The Big Move

After many months of trying to sell our house, we received an offer over the holidays.  It was a very tough decision to leave Overland Park, where I lived for almost 10 years and we raised Stella for the first 1+ years of her life.  However, we want Stella to grow up around more of her family and have thus decided to move to our hometown of Wichita, KS.  Today, we are 100% out of our house and looking forward to this new chapter in our lives. We will dearly miss our great friends in the Overland Park area, but we are just down the road a few hours!

Santa's Helper Doing Laps

Apparently putting a Santa's hat on Stella encourages her to do laps around the house:

Christmas Card 2012

This year, Mom came up to visit with her new DSLR camera and took pictures of us at the surrounding parks at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  We got a ton of good pics (all that can be seen here).  It was difficult to decide between all of the pictures, but we ended up going with the 4 above.  My favorite though is this one (that's in the center of the card):

First Time at the Zoo

Previously, we had gone to Deanna Rose where Stella got to check out some animals, but today we took her to the actual Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita where she was exposed to a much larger variety of animals outside the barnyard persuasion.  She lasted a good few hours and seemed pretty interested in the animals, especially the tunnel in the rain forest where the fish swim right in front and over the top of you (top right).

Not Stella's 1 Year Birthday Party

Our good friends, the Leaches, had a 1 year birthday party for their daughter today.  They are always creative with their get-togethers and had a The Very Hunger Caterpillar themed party from the adult food to the wall decorations to the cupcake display.  We all enjoyed it.  Stella hasn't been around other kids her age as much as we'd like, so this was a great opportunity for her to socialize.  Above is Stella and the birthday girl post smash cake.

First Steps (oh, and Happy Halloween!)

I was expecting Megan to dress up Stella in a princess costume, so I was surprised when she get got her a gnome costume.  There must have been something magical about that gnome costume, because she took her first steps in it.  Right after we got her in the costume on Halloween day, we wanted to have a photo session.  She's been pretty good with standing up on her own, so I tried to pose her in a standing position.  As soon as I did, she took a couple of steps towards us while we were trying to snap a picture of her.  We were definitely taken back when she did this.  I wish I would have got it on video, but at least both of us were there to see it!

First Time at Deanna Rose

We had a lot going on this weekend.  My dad and I went to KU's homecoming game Saturday morning (we almost actually beat Texas), and then Megan and I went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert Saturday night.  My brother also came in town with my parents to go to the Chiefs vs. Raiders game on Sunday.  Since we had time to kill on Sunday, we decided to take Stella to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead.  I'd always wanted to take her and today seemed like a perfect time to.

I know Stella loves animals from our walks that we take to the nearby South Lake Park where she likes to watch the ducks and geese.  I think she has a thing for feathered creatures because she was fascinated by the birds at Deanna Rose too, including the bald eagle, owls, and turkeys there.

I don't think she was as interested when the goats molested me for the handful of food I had:

Mom was happy because she got to take the "fallish" photo with the girls that she wanted:

The last thing we did was check out this barn that had E.T. in it.  I have no idea how E.T. was affiliated with the barn, but I took a picture of Stella with the alien anyways:

We only got to scratch the surface in the ~1.5 hours we were there, but I think we will definitely be returning and spending more time on the stuff we know Stella will like.