Branson Bound

We took a mini vacation to Branson for a few nights.  Zoe tried to get Cole all set up to help with the ride.  30 minutes into the trip he asked, "Are we there yet?"We got an apartment by the lake.  It was nice.

Cole got really excited about his "new Branson house", but all he wanted to do was watch cartoons and play trains.  So basically he wanted his vacation to be just like every other day.

Monday night we headed down to The Landing.  We walked around and ate dinner.  The reason Zoe has a fake smile and a choke hold on Cole is because he was making her really nervous around the water.

Cole and Zoe weren't really used to apartment life.  Brad had to keep reminding Zoe that she couldn't do leaps and tap dance because there were people under us.  Monday night, as we were trying to go to sleep, we heard loud music outside.  We walked out on the deck to see what was going on.  Cole kept yelling things like, "Those people are listening to music even when it's dark and time to sleep!"  They turned down their music after that.  

Tuesday morning we headed down to the lake to fish.  It was nice and cool.  

Cole made us all nervous climbing on the rocks.  He wasn't really into sitting around and enjoying nature.

 Zoe loved fishing with Brad.  She even put the worm on the hook herself.

She ended up catching 11 fish!Brad caught 8.  They were all about this size!  

Cole tried fishing for a couple of minutes.  He looked up at me and said, "Really?  This is fishing?  Just sitting here, waiting?"  He did enjoy the worms though.  

He grew really attached to this half worm (Zoe was cutting them in half to make them go farther).  He named him Thomas.  It started raining and Cole said, "Can we please go back to our Branson house?  Thomas doesn't like the rain."  I told him that we weren't taking Thomas back to the apartment with us and he cried the whole way back and said, "How come I can't have a pet?"  "Hadley and Brewer have a pet!"  

 It rained a lot of the day so we decided to try a train ride.  Cole couldn't wait to ride a REAL train.  He said it was James and we were riding in Annie and Clarabell.

He was shaking with excitement.  We found out though, that you can get too much of a good thing.  He started getting bored about 30 minutes into the hour and 45 minute ride. 

Luckily (I guess), they had a concession stand in the train.  

 A couple of snacks and a drink made the ride much better.

We all enjoyed the ride.  It was really beautiful!

 We started realizing that nearly every activity and show in Branson cost around $100 for our family. Call me cheap, but that's ridiculous!   

We found one of the only free activities there...the fish hatchery!  The kids loved it.  I texted my brother, thinking he would be impressed.  He just said, "Way to go, you know they have one of those in Neosho?"  

We spent the rest of our vacation at the pool and the lake.  

 

And also played trains and watched cartoons!