Balmas Family Vacation

So, we tried the whole Branson weekend vacation with the kids...it was pretty much an epic fail. I guess we kind of assumed that would happen, but not to the extent that it actually played out! We finally made it up to Branson at about 3 in the afternoon, after many tears and lots of screaming (by both myself and the kids!). So much for getting up there early the first day! Oh well. We successfully found our hotel after only one wrong turn, and one pit stop to look at the directions. We checked in and everything was great for a little while. Upon arriving to our room, Derrick said he smelled 'wet dog.' I of course did not smell 'wet dog,' 'wet paint' maybe, but not 'wet dog.' We carted all of the luggage up to the room and layed everything out. Addi marked her bed, while Conner ran around the room trying to size everything up. We started calling around and almost every attraction we wanted to take the kids to closed at 5, so we had to put off everything until day 2. That was fine, because we were planning on being up there for 3 days. We found a k-mart, bought everything we managed to forget to pack. We then drove in a very large circle around town to try and look for a spot to eat dinner, only to end up right back across the street from k-mart at Montana Mikes. Dinner was fine, except for the mini-meltdowns happening every 3 minutes on opposite sides of the table. Conner tossing his onion rings across the restaurant like he was training for the next Olympic frisbee team, and Addi opposing any food what-so-ever. After we packed up dinner, we ran across the street to buy milk for the kids. Addi of course had to go to the bathroom, so we made our way to the ladies restroom. It smelled absolutely disgusting!!! I could've sworn someone with a UTI just got done peeing all over the floor. YUCK! Anyways, I said "yuck, it smells disgusting in here!" Addi then said "mom, no, that's just how bathrooms smell, like pee." Thanks Addi, for pointing that out. Anyways, after our nasty trip to the restroom we headed back to the hotel, to get suited up to head down to the pool. We jumped in the pool and it was freezing cold. I started laughing, because Derrick couldn't get his teeth to stop chattering. So we ventured over to the hot tub, the kids liked it, but ultimately it was too hot to keep them in it for long. We found ourselves back up in our hotel room at 8:30 with absolutely nothing to do. We started trying to put the kids down at 9:30. Needless to say, it didn't work. The kids and Derrick went down about 11:00. I finally got to sleep sometime right after midnight, only to be awoken by Conner at 12:30. I put him back to sleep, layed back down and fell back to sleep at about 1. Addi woke up at 2, complained that she was scared and I let her crawl into bed with Derrick and I. She woke up again at 2:30 saying that she heard tigers outside our hotel room door. I tried to explain to her that our hotel had a strict 'no tigers allowed' policy, but ultimately she didn't buy it. She was wide awake listening for a roar, when Conner cried out again at 3. He was now wide awake. I was exhausted!!! Derrick was trying to get Addi to fall back to sleep and I now found myself rocking Conner for 2 hours to no avail. At about 5 am he finally passed out on my chest. I layed him down in bed with me, and he snoozed away. He was apparently dreaming, because he kept hitting me in the face or pinching the backside of my arm for almost an hour. Addi was fast asleep curled up in Derricks arms, and I was laying there wide awake watching the sun come up. I fell back to sleep around 6 and of course Addi woke up at 7:30. Only long enough to say a couple of words and drift back to sleep. I heard her wake up, and of course I was wide awake. I layed there in bed for at least another hour, before I made my way down to the front desk, begging them for a refund on our second night. They understood my predicament and waived the 24 hour cancellation notice, and gave us 15% off our next stay with them. Thank goodness. I couldn't handle too much more of that! Addi and Derrick slept in until almost 9. Conner slept in until about 10:15, until apparently we made too much noise packing our bags to leave. We went and checked out Butterfly Palace, which was a lot of money for little entertainment. Addi loved it though. Then we took went on 'ride the ducks.' That was a lot of fun, only a couple meltdowns on that excursion...so I chalk that one up to a 'win.' We headed back home at about 4 the next afternoon, after we had only arrived 26 hours prior. It's funny, I had this cute little trip planned for the family, and not a single thing worked out like it was supposed to. That's ok though, I will have plenty of memories of our first family vacation, and ultimately Addi doesn't think there was anything wrong with our trip. Next year, maybe we will try two days, but until then, I'm ok with just venturing up to Branson for the day and sleeping in my bed at night!!!