The Howerter Family Homepage

Brandt was matched yesterday to University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, Kansas, for his residency in General Surgery.  I think they will be moving sometime in May.  Congratulations and good luck Brandt, Angel, Oliver and Weston.

This week was spring break for Elijah and Josiah, so I got to hang out with them some.  On Wednesday, I took them to Decatur to the Children’s Museum.  It was great because it was not crowded at all.  We wandered around for a bit, and then they settled at the water table.  We built walls to funnel the water into rapids and watched our various boats and rubber ducks manage the rapids.  Somehow Josiah’s sleeves just could not stay rolled up, so the arms of his sweater were drenched.  Josiah always “immerses” himself completely in his playing.  Elijah came up with the idea to make the rapids, and he was very impressed with the whirlpool that was created at one of the turns. 

Then we headed to Dairy Queen (Grandma’s favorite) for lunch.  Again, it was not crowded, so the boys were able to play in the play area with the few kids that were there.  We had ice cream for dessert and headed out for a sight seeing trip.  Elijah wanted to see where his dad went to school, so we drove to TJ where Ryan went to junior high.  Our good friends Jeff and Judy live right across the street from TJ, and Jeff happened to be home raking leaves.  We stopped to say hello, and I believe he was quite surprised to see us.  Then we drove by our old house, and I pointed out Ryan’s bedroom window.  I don’t know if they enjoyed this trip, but I did.

Yesterday, Sara and I took all 3 kids to St. Louis for a trip to the zoo.  The day promised to be beautiful with a forecast of sun and upper 60′s.  We stopped by to pick up Grandma Nell, and headed over.  When we got there, the traffic was backed up across 44.  This line of traffic was bumper to bumper.  Grandma Nell knew how to get to the zoo a different way, so we bypassed that line of traffic.  Or did we?  We met up with it again on the other side of the zoo, and it loomed up the hill heading around the back of the zoo.  After 15 to 20 minutes of sitting in traffic just to get halfway to the parking lot, we decided to give up.  Even if we ever got to the parking lot, who knew if there would be any places left to park.  We headed for the Science Center instead.  I think the kids had a good time there, but we were all disappointed.  Lily wanted to see the bears, and we could not find any at the Science Center.  We did see the dinosaur exhibit which had big, moving robot-like dinosaur replicas.  We will try the zoo again another time.