Exploring the Ozarks

As I've mentioned in the past, Megan's grandmother, Judy, lives at the Lake of the Ozarks.  We had an opportunity to get away this weekend for a visit.  This time, we went exploring at Ha Ha Tonka State Park.  We had a good time exploring the castle ruins and checking out the caves in the park.

Another new (to us) and cool attraction we checked out was Casa del Loco Winery.  We had some good pizza and great wine with an awesome view of the valley!

Snow Shoveling

Just got back from a trip to KC to a driveway full of snow.  Dad came over to help and Stella got all suited up and joined in.  I'll take all of the cheap labor I can get.

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.