Benich Family: Spring Break Fun (and yes, more soccer)!

We headed out of town right after the last day of school before Spring Break on Friday, March 25th. We drove to the Bloomington, Illinois area to have a delicious supper at Avanti's with a friend. We talked until it was really late, and then we crashed at a nearby hotel. The next morning we were back on the road, heading towards Branson, Missouri. Our original plans included us stopping in St. Louis and going up in The Arch. Unfortunately, those plans had to be changed due to the SNOWSTORM that was going on while we were going through St. Louis! UGH! What a way to start off our "spring" break!

It was a long drive, but we finally made it to our destination: The Welk Resort in Branson. It was still quite chilly, but at least we left the snow behind us! This is the building we were in:

And we remembered to take nice pictures of our room before we trashed it! LOL

It was a beautiful lodge, and it was hard to believe that we finally made it! Spring Break vacation, here we come!

Kyle's birthday was over the Spring Break, so he got a special "custom" car as one of his presents from Ridemakerz. It's like a Build-A-Bear store but for cars! He LOVED it. First, he picked out his basic car to start with:

Then he got to pick from a whole bunch of wheels, running lights, and tons of other car parts I don't know to customize his car however he liked. Then he got to put it together!

Success! One car custom built and created by and for Kyle.

He even put a remote in it and was playing with it right at the lodge:

He is so proud of his car!

The lodge had a great swimming pool, hot tub and even a nice-sized slide. We did a lot of swimming while we were on vacation.

We took it easy and had nice lazy, sleep-in days a lot, but we made sure to have some fun too. One of the kids' favorite things to do was play laser tag.

Dee was the reigning champion every time; she was able to talk Kyle into ganging up on Kenny each and every time. Kenny said he was always getting one of them in his sights to take down, while the other one was shooting him in the back. :-) They also had a nice glow-in-the-dark miniature golf area there as well.

We even tried zip lining for the first time. We had all gone parasailing before in Florida, and everyone thought that zip lining sounded just as fun.

We all did our little "practice" strip where they show you the basics of zip lining.

Then we were good to go; it was time to climb up and do our first zip line.

And here we had a little bit of a snag, after getting up that high... Kyle was not so sure that he really wanted to zip line anymore. Dee went, then I did, then Kenny... and they could not talk Kyle into trying. So... since it was a lot more effort than I had planned on, and I was already concerned that I wasn't going to physically be able to finish the entire track... Kyle and I called it quits. They were very nice about it; and they even let Delaney and Ken come back another day to "make up" our unused tickets. I was able to take the good camera and get some nice shots of them ziplining:

They had to cross some bridges to get to other towers, and they even zip lined together once. I guess the wind was blowing against them, and the lighter people weren't getting all the way across. With Kenny's added weight, Delaney was able to zip across with no problem.

Unfortunately, the week had to come to an end. It was time to pack up and head back home. Fortunately, though, the weather was MUCH improved! We were able to visit The Arch on our way back home. Look at the difference in the St. Louis weather, compared to our earlier snowstorm!

This was a new experience for everyone, as Kenny and I had never visited The Arch before either. After waiting in a long line to get our tickets (I recommend purchasing them online in advance!), we got their package to see the documentary on how The Arch was made as well as a ride to the top. The documentary was really neat; it was amazing to see how it was made. Then we got in another long line to wait for our ride up.