Science Center and Muster

Last Sunday was April, 21. And for Aggies everywhere, this is a special day to remember the lives of fellow Aggies lost this year and remember the good days in Aggieland. Normally, we try to attend a Muster event in the area (and in Oshkosh we even coordinated the Muster gathering).   This year, Justin was contacted by a friend of his from college who had just recently moved to Illinois. So, we decided to meet her in St. Louis for a Muster dinner.

We decided to go to St. Louis in the early afternoon to check out the St. Louis Science Center. When we arrived we first headed over the sky walk. Both boys were pretty impressed by the windows in the floor.


The first area we stopped at was the flight simulator. Justin helped Garytt fly a plane.


Based on the type of flying Garytt enjoys, he might consider being a part of the stunt show at EAA in a few years...ha!


Westyn played with a toy plane and runway while we waited for Garytt and Justin.  (By the way, this was not nearly as entertaining.)


After that, we stopped by an exhibit about bridges. Garytt enjoyed putting the bridges up and then letting the cars fall in the the "river."


After that we headed to the "Discovery Room." This was part of the science center that you had to have tickets for (the science center itself is free). We asked what all was in the discovery room before we bought the tickets. From the description on their website and what we were told, I really thought it was going to have directed science experiments that were geared for ages 3-7. In actuality, it is essentially a big play room with toys at their level.

With that said, I wouldn't have been thrilled if we had actually had to pay to get in. Fortunately, since we have a membership to Science City in Kansas City, this was part of the reciprocal program benefit. So, for a free thing, we thought the Discovery Room was great because it was contained and we could monitor the boys without having to infringe on their discovery.


Westyn's favorite thing in the Discovery Room was the watching the balls go down the tower. He did that for a long time! (Do you hear the loud bells in the background...yeah, that's Garytt...he loved the bells...I'm just not sure everyone else did...ha!)
Garytt did a lot more moving around to different stations. He was pretty impressed with the magnetic doll (a novelty in a house with all boys). He was proud of himself when he made a police/fireman super hero. And, truly, policeman and firemen are super heroes!


So, apparently, I didn't plan this too well because my camera battery was about to die right as we were leaving the Discovery Room. I didn't take pictures during the rest of our time at the science center because I wanted to save enough battery to get a picture of our Muster group. We looked around the science center for a bit longer. Then it was clearly time to take a break. The boys were asleep almost instantly in the car. So, we drove around for about 45 minutes before meeting Justin's friend for dinner. 

We enjoyed chatting about the good 'ol days at A&M and our server was kind enough to take a picture for us. This is the smallest Muster I have ever been to but it's good to keep the tradition alive.


"Softly call the Muster, let comrade answer 'Here'..."

MU Vet School Open House

This past Saturday was the Vet School Open House at MU. Although you would think that Justin would have the inside scoop on things on campus, I actually heard about this event while talking to some of the moms at The Little Gym during Garytt's class.

We headed over to the vet school around 9am. We parked and took a tractor ride up to the top of the hill. Of course, Garytt really loved that but there really wasn't a good way to get a picture...bummer! Once we were at the top, the tractor let us off but we really didn't know where to go since we hadn't really been to this part of campus before. So, we saw a tent and headed over there. It was a showcase of some exotic birds. They had an owl and a vulture. Justin had to hold Garytt up so he could see.


From there, we headed towards the large animal area. As you can see, Garytt was wearing his cowboy hat...quite a few people commented about his hat.

When we got to the large animal area, there was a farrier outside doing demonstrations. We stood there to watch for a bit but the poor guy was having trouble with his tongs, so the demonstration was a bit of a flop.

So, we decided to head inside. Our first stop was Tess, the dairy cow. Garytt was more interested in just petting her rather than milking her.

Next, we moved on to the highlight of the day for Justin...the fistulated cow. He was really excited about it! He showed Garytt what to do...but Garytt really wasn't too sure about the whole thing. Later he told me that the cow had grass and poop in there...well, he kind of got it. I guess you can't blame him for not wanting to put his hand in with grass and poop...ha!

Next, we moved on to the goats, where Westyn got in on the action too.

Garytt even took a moment to look at the poster for Small Ruminants...I'm sure he found it very informative.

Next up were the sheep. Both boys were trying to get them to come over to see them.

We moved over to the pigs. There was a cage of big pigs that were pretty boring because they were just sleeping and a cage with some baby pigs that they were letting the kids pet. Of course, that was the more popular pig cage.

  We took a quick video of Garytt petting the baby pig.
 
  On a side note, Westyn was so excited about the animals, he tried to climb into every single cage!  He is a wild man and has no fear of the animals at all!
 
  Of course, no visit to a large animal area would be complete without visiting the horses.

  From there, we walked over to one of the other vet buildings. It was a slow walk since Westyn was actually walking, too.

  We found the pathology demonstration, which had no line at all. (I really don't understand why people don't get as excited as I do about microscopy...come on...it's fun!) First, the boys looked at the mice they had on display.

  Then we went to see the microscope stations they had set up. They had a little worksheet available. The kids were supposed to look in the microscope and match the station to the picture. I think that Garytt had a hard time seeing in the microscopes because he didn't match any of the stations correctly...ha! I guess I'll have to work with him on those microscopy skills.

  The next room was the reptile room, which had a HUGE line. So, we opted to skip that room. (I wasn't too sad about that.)

We moved on to the rabbit room. Garytt was allowed to go inside the cage to pet the rabbit.

  After that we decided it was about time to take a lunch break. So, we headed home. Westyn said "Bye! Bye!" to the animals.