Family

Family is everything to me.  Back in January my husband and I went back to the homeland to visit family to celebrate Christmas (I would talk about Christmas when we are coming upon Easter).  My sister was gracious enough to set up family portraits to be taken by a friend of hers.  The photos turned out fantastic!  If you are ever in the metro area and looking for a photographer I would definitely recommend: Erin Bell.  She is an absolute joy and we all couldn't stop laughing.

"Don't look at me.  Everybody look somewhere else"

Handsome with Mickey, Beluga and teething, Sassy Pants and Frozen

Family

We are crazy for these littles

The love of my life

My parents are incredible

Monkey see <--> monkey do

Beautiful Seester

These two through thick and thin I will always love

Teej & Bogusia

These two are completely obsessed with their Uncle Derek

Baby Beluga loves cameras

03.29.14

I'm an absentee blogger that if for certain.

Today did not go as planned this is also for certain.

The good news is that tomorrow is a new day!

On a side note I put out some of my Easter decorations today along with some roses (yes, roses!).

How cute are these little ducks?

I am absolutely in love with this treasure!

The colors of these roses were too pretty to pass up.

Guidance is something I pray a lot about lately.  This is probably one of my favorites.

Family Vacation

Due to taking close to 2000 photos this will be broken up into a few posts.  I grew up travelling quite a bit. My parents didn't get the luxury of travelling while they grew up and knew that when they had a family it would be something they would do as often as possible. For 22 years now we have been going to Branson, MO. Sometimes we had gone more than once a year. Branson has become a second home you could call it for my family. We would bring friends and family along with us and now spouses and children. The beginning of August is worked out so well that my entire family was able to vacation TOGETHER!

Husband and I left earlier than we anticipated so we were able to have an extra day of vacation.  We ended up meeting my folks and one of my cousins before the rest of the clan showed up the next day.  In wanting to do something that not everybody might want to do we ended up going to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.  My family had gone many many years ago so it was fun to go again and see things I had totally forgotten about.

One thing to notice is the cars in traffic.  We have discovered the best way to drive is learning the back roads.

Niko & Derek playing some shooting game we came across.  Coincidentally the game was right before the carved coffins that were designed as turkeys and bananas.

 Once the kids rest of the clan arrived they made sure that they got to take walks to the playground to burn off some of the energy they had built up in the car ride down.

Stopping to look at JJ's room on the way to the playground.

Sassy pants adores her Uncle Derek.  Truth be told he adores her as well.

This little guy had so much fun playing with Uncle Derek too.

One of the first things that we did was go to Silver Dollar City or as my nephew called it, "Fun park".  In all honesty my folks, have found that when you purchase the two day pass it is a way better deal when bringing the kids along.

Apparently, it takes two to get the Baby Bjorn ready for the day.

Papa trying the Red Velvet funnel cake.

Oreo Funnel Cake!

Momma and her Great-Nephew Niko.

Uncle Derek was a trooper and went on the kiddie rides...

Even on the ones he REALLY didn't fit on.

Sassy pants and her "Nuko" as she calls him.

Me and the kids.  I had no idea what I was getting into with these frogs.

FEED US!

While some were still eating Derek and I made sure the two older kiddos were entertained by the super cold water from the river ride watching people.

Derek and a very nicely seated handsome boy.

And then there is little miss Sassy Pants who kept blinding me.  Love her!

Beluga slept most of every day...

But she is so stinkin cute.

Some of our favorite must do rides:

Wildfire!

The water one where you get to shoot people with water and people get to shoot water at you!

They went on this 3-4 times in a row!

Me and my bro on our favorite ride.  This thing spins you in circles as you go up and down a half moon thing.  Compare it to the skateboard ride at MOA.  It is awesome.

The Barn Swing!  Literally a giant swing!

We were unable to do the Caves because of the flooding that had been going on during our visit but next time I really hope to see them.  Since SDC closes at 6:00 PM we needed to find other things to do afterwards besides sitting in the rooms.  One night we decided to do Go-Karts and have Andy's Custard.  Not going to lie when the Go-Karts were terrifying!  My family couldn't remember which one they took the kids to last year when they loved it.  This year we went to the wrong one.  The kids still had fun with the bumper cars, ferris wheel, and arcade games.

New victim in getting set up in the broken Baby Bjorn.

Big Buck Hunter with Niko.

Where Uncle Derek goes, the kids go.

The kids also liked playing their new matching game with Auntie JJ even though they are still a little too young to understand how to play it.

And one last photo before the next post...

10 years have gone by.

Husband had his 10 year high school reunion! I was not able to make my reunion last year so it was nice that we could make his this year. His graduating class size was not even half of the number of students we would have in a regular class. My husband grew up in a tiny town village in Missouri. I teased him a lot when we first started dating about going to a one room schoolhouse. It wasn't really a one room schoolhouse but more of every grade was in the same school. Comparing his graduating class of nine (yes, I said 9) to my class of about 555, it was a very different world. 

His friends were kind enough to go with his schedule and we ended up meeting on a Wednesday for dinner, a bar, and then a friends house to end the night. Not much of a plan but when the town you grew up in doesn't not have anything but farms and a school you make due with what you have. During the day we ended up playing pool at the same bar we would end up at later that night as well as checked out a state park (the name escapes me but next time we are actually going to tour it). For dinner we met everybody at a nearby town diner that had great food.

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Old sign in the bar

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Look close to see Bambi

The graduating class of 2003 (minus 3 I believe) *the only appropriate photo I could post.

Many thanks to husbands friends in letting me attend your class reunion.  It was so nice to finally meet some more of you guys!