Museums, boat rides, dinner and loads of FUN!

On, thursday we went to the Ripley's Believe it or Not! It quickly became one of the boy's fav places in Branson. It's interactive and has lots of cool things to inside.

And our tour begins . . .

Noah in a deep sea diving helmet.

Look at Eli's legs.

Car stamps.

And for my Dad- military stamps.

The tallest man.

Maybe Eli should give some of his legs to Lucas.

Largest ball of yarn.

These were carved out of camel bones. The detail is amazing!

The boys were excited for our dinner on the Showboat!

We were ready for food and entertainment!

The band was great, but the featured act was a Todd Oliver and his dog. He uses dogs in his ventriloquist act instead of puppets. And it was soooo funny!

Here are the boys w/Irving the featured dog in the show!

After the boat ride, it was POURING rain- so we decided to go to the last museum that was on our "HAVE TO" list. It was the Dinosaur museum. And it only gets 1 thumb up and that was from Lucas.

It took maybe 30-35min to go through the whole thing and that was w/stopping to play on the computers and watching part of a video. There is also a haunted house in the same building-so you could hear other people screaming. Considering it cost nearly as much as the Titanic museum- I thought our money had not been well spent- but lesson learned.

Believe it or Not!

This is a video that the boys wanted me to take in the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum. It might be hard to tell but the ball appears to roll uphill.

Marvel Cave

So, on Wed-when we were at Silver Dollar City-we did the tour of Marvel Cave. It was fun, even though we did have to wait about 30min for the tour to start. Since, I took soooo many pics- I decided to make this an individual post.
Yet again waiting in line in Silver Dollar City . . .

Stairs . . . stairs and even more stairs . . .

This is an opening at the top of the cave.

Further down even more stairs- here is another pic of the opening.

Here is a waterfall we saw. In blue and green.

Lucas was good at getting through the tight places of the cave-so I had to play catch up. Not to mention-no one wanted to wait while I was taking pics.

This is a pic of the mystic river room. Water was still coming down from the rain on monday night.

I can't remember the names of these but they were beautiful.

This is the ceiling of one of the last rooms. The boys and I really enjoyed the tour. If you haven't done it-we gave it 4 thumbs up!

Silver Dollar City . . .

We went to Silver Dollar City on Wed and Fri- gotta love buy one day tickets-get a 2nd free! But boy was it HOT! Noah said it was better than World's of Fun, and Lucas thought it was like World's of Fun and Ocean's of Fun combined.

Eli didn't want his pic taken-he was hot, tired and ready to find some AC.

The boys couldn't get this "thing" to move, but they sure tried. Lol!

Noah and Lucas made a good team on this ride!

This was like Snoopy's playhouse on steriods! The kids spent nearly 45min playing in there!

This was the new ride for 2010-after about an hour wait and the 3rd time they said they might have it fixed in 15-20min-we decided it was a lost cause and went onto another part of the park! I don't think they ever got it up and running again that day :(

It would have cooled us off too!

The boys really enjoyed the shopping and demo's. Lucas was really fascinated by the blacksmith. We also did the free cave tour-but since I took so many pics of that, I figure I will make that its own post. Come back to ckeck it out!

Ride the ducks . . .

So, we ended our first day by riding the ducks. It was a great way to end the day.
The scenery . . .

Table Rock Lake . . .

Showboat Branson Belle-where we had dinner on Thursday . . .

The boys each took turns driving the duck when it was on the lake . . .

Lucas . . .

Eli . . .

Noah . . .

The fish hatchery and the dam . . .

Lake Taneycomo, since it is fed by the bottom of Table Rock Lake- it creates a fog since the water is around 45 degrees. We visited the lake again later in the week.

Our feet were definately in need of a break by the end of the day. The kids were definately loving Branson!

Hollywood Wax Museum, Mirror Maze and more . . .

One of Eli and Lucas' fav place was the Hollywood Wax Museum. The boys had a great time!
Both Eli and Lucas both wanted pics w/Tom Hanks!

Here are a few of our fav ones . . .

On to the maze of mirrors . . . .

The funny mirrors were quite entertaining . . .

Eli was the hero of the day.

After the wax museum-we went to the Titanic museum. Unfortunately, you are not able to take pics inside the titanic museum-so I tacked this pick onto this post. The boys all said that this was one of their fav. I think it remained Noah's fav all week. He had done a unit on the titanic last year, so he enjoyed testing his memory and sharing info w/all of us. It was interactive and a great museum. I will end this post now. Come back to see how we ended our first full day in Branson.