Family Vacation to Arkansas/Branson

This past weekend we took a quick trip down to Arkansas and then to Branson.  In true “our dysfunctional family” fashion we had lots of problems and a few good times.

We headed down on Friday afternoon.  There was crying and fussing the whole way down.  Most of the time it was just Bella, on occasion it was Oliver too.  Most of the trip looked like this.

Our only highlight was a quick stop at an ice cream place, Braum’s, which had a delicious latte cappuccino chocolate chunk yogurt, or something like that.  We also drove through Joplin and got to see some of the tornado damage.

The main reason for our trip was to buy a new vehicle for Bella.  Well, Jesse gets to drive it for a few years and then once Bella gets a bigger wheelchair it will become the Bella mobile and I will be driving it around.

So we headed to the dealership and bought the new vehicle and traded in the 4Runner.  The kids were troopers there, since we stayed up 2 hours past their bedtime.  We finally got back to the hotel (we had checked in and fed them dinner before we got to the dealership) around 9 pm.  We put them both to bed, looked at each other in the dark hotel room, and said “Now what?”  Jesse ran to get us dinner at a great little place called the Flying Fish and we ate dinner huddled by the bathroom so as not to disturb the kids.  Ummm, maybe someday we could spring for some adjoining rooms.

Bella slept like a champ, but Oliver had a little trouble adjusting.  We had noticed he started to get a runny nose at the dealership and that night he was up at 10pm, 11pm, midnight, and 3:30am.  At 3:30am he thought it was wake up time, so the three of us were up and exploring the hotel room.  We even gave him his first shower.  Then eventually at 5:30am we all went back to bed for another couple of hours.

We did a quick continental breakfast, and then we were off to Branson.

Friends of ours – Thanks a million to the Shippy’s for loaning us your house at Table Rock – let us borrow their house to stay and sight see in Branson.  It was located right next to Silver Dollar City.  We hadn’t planned to go to Silver Dollar City, Oliver is just too young and Bella wouldn’t be able to do much.  So instead we headed out to The Landing, which was a shopping area near the water in downtown Branson.

Bella seemed to be enjoying the sight seeing and shopping, but Oliver still had a runny nose and needed a nap, which the crowded area did not allow him to fall asleep in the stroller.  So after about an hour we headed back to the house.

We put the kids down and got about the only 2 relaxing hours of the whole trip hanging out by the water drinking a couple of beers.

We woke the kids up at 6pm and drove around trying to find a local place to eat that would have good food, non-smoking, and accommodations for Bella’s cart.  We ended up at a Marina restaurant, that was pretty good and had nice views.  Bella was having a great time.  Oliver was still snotty and sleepy but did pretty good.

We got back to the house after the restaurant and got into pj’s.  Then we made a last minute decision to drive home.  That’s right.  We decided that since Oliver was going to have another terrible night, and then we were going to have to clean the house when we got up, and then drive home.  Why not just drive at 9pm, which would mean we would get home around midnight, and all of us could sleep in our own beds.  Not to mention at this point I was starting to get a sore throat and figured I was catching whatever the kids had.

So we quickly packed up and headed out of town.  The drive went smoothly until we got to KC right before midnight and made the wrong decision to stay on the interstate (we figured it was a little out of the way, but less starts and stops so hopefully the kids would stay sleeping), we didn’t count on the major accident that had all but one lane shut down, and the 30 minute delay it would cause us to travel less than a mile.  Not to mention Oliver woke up anyways, since we had to start and stop 5 million times.  A fitting ending to our trip.  Oh and did I mention that both Jesse and I did end up getting sick.

So maybe the vacation wasn’t to blame, it was more the fault of sickness that ruined it.  Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen again.