Branson trip, part 1- The Butterfly Palace

This post has alot of pictures.  The sad thing it's not even all the pictures we took while we were there!   Let me back up... in June, James and I took a little trip by ourselves to Branson.  We thought it would be fun to return in December and take the kids with us.  So last month we took our first family vacation.... a first vacation were we didn't go to another family members house.  The kids were a little confused.  They kept asking who else would be there.  :)  Anyway, the first place we went was the Butterfly Palace.  This was wonderful!  If you go to Branson and have younger kids, go here!  It was by far the highlight of our trip.  The kids still talk about going back today(not remembering the 4 hours it took us to get here).  So here are a few of the many pictures we took.
The butterflies flew all around so you could get really close to them.  And the kids loved the scooters!

 

Our first attempt at getting some family photos

I think we circled the area about 4 times.  We went when it first opened so we were the only people there for a long time.

Kids loved the magnifying glasses! :)

Second family photo attempt...

They even had a little room you could look in to see the different stages of the caterpillar growing into a butterfly

Here are the hats they could wear, if they wanted.  Basically they wore the hats while I took about 4 pictures as fast as I could in order to get a decent one.  The funny thing is, O kept calling it her "cowboy hat."  I'm not sure where she came up with that.

After spending all morning at the Butterfly Palace, we headed out to eat.  Here's the restaurant we ate at.  The next post I'll try to share the family photos we had taken there.  It's funny, the best photo we took all trip, where everyone was looking at the camera and halfway smiling was at the "Chicken Restaurant!"

decorating the tree

This year we put our Christmas tree up the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  James said he would take the pictures because decorating the tree was my "thing." :)

There was some serious decorating going on.... you don't take this stuff lightly!

I did manage to steal the camera a few times

When O saw this ordainment she told James "I'm going to cook a meal!"

I remember James making some comment about how she would make a great wife someday. :)

After all that decorating, we had to have our egg nog and sugar cookies.  To say S loves egg nog is an understatement.

After "snack time" I tried to get a picture in front of the tree.  Pick the one you think is best and let me know...

I gave up and decided to try again next year....

Why I haven't been blogging....

Have you noticed I've been MIA from the blogging world for a while?  Well, maybe you haven't.  But I have been.  I thought I would explain...

You see, there's been some sickness in our family.  Yes, the usual winter stomach bug(everyone but O got that!).  But that's not all.  I wish it was.  Throwing up for 4 hours straight beats throwing up for 4 weeks straight, being tired all the time and emotional.  But it is all worth it... so worth it.  It's worth it because in June we will be having a new baby join our family!!!  So that's my excuse for not blogging about decorating the tree, Christmas, and all the other things we have done.  It's hard to blog when you go to be at 9:30 every night!  But I will blog about them.. hopefully soon. :)

I've had a few issues with the pregnancy.  All is well but I've had to have a few sonograms to make sure.  Our sonogram person gives me pictures to take home.  Here's the first one, done at 7 weeks....

I love the arrow and the "baby."  This was done at 7 weeks.  Not much to see.

The next one was done at 14 weeks.  Just in case you can't make out what everything is, from left to right is the head, body/arms(hand by mouth- I told O the new baby was sucking its thumb like she does!), and legs.

It's amazing to me how wonderful God is.  In 7 short weeks my new baby can go from a dot to having a head, body, arms and hands, and legs and feet.  And God takes care of that baby even though I'm throwing up! :)  I can't wait to see what God has in store for this little one!