What Can I Say about Wichita?

It's flat. There are lots of tornados. It's not quite as conservative as Missouri, but conservative nonetheless. And a little bit country.

We stayed in a totally retro Best Western that had a huge courtyard with big screen TV, indoor pool, miniature golf, and video games. The boys were beside themselves with joy. The pool stayed open til 11:00pm and we were there at closing each night.

The official Oster Family Reunion was held in a suburban church. When we told Satchel he was very much, "Ew, I don't like churches!" which was kind of funny since he's never really been in one and as far as I could tell had always sort of liked them from the outside. I too was a bit apprehensive about spending a couple of days in a church, but I kept my mouth shut about it. (I may have let out one tiny whine.)

The church turned out to be pretty nice--very new and clean and good air conditioning. We were basically the only people around (on a Friday and Saturday) and had the social hall all to ourselves. It was stocked with a smorgasbord of food and canned beverages and candy and cookies and toys and Osters! Right outside was a basketball court and a pretty extensive playground. The monkeys were in heaven--sneaking cookies and canned drinks and running inside and out with their cousins. Warren's oldest brother has two girls--Alix (10) and Sidney (5)--who along with Warren's sister's daughter--Natalie (6)--played "Mommy" to Jiro and Satchel pretty much the whole weekend. (Warren and I didn't even have to monitor the monkeys in the pool thanks to the cousins' close watch over them.) It kind of made me see how people could actually have more than two kids.

Warren and I had done some research before arriving and had a water park and a skateboard park already scoped out. The waterpark was pretty standard with slides and a lazy river and a sprayground. The boys were both too little to do anything super crazy so we mainly stuck to the sprayground and swimming pool. It was a brand new park though which was nice--it even had family changing rooms. (Something Germantown Civic Center desperately needs.) Best of all it only cost $5 to get in.

The skateboard park was probably the coolest thing ever. It was built under an overpass and was outdoors (obviously) and free to whoever wanted to use it. We were there on a Sunday afternoon and it was full of bikers and skateboarders of all ages. Several families were there and it seemed very clean and wholesome. I saw a few teenage types smoking but in general it was cool as hell. There was a sign posted (that I couldn't get a good picture of) that read (I'm paraphrasing) "This park exists thanks to the efforts of Wichita's youth who were dedicated to seeing it built. The City of Wichita supports its youth and their desire to participate in one of the country's largest growing sports." I swear I got a little teary reading that! I so wish we had something like that here. The SPOM (Skatepark of Memphis) is pretty cool but it's in Cordova and you have to be at least 6 or 7 to skate. This park had several tots skating that were just badass. Satchel jumped right in and started practicing the moves he's been honing in our livingroom. Warren quickly had a little posse of pre-teen skateboarders following him around. (They were awed by his old skool skateboard!)





Little Jiro was sound asleep in the car, so I had to monitor him and only had a few minutes to sneak away and take pictures. Had he been awake, the two of us would have been all over it. I think I need to call the Mayor and see if we can get one here!

Another cool place to visit is the Exploration Place. (It's affiliated with the Children's Museum network so we got in free with our membership.) It has a really cool kids area, all kinds of sciencey stuff to check out, a weather station where a real weatherman does a live broadcast in the studio while you watch, a paper airplane testing center, and best of all a row of massage chairs overlooking the river where parents can hang out!

I definitely wouldn't want to live in Wichita, but it was a pretty nice place to visit for the weekend.