Back From Branson

Mike and I had a wonderful weekend away in Branson. We both really needed the break but looking at our schedules over the next few weeks, I think we should have stayed in Branson. Things are going to be crazy around here, but at least we won't be bored.

I want to thank everyone who helped us out to have a very affordable weekend away. As you know, we are still on a very tight budget since Mike hasn't found a full time job yet. I wanted to give you a breakdown of our weekend to show you it isn't impossible to get away while on a budget:

- used hotel points for a nice hotel - breakfast was included
- by showing our stimulus rebate at the Chamber, we received two tickets to 50's at the Hop
- won tickets to the Titanic museum off ozarksmoms.com
- Yakov was taping the pilot to his new talk show so we volunteered to be part of the audience to see a show for free
- various people gave us gift certficiates for food
- almost all of our shopping was paid for by the insurance company since shoes, towels, rugs, etc were ruined in the flood

The most expensive part of our trip was gas but we are ok with that since everything else was virtually free. If you are wanting to get away too, I suggest surfing the internet to see what free things you can find in the area. If we had time, we would have walked the Branson Landing at night and enjoyed the show at the fountains. It wouldn't have cost us a thing but would have been fun and relaxing.

On another note, I mentioned the flood earlier. We finally found someone to fix the dry wall last week. His bid was way too high but we have been searching for 2 1/2 months with no luck so we took it. Our ceiling is now fixed so our next project is to pain the majority of our house. We are busy the next two weekends so that will have to wait. In the meantime, my basement is kind of lonely. We haven't had a chance to put any of the lights back up and all of the furniture and pictures have been cleared out. There is no use putting it back because it will have to be moved for painting and fixing the carpet. My hopes are to have my house put back together by Sept 1. Anyone want to come help us paint?