A change in the weather...

and we've got rain. Hard rain. Pouring rain. But it looks good for the weekend, so we'll just hope for the best. Our minivacation to Branson is planned, we're leaving in the morning in a minivan, the 6 of us, and our first stop is Adrian, Missouri, where Joe works as a police officer. Then it's straight on through until we get to Ozark, Missouri, south of Springfield, where we're stopping for dinner at Lambert's, home of the throwed rolls. :) First stop on Saturday is Silver Dollar City, and Sunday we've planned to stroll around Branson and see the sights.

Tuesday, Arnt, Eirik and I took off after naptime, and spent some time shopping and playing, just the three of us. We stopped for a snack at Cracker Barrel, where we split our first dinner between the three of us. Then we went to Target, and bought Eirik some clothes, and then to the Independence Center, and shopped a bit there, ate some ice cream at Dairy Queen, and played at the play area (rode the carousel, etc). Then we headed over to my favorite restaurant, Smokehouse BBQ, for the much anticipated famous Kansas City BBQ! DEEEELICIOUS! Eirik LOVED the bbq baked beans. For those of you who like BBQ, this is a MUST! For those of you that don't, I pity you. :P Anwyay..... :)

Yesterday, Eirik FINALLY slept in until 8am, so we just enjoyed that. Got up, and I stayed with the boys while Joe and Arnt took Cinda, Joe's german shepard, for a morning run. Then we loaded up the boys and headed out to Taco Bell for some lunch, nothing there looked good to Eirik though, and then headed to Eirik's favorite place here, the PARK! I walked 3 laps while the boys played. The weather was sunny and wonderful! Then back home for Eirik's nap, where I watched Grey's Anatomy that Nicole had Tivo'd from last week, and then we packed up and headed over to Andi's house for the evening. On the way, we passed a billboard off of I-70 and Adam's Diary Parkway, showing one local man's sentiments of the state of our nation. It seems there are a large number of American's also sharing these sentiments...

At Andi's, we ate a little food, then relaxed while the kids played. Enjoyed their company, then went to bed. They headed off to work in the morning, so we headed out after a small breakfast of pancakes, and stopped by Andi's work to get some maps for Branson. Headed up to the Independence Square, and stopped in Scandinavia Place, a little boutique that sells imported items and candies from Scandinavia and parts of Western Europe. The lady that owns it, Nina Anders, is icelandic, and Arnt got to know her when he was an AFS student 15 years ago. She's like family, so we stopped in to see her. She wasn't in, so we'll be stopping back by in a few days. It's Arnt's birthday today, I let him choose the filler entertainment while waiting for 11:30am to arrive, when we were going to head to Ernie's in Sugar Creek, to meet my coworkers from when I worked at the Examiner back in the day. So we stopped at Cable-Dahmer Chevrolet to admire the new Camaros. Eirik also thought they were pretty cool. Then it was off to Ernies, for a chicken fingers dinner - yummy! Home again, home again ... back to Joe's, where Eirik has been wanting to go for 2 days! Nap time, and blog update time. Posting some pics for your enjoyment. Branson tomorrow!

Tonight we're celebrating Arnt's birthday at an undisclosed location - will update tomorrow, so I don't ruin the surprise! :P