We planned a trip in October to reconnect with family on my dad's side, and we stayed for the rest of the week touring different cities in Missouri. We had a fantastic time, and felt that we could've stayed longer to experience more of the cool attractions there!
My parents joined us for the first three days of our trip in Kansas City. My dad's older sister, Aunt Wanda, lives there with her husband, Uncle Larry, and their extended family. They have three children, Anne, Angela, and Andrew, who all live within a few minutes of each other. Anne and Angela have grown children, and many of them also still live in Kansas City. It was a wonderful family reunion with relatives that we haven't seen in many years.
My dad with his sister, Wanda
Our first evening in Kansas City (Saturday), we had a lovely dinner at my cousin Angela's house.
Around the table left to right: Cousin Angela, my mom and dad, Uncle Larry, Aunt Wanda, Cousin Anne, and her husband, Allan.
Around the table left to right: Jackson (Angela's son), Cousin Andrew, Jillian (Angela's daughter), Dan, me, and Steve (Angela's husband).
On Sunday, even more family was able to come to Aunt Wanda's house for lunch and cousin Anne's house for dinner and dessert. It was so nice to catch up with everyone and see where they live.
All the Kansas City family
My mom and dad with Aunt Wanda and Uncle Larry
Left to right: Angela, Aunt Wanda, my mom, me, and Jillian
The most fun part of the family time for Emma and Hallie was Angela's basement! She had transformed it into "Tiny Town" for her young grandkids. It was like visiting a children's museum with different themed play areas!
There was a house, grocery store, bakery, post office, beauty salon, fire station, garden, doctor's office, and ice cream stand. Every section was filled with themed toys and details - it was simply amazing!
Hallie gave me a makeover at the salon
Then Dan got into the wigs and transformed into a rockstar! Ha!
Dan and I made a point to find some delicious Kansas City BBQ
We also took the family on a driving tour of the city one morning, and stopped at downtown Roanoke Park so the girls could play.
On Monday morning, we dropped my parents off at Uncle Larry and Aunt Wanda's house, so they could visit for a few more hours before flying home. Our family began our drive to Branson, MO.
It was a beautiful drive, especially as we got closer to Branson, which was nestled in the Ozark Mountains. I didn't take photos while we drove, but we saw beauty like this stock photo.
Our first stop in Branson was Silver Dollar City, a western-themed amusement park.
We rode all the major rides and rollercoasters at least once.
Since it was fall, they had decorated the park with "Pumpkins in the City."
Something exciting happened when we ate dinner - Hallie lost a front tooth!
She's posing next to the perfect dentist sign - haha!
Emma took one look at this rollercoaster, Outlaw Run, and said we shouldn't go on it because 1) look at that crazy drop, and 2) she heard the riders screaming in terror. Did we listen to her? Noooo. Did we pay for it? Yeessss. It was an intense, jerky ride that beat Dan and I up and terrified Hallie, who didn't feel secure when the coaster flipped upside down.
We were chatting with a kid about his favorite rides, and he said that "Fire in the Hole" was the best ride in the park. That child was very strange. The indoor mine car ride took us through dark tunnels, following the story of the "Baldknobbers," a group of masked vigilantes who reportedly burned down a nearby town in the Ozarks. It had weird and fiery scenes with mannequins, showing the Baldknobbers setting fire to buildings, the townspeople panicking, and the authorities chasing the Baldknobbers and hanging them for their crimes. Isn't that charming...
Hallie said she wanted to ride it again and she'd just close her eyes during the scary parts. The rest of us were ready to put that creepy Ozark mountain story behind us.
Hallie was just an inch too short to ride this Time Traveler ride, so Dan and Emma rode it on their own. Emma LOVED it, and convinced me to ride it with her near the end of the night. I really need to Google descriptions of rides before I agree to get on them. It's one of the fastest and longest spinning roller coasters in America. Spinning rides and I don't get along in my middle age. It was a super cool ride, but I was too nauseas afterwards to ride anything else!
Hallie was pretty worn out by then, too, She and I got some ice cream and cotton candy, and visited the carousel while Dan and Emma hit a couple more rides. There was no line for the carousel, and the attendant let her ride it 5 times in a row! She chose a different animal to ride each time and loved it.
