Weekend in Wichita

We took a quick trip to Wichita this weekend to see the family down there and had a blast. But before I talk about THAT, I need to mention that Grandparents Pontow were here Friday and Saturday and REALLY helped us out by babysitting for several hours on Saturday so I could attend a church meeting (while Steve worked) and so Steve and I could go see Batman on Imax. Steve and I rarely get to do anything together without the baby (not that we mind), and we really appreciated that G-ma and Papa were willing to watch Adele for a few hours! Thank you! (By the way, the movie is AWESOME. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it, and seeing it on Imax is worth the extra bucks!)

Anyway, Sunday we headed to Wichita to see family there and take a much-needed mini-break. Most of Steve's family lives there (his Dad and Raylene live in OKC), which includes his mom and Ted, his triplet siblings and all their kids. It's quite a group when everyone gets together! Unfortunately, Theresa's girls were sick, so they couldn't come over. But Jason and Angie (the other two of the triplets) and their significant others and kids all made it over. YAY!

We spent a few hours in Grandma and Grandpa VanHorn's pool and enjoyed a delicious supper complete with an early birthday cake for Steve! Monday was Steve's birthday and we went to the Sedgewick County Zoo and spent half the day there. I'd never been and the last time Steve was there was at least 25 years ago. It was a really nice zoo! Great exhibits, very clean and well-kept and CHEAP (thanks especially too some 1/2 price admission tix we got from the VanHorns). And since it was a Monday morning, it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. Adele seemed to enjoy the animals, although she did konk out about halfway through the morning. After the zoo we hit Pei Wei for birthday lunch with Steve's mom and were on the road back home.

Since we weren't able to take a real vacation this year, we've been relying on occasional long weekends to break up the summer. We camped earlier in the season and now we're wrapping up the summer with the zoo trip. Fun! I even remembered to take some photos during the weekend.

Oh! The other fun thing that happened was that Adele came THISCLOSE to walking! She's standing up on her own more and more now and occasionally she'll take a step (although sometimes she does more of a pivot move). I'm sure it's only a matter of weeks before she figures it all out. Eek! So, there's a short video of some small steps after the photos. Enjoy! Also, I put an album online in case you want to see more of the weekend. Click here for those.

(That's cousin McKenzi in the background...)