The Steg Family Chronicles

NY, here she comes!

2012-01-11T13:23:00.008-05:00

I know I don't blog much anymore, but this bit of news is definitely blog-worthy! We just found out today that Hailey made it into the 5-week summer course at SAB (School of American Ballet) in NY! I am still shaking and trying to wipe the happy tears off my face :) Most of you probably don't know much about SAB since you aren't in the world of ballet, but it is the top ballet school in the country (in my humble opinion :)) and extremely hard to get into (only about 200 make it out of 3000 who audition). She had her audition last weekend in Indy (and was the youngest at age 11) and I think her words afterwards were, "I messed up a few times, but not to the point that I think I failed". Haha...such humble and honest words from our ballerina. AND...not only did she get into the program, but she was blessed with a wonderful scholarship package. AMAZING! We are so proud of her and so grateful for this gift God has given her. I cannot wait to see her face later on today when she gets the news. She will be on cloud nine! Finally some good ballet news after a disappointing end-of-2012! So, NY...get ready....our beautiful ballerina will be gracing you with her presence soon! Now I need to start preparing myself to have her out of my sight for FIVE whole weeks. Lord, help me! But, