  They had everything there from REAL human shrunken heads to the largest roll of toilet paper:)

The tallest and shortest men

The Hulk made out of car parts

An early deep-sea diving mask

The last room to pass through was a cool spinning room.  The kids spent about 10 minutes just in this room.  It was hard for me to walk through without loosing my balance!  Super fun place that my kids are still talking about a week later!

Silver Dollar City/Branson Belle

We hit the ground running on our first full day in Branson.  We woke up to the most wonderful rain!  LOVED IT!  It's been a long while since we've had rain in AZ.  So we headed off to Silver Dollar City not minding the rain because we were prepared to be wet all day riding all the rides.  It only rained the first hour, then PERFECT the rest of the day.

I love love love this place.  As soon as you walk in, there is a sign that lets everyone know that they do not tolerate foul language in the park--they will have you leave if you are over heard cussing:)  And check out this sign on the log ride:  AWESOME!  Does Disney do that…I think NOT!

So we were basically wet all day but like I said, we were prepared with our swimsuits under our
clothes.

The kids rode this ride 3 times in a row:)

They have some of the BEST roller coasters here at Silver Dollar City.  The newest one is called "The Outlaw Run."  It is quite intense.  Tatum is exactly 48 inches and you have to be at least this tall to ride this ride.  One worker there asked her to come and get measured before the ride started.  The guy couldn't make a decision himself and consulted with 3 other workers on their thoughts on her height.  I was getting really nervous that they wouldn't let her on--or that maybe she shouldn't get on.  But after several minutes they decided that she was fine.  It was super cute because when they gave her the go-ahead EVERYONE in the roller coaster AND in line waiting cheered and clapped for her--they were rooting for her the whole time!  Once again I ask, would that happen at Disneyland?  I think NOT--we would have probably annoyed everyone by holding up the start of the ride:)  So Tatum rode it and LOVED it!  (And I kept my hand on her throughout just in case:)

Our Ethan is NOT a roller coaster guy but we convinced him to try this one--not sure how we did, but he got on:)  Well, he did it and said "That's it!  NO MORE roller coasters for me!"  Well….we shall see:)  We just HAD to get him this shirt from the gift shop.  Way to go E!  We are proud of you for trying it out!

Fun stuff:

After spending the whole day at Silver Dollar City, we went back home to clean up for our evening activity--the Branson Belle.  The Branson Belle is a huge paddle boat that you go aboard to eat way to much good food and be entertained at the same time!

On the dock:)

The stage

Waiting for some yummy food!

The show on the boat is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!  We were throughly entertained by the host (and magician) Christopher James.  Then wowed by the Branson Show Boys--basically a boy band of super cute young guys.  And then finally the Julliard trained Janice Martin who sings, plays piano, violin, and oh yeah…is an aerial artist!  She would actually play the violin WHILE doing crazy stunts.  We were cracking up so hard at Max because he could hardly watch her!  Every time he was just sure that she was going to fall!!!  (But she never did:)

Out on top of the boat:

Christopher James is Max's new hero now!  He just HAD to go meet him after the show.  So here are my kid's being levitated by Christopher James:

Max's Hero!!!

So we were throughly EXHAUSTED after our first day but had the best time!  We headed home for the evening and immediately crashed!  We needed to rest up for our next awesome day in Branson!

Headed for Branson, MO!!!

So after much debate about what we should do for our summer vacation, we settled on Branson, MO!  My husband goes to Branson nearly every year because his company puts on a huge show choir competition there.  I've been there twice with him and just LOVE it there.  Branson is a little town in the middle of the Ozark mountains.  It's kinda like a Las Vegas because it is a town completely dependent on tourism and has some of the most amazing shows I've ever seen.  Lots of "Mormon" acts there as well--like the Osmonds and Duttons.  It is the MOST religious/family-friendly/patriotic place that I know.  We've been wanting to take our kids here for years and by golly, we FINALLY did it!

It's about a 18 hour drive from Deming that we broke up over 2 days--our kids were amazing in the car.  We drove 12 hours from Deming to Oklahoma City, OK the first day.   The second day we drove the last 6 hours from Oklahoma City to Branson, MO but before we hit Branson we hit one of our most favorite restaurants--"Lambert's--Home of the Throwed Rolls."  Good ol' fashioned-all-you-can-eat home cooking where they literally THROW the homemade rolls to you!  My kids had the best time catching them:

She caught this roll on her first try:)

Then we drove into Branson where we arrived at our WONDERFUL condo--seriously amazing views from our room.  I loved eating breakfast on the back porch watching the fog on the lake in the morning and then we loved catching fireflies every evening.

Back Porch view

Front Porch view

Fog hovered over the lake most of the day.

FIREFLY TIME:

Evening Fog with a  full moon.