Our Spring Break of Travel!

This Spring Break was just perfect! To start it off, as soon as the bell rang the kids and I took off to the movies to see Beauty and the Beast. It was SO good! Then Nathan met us for dinner. It was a good start to the break.

 I got a little time at home before the travel started and was able to enter all my Rhea Lanas stuff and do some cleaning and organizing. It felt so good to mark a few things off that list that I had been looking for time to do. It is also nice that the kids are at the age that I can clean and they can self entertain and not destroy the house :)

Monday night Ryan had her first t-ball practice. She was SO excited! She asked me if it was time yet all day and then put her cleats on a few hours early :) She did much better than I was expecting - not skill wise, but behavior wise. She is our child that often bucks when we tell her what to do, but she did exactly what Nathan and her other coaches said. It has been a few years since Noah's first year of t-ball so I forgot exactly how much they play in the dirt - she was covered when practice was over. But, she loved it and kept asking if she could have more practice the next day!

The next day the kids and I took off for a few days in Branson. Noah started getting car sick for the first time, but I moved him to the front seat, laid the seat back and rolled the windows down and he was better in no time! We made a Branson Bucket List last summer and have been checking things off as much as we can. This time we were able to go to the Wax Museum and the World's Largest Toy Museum. We also did Build-A Bear for Ryan and the Prehistoric Fossil store with Noah. Our hotel pool was 3 feet deep all the way across so the kids were able to swim alone. They swam at least 2 hours each night and had a blast! We did putt-putt, ate at Pasghetti's, and hit up the Disney Store.  My mom gets all her kids and their families Silver Dollar City passes for Christmas so we were able to go there for a day also. We got there when they opened and rode 10 rides and were out of there by lunch and headed back.  Nathan was not able to make it to this Branson trip. We wanted to go mid-week so we could avoid a lot of the crowds and Nathan is in the middle of a big job and couldn't take off. I have no problem taking the kids places alone and even traveling to familiar places like Branson with them alone. Some people have commented that they can't believe I travel alone with them or how sad it is that Nathan cannot make all our trips - but I don't understand that. We cannot always do everything together and I don't want the kids to miss out on opportunities that Nathan and I could give them when the other one is unable to. That is how we do things and it works for us. 

Ryan built a Poppy :)

Putt-Putt!

This boy could eat his weight in spaghetti and meatballs!

Ferris Wheel at Pasghetti's

Ryan's usual reaction to her spaghetti at Pasghetti's :)

If this picture had sound you would hear "take dat you pip stweak" :)

Sign of a good vacation!

Worn smooth out!

Another wonderful surprise during our trip was that one of my best friends Sarah and her husband Shawn and son Jack were also in Branson! They saw we were there (thank you Facebook) so we met up for ice cream and went to their room to visit. It was so nice to visit with them and let the kids play together. Good move God :)

Ryans rainbow ice cream and Noah finally tried ice cream! Of course it was banana pudding flavored :)

Shawn playing "Timber" with the kids - they were really weak trees and he knocked them onto the giant bean bags :)

We got home from Branson just in time to go see the new Power Rangers movie with Nathan! We have literally been counting down to see this movie for awhile. It was actually really good, a little more adult than I was expecting though. The bad guy was kind of scary to me but it didn't even phase the kids, so I played it cool :)

Originally, Nathan was going to be racing in Memphis and I was going to drive over to see him after we got back from Branson and Nathan's mom was going to keep the kids. But, it turned out the race car was not going to be ready so he would not be racing. Nathan and I had not went away together without the kids in a while (we couldn't remember when exactly) so we decided since we had a sitter to go ahead and find something fun to do. I kept throwing ideas around, and Nathan would throw some around, but we just couldn't decide on anything. So, we packed our bags and got in the car. Then Nathan flipped a coin and the coin decided we needed to go Southwest - so that is the way we went! We ended up in Hot Springs! We survived a tornado Friday night and then Saturday we shopped all morning at our favorite store - TJ Maxx, went to Cajun Boilers and had lunch on the water, then headed to the horse races. I went with my grandma as a child, but Nathan had never been. We tried to act like we knew what we were doing and even snuck our way into some reserved indoor seating to watch the first 4 races. We made a bet, but didn't win. We weren't exactly sure what we were doing though, so we will need some pointers for next time. The popcorn and ice cream were good though! 

Our view from "our" reserved seats ;)

After the races we went to old down town and had dinner at Brick House Grill and then shopped in the downtown shops. Nathan called and booked up couples massages for the Sunday while I booked us another hotel room. We finished the evening watching HGTV :)

Sunday we did a little shopping and then had lunch at Stubby's BBQ - which was really good! Then we headed to our couples massage appointment. Unfortunately, the massages were not the best - we have been spoiled by our local massage girl. Then we headed home to the kids! I missed them so much while we were gone - I had been with them non stop for 7 days so I needed a break, but as always, I miss them after only a few hours!

While we were gone, the kids Meme took them on lots of adventures! Their cousin Paxton joined them for a couple days too.  They had a picnic at the park, rode bikes, went bowling, camped in the living room and much more!

Now that Spring is finally here we are ready for lots of time at the ball park, golf course, in the water, going on walk, evening four-wheeler rides and drag races!