Branson: The Lake

Warning: Picture overload.  There is not much to add, except that we had a great time!

Branson: Downtime

There are plenty of things to do right at the hotel where we stay, so we spent a lot of time just relaxing, playing games, cooking meals and swimming.  They have things going on all of the time and we joined in on a few.  Here is Jackson during the "dive for the prize" contest.  He claims he would have won if two girls hadn't combined their dive sticks. 

Harrison participated too, but it was pretty tricky with a life vest on!  Everyone got a popsicle for giving it a go.

We had lots of family time in the pool, especially throwing balls of all sizes (one HUGE beach ball especially - how did I not get a picture of that thing?!)  

The kids spent as much time as possible watching cartoons.  None of us have cable so they thought that the all day cartoon channels were magical.  I could have done without them!!  I did find it cute how they all climbed in bed to watch together though.

We celebrated Isaac's birthday.  We were cave men with no way to make fire, but we still had blue cake.

Crafts were made.

Arms and faces were painted.

Bubble were blown.

Shuffleboard.

When it got to hot outside, we made some noise in the indoor pool.

Hannah even sang karaoke... braver than I am!

We played Nertz, Rook, Memory, Charades and Spades... even Joe tried his hand at bidding nil.

Branson with the Poyners: Silver Dollar City

We spent our first full day in Branson at Silver Dollar City - the one must do for the Poyner clan!  I started off with the "high adventure" group in which everyone wanted to sit by Amy to see her reaction to the coasters.  She was the most fun to watch as she was only in the high adventure group to spend time with Sarah!   I was with Lincoln and he was having a blast.  We expected really big lines based on the traffic getting into the park, but there wasn't much of a line at our first coaster and we rode it three times.  Lincoln was always at the front of the line, so we were often on and done before everyone else, so I got to take a quick pic of Amy and Papa who waited in line to be in the front of the car.

  

After lunch I switched over to the low key group to be with Harrison, Hannah and Natalie.  They were so much fun to watch and play with.

My favorite moment was catching this picture of Harrison as a huge load of balls unexpectedly let loose and fell toward him in the ball pit.

There were a few minutes when I couldn't find him until I looked up the stairs and found he had crawled into the balls.  Little goofball!

I wouldn't have expected him to love the swings because they get pretty high and go pretty fast, but he loved them!  He did not like the kiddie coaster the first time he rode it, but he decided (without any coaxing) to brave it again and liked it a little better the second time.

I got in trouble on the elephant ride for taking my phone out for a selfie... one of maybe three I've ever taken.

Some of us came back again the second day for a little while in the evening to make use of our two day tickets.  I was with the high adventure group again, but Lincoln had a rough start.  He was really overwhelmed by the heat, noise and crowd in line for the barn swing, so we left and waited outside.  A nice man tried to comfort him thinking he was afraid of the ride... that was not at all the case, he just couldn't handle the sensory overload of the line.  :(

He has always been able to spend lots of time at the frog race thing right outside though, so he was just fine as soon as we got out of there.

Next we went back to get a chance on the Outlaw Run.  It is a new ride and the high adventure group from the day before had waited in line all the way to loading up and then they didn't get to ride it for maintenance issues.  The kids were complaining to me that they shouldn't have to wait in line again and I happened to see a guy there with a clipboard who looked official. I mentioned it casually to him and he sent us to the front with a fast pass to get right on.  I didn't get to ride, but I heard it was great!  Everyone was excited as the back three, but my two made weird faces for the picture.

It was fun to have the groups mixed together according to everyone's thrill level.  It doesn't matter who you are with, you're going to have a great time because they are all so fun!