Eventually Dan and Emma caught up to us and joined Hallie for a ride.
We enjoyed our time at Silver Dollar City!
On Tuesday morning, we had breakfast at our hotel, and discovered this sweet little lady who lived there.
Her name is Lily, and she LOVED Hallie and Emma!
Since we didn't get enough rollercoasters the day before, we headed straight to Copperhead Mountain Coaster.
It was a fun and fast coaster on a winding track down a mountain. The car had a brake you could use to control your speed, but the girls made us swear not to use it.
We needed to do a load of laundry that afternoon, and Dan volunteered to sit at the laundromat to wash our clothes while I took Emma and Hallie to a cat cafe.
I'd never heard of a cat cafe until recently, but suddenly they seem to be popping up everywhere. The girls saw a billboard in Branson for Mochas and Meows Cafe, and insisted that going to a cat cafe was on their "bucket list."
It has an area that serves coffee drinks, and a separate room where (for a fee) you could spend time with the cats. There were at least 25 cats in that room!
Emma immediately found the calm cats who wanted to be petted. She has a good instinct for animals.
I brought a book, and one of the cats walked right over and claimed it.
She and Emma bonded over their love of books.
Hallie was attracted to the playful cats, and she made friends with almost every single cat in the room. Especially this energetic kitten who wanted to chase toys.
Unfortunately, she tried to pet a cat who was busy cleaning himself, and got a scratch across the forehead. It was a good thing that Dan wasn't there because he would have kicked that cat across the room!
Back at the hotel, Lily comforted Hallie by letting her give her belly rubs.
That evening, we went to Dolly Parton's Stampede dinner show.
We went early so we could see the horses up close before they performed. Each horse had a plaque with its name and a description of its personality. Dan is posing with Danny the horse.
The meal was good. Servers brought out several dinner courses throughout the show. We had soup and rolls, a Cornish hen, slices of ham, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and an apple turnover for dessert.
The show was based on settlers coming to the West, and the performers sometimes sang and danced while they told parts of the story.
They had impressive trick riding
And they included different animals in the show, like buffalo, cattle, dogs, and piglets.
We all really enjoyed the show!
After the show was over, we walked down to meet some of the riders and their horses.
Dan met the rodeo "clown," who played a goofy role during the show. He put his very sweaty hat on Dan's head for their photo.
Our last stop for the day was Branson Landing, an outdoor mall with shops, restaurants, and this beautiful fountain that danced to music and lights.
We didn't have any daytime plans on Wednesday, so we drove down the Branson strip and gave the girls some options to choose from. They both voted on Fritz's Adventure Park.
It was an indoor gym with climbing structures, a multi-level ropes course, a laser maze, and a climbing wall. It was a great choice, and we had a blast!
Hallie's never loved heights, so I was worried that she'd freak out on the ropes course. They strapped us into harnesses that would catch us if we fell, and that's all she needed. She was fearless!
Emma has no fear of heights and loves to climb things, so she absolutely loved it.
Dan's up on the 3rd and most challenging level of the ropes course. We took a break in their cafe to eat pizza and drank lots of water, then we moved on to the climbing wall.
There were three climbing routes, ranging from easy to difficult. The girls were too short to reach the handholds, but there was a ladder they could easily climb and repel from.
Emma banged her leg against the ladder her first time repelling, but it didn't stop her from trying it again several times.
I made it up to the top of the easy route, but didn't want to do it again. Clinging to the side of walls isn't really my thing, and I was pretty shaky by the end of it.
Dan did all three climbing routes successfully.
Fritz's also had some cool climbing areas
Dan and I followed them through these metal tubes. Barely. It was a tight fit for us!
They had a few train cars that you could go inside
And lots of tubes and slides
Needless to say, after spending five hours at Fritz's, we needed a naptime!
After we rested at the hotel, we had just enough time for a round of mini golf at Dinosaur Canyon Golf Course.
That evening, we saw "Queen Esther" at Sight and Sound Theater
Outside the beautiful theater
The show was amazing, and we got a photo with Mordecai, Esther's cousin, after the show.
On Thursday morning, we checked out of our hotel and drove to St. Louis.
The girls each got a sensory bin with toys to play with on the road trip.
Emma's river, grass, and animals
Hallie's wildlife scene
Our first stop in St. Louis was the Gateway Arch. Unfortunately, they had sold out of tickets that day to ride to the top, but we enjoyed touring the museum under the base of the Arch for about an hour. We bought tickets to ride to the top the next evening.
There were lots of hands-on exhibits and touch screens to interest kids.
After the Arch Museum, we drove to the Enterprise Center to watch the St. Louis Blues play the Arizona Coyotes.
Emma and Hallie enjoyed watching the game some of the time, but they kept asking me to take pictures of them blowing bubbles.
Which turned into them stealing my phone to take 100 silly selfies
After a while, the dude sitting behind them noticed what they were doing
The girls were too preoccupied to see that he was photobombing them.
I think he had just as much fun as they did.
We took a bathroom break and I was in the stall with Hallie when this happened. Yes, I took a picture of her while she was on the toilet, and I'm not sorry. The stall walls were full of static and Hallie's hair was long enough to cling to both sides. It was hilarious!
The Blues' mascot came to our section to get us cheering.
Dan has a goal of seeing a game at every NHL arena, and it's been years since we've visited a new one. That's one more checked off the list!
On Friday, we checked out St. Louis' City Museum. We had heard about it from Dan's sister and read about it online, but nothing really prepared us for it. It's a multi-story indoor and outdoor children's museum with climbing structures made of repurposed municipal equipment and materials. It was incredible!
As soon as we walked in, we saw a stairwell carved in a tree, a climbing tunnel made of metal bars, and a giant whale you could walk through.
One of the girls’ favorite sections in the museum was the caverns. There are hundreds of caves in Missouri (they’re so common, they even use some of them as business warehouses and office space!), and I had thought about taking a cavern tour during our week there.
The City Museum cavern was so much better, since we could actually crawl around and explore in a way that wouldn't be allowed at a tourist attraction cavern.
Dan and I were nervous about losing the girls in the museum, since there were so many tunnels they could disappear into.
Sometimes you didn't know where they'd pop back up again!
The structures were so unique, like this "stairwell" made of metal and tree branches.
None of the museum was officially off limits to adults, but there were certainly parts that only kids would fit into!
After playing in the lower levels of the indoor museum, we went outside to climb the outdoor museum structures.
You could climb up to that plane and get inside it. You can see the tiny people climbing in and out from the wings.
Hallie flying the junkyard plane.
Dan and Hallie climbed to the very top of the castle turret.
We went back inside to eat a horrible, burnt pizza from their cafe, then Dan and Emma wanted to go down the 10-story slide. Hallie doesn't love slides, so we looked for other things to do.
And we found axolotls!!!
Oh my goodness, they were so cute, like pink tadpoles with smiling faces!
We also found their arts & crafts room, and it was nice to sit and rest a while.
I suggested to Hallie that we hang our pictures on the art wall so we wouldn't have to carry them in the museum.
But Hallie was determined to keep the pictures, so she held onto them somehow while she crawled around.
We found the museum's giant underpants hanging behind a festive skeleton coffin. They were filthy and big enough for our whole family to wear them. But we decided not to.
"Semper Ubi...Sub Ubi" in Latin means "Always Wear Underwear!"
Before we left the museum, Hallie and Emma took a wild ride on top of a fire truck. It's hard to see, but there was a 4-year-old inside "driving" the truck.
After the City Museum, we finally got to go to the top of the Arch!
We squeezed into the capsule-shaped elevator car.
The St. Louis Arch is one of my most vivid childhood vacation memories. I remember peering out of the tiny windows at the city below.
The view of the city from the Arch.
Afterwards, we made a stop at Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, and went souvenir shopping.
On Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel and had one hour to walk around the St. Louis Zoo.
The zoo's visitor's center was full of dangerous creatures hanging from the ceiling. Emma stopped to tie her shoelace before she realized she was about to become fish food!
We only had time to walk around one section of the zoo, but we saw lots of animals.
The most notable was this hippo, who was sleeping against the window.
We got a kick out of watching his fish friends "kiss" him. They were actually eating parasites off his skin, but it looked sweet.
After our short time at the zoo, we rushed to the airport and flew home. Taking a week off from school and work meant that we had lots to catch up on the following week. But it was absolutely worth it - we had the best vacation!
