No Saturday post this week since I fell asleep with the baby around 8. She had a rough time falling asleep. I think she is teething.
Given that we went to Palm Sunday Mass on Saturday evening, it seems kind of fitting to write about it on Sunday anyway.
Craft Project
Since mini-golf place didn’t open until 10, we had a bit of time to spend in the morning. We decided to visit Micheals where they had shirts on sale for $2 each and my mom had a coupon for 60% off full priced items such as fabric markers.
Older son picked a red shirt, older daughter picked a white shirt and 3 year old picked neon green. They did not have any shirts the baby’s size, so she doesn’t have a DIY Branson souvenir shirt.
Mini-Golf
We then went to Dinosaur Canyon Mini Golf shortly after it opened. It was so much fun, even though the volcano was not emitting fire that early in the morning. The 3 big kids kept ahead of us, while Mom and I attempted to play keeping score. This was pretty tricky with the toddler helping.
She took great joy in carrying her own tiny plastic club and pink ball for about the first 2 holes. She then decided she needed to chase down our balls after hit them and return them to our club. After the next few holes she noticed one of the dinosaurs and started growling at it.
After this we got better at tag teaming her. I would go ahead and do a hole, then coax her up to see me while mom played the previous hole. I did make one hole in one, which was pretty cool.
We did this through about hole 10, at which point she decided it was now her job to keep score. At this point she would take the paper and pencil and lay down on the concrete to color. Then she took to laying down at the beginning of each green, right where we needed to tee off.
By the 17th hole, she just started crying. Presumably tired as she had just walked herself around 17 holes. Mom and I almost gave it up and skipped hole 18, but we were tied and wanted to see who would win. We ended up tied.
Pasghetti’s Italian Restaurant
We decided to go to Pasghetti’s for lunch as the kids were very entertained by the humongous meatball out front. The food was good. Not outstanding, but good.
It was a lots of carbs though. I am really struggling with my internal dialogue regarding food right now. For the Bombshell program, we were encouraged to be eating in a specific distribution of macros (roughly 40% protein, 30% carb, 30% fat) in order to build muscle. Logging and eating that was did not feel very natural to me at all.
I had started to log my food a few weeks before the program started, but I was able to do it in kind of a detached / observational / non-judgmental kind of way. Somewhere in the last 5 weeks I lost that and it is irritating to realize that.
I read somewhere that we shouldn’t talk about carbs and macros with out kids. That is brings out a shaming mentality when you do or don’t eat in a particular way. I think maybe that applies to adults too.
I’ve downloaded an app called Food Diary where I can log what I eat and when, but it doesn’t show calories. I’m going to do that for a bit until I can re-read my Intuitive Eating book and see if I can’t figure out something less irritating.
After Lunch
After lunch, the baby and I got to take a nap while my mom took the big kids to swim. 3 year old just wanted because “he doesn’t do that anymore” (swimming). When they came back, they had a bit of kindle time and also worked on their shirt craft project.
Palm Sunday Mass
We decided to attend Saturday evening mass so that we could get up and leave earlier in the morning. Older daughter was tired and struggled. When younger daughter scratched her in a moment of curiosity, older daughter thumped her on the back. Poor baby.
So my mom ended up taking middle two kids to the vestibule for a break. Baby an older son both did really well in mass without the middle two pestering them.
I was pleased that older son followed along with the long gospel reading and seemed engaged in what we were doing, at least during that part. He really struggles with focus during mass.
Bedtime
After a quick dinner at Panda Express, we all went home and fell asleep pretty quickly. Well, the baby was teething and a little fussy, but otherwise easily.
Lack of Exercise
One of the things I’m disappointed in myself, is that I didn’t work out while on this trip. When I went to Dallas a few weeks ago, it was not difficult to talk myself into working out. That trip I didn’t have kids though, so I think I still struggled with working out when I could be spending time with the kids.
There appear to be some fitness classes (including dance fitness) at Big Cedar, so next time I come, I will plan some of those into my schedule. I think that was a big factor. I didn’t really have a good plan for when I would work out before I left. So lesson learned I suppose.
Sunday Morning
We got up, packed the van, took our requisite front porch picture and trundled off to IHOP for breakfast. It didn’t seem that busy yet when we got there, but our food took a long time. Kids each went to the bathroom at least 2x each, lol.
The baby was a hungry girl and probably ate 3 scrambled eggs between my plate and mom’s plate. Everyone else also pretty much cleaned their plates.
Butterfly Palace
6 year old could have spent all day with the Butterflies. She spent nearly 2 hours in just the butterfly room. Baby ended up taking a nap in the butterfly room. Younger two were pretty startled anytime a butterfly came close.
9 year old was mildly entertained briefly, but wanted to do all the other things too. He enjoyed the mirrow maze many times. He enjoyed the 3D video about the Monarch butterfly migration the most. He also enjoyed looking at the frogs.
After we finished up at the Butterfuly house, it was pushing noon so we set out toward Arkansas for our trip home.
Final Note
I’m a bit a tired now, so I’m going to pause and resume my accounting of our road trip home from Branson in tomorrow’s post.
Spoiler alert: We made it home safely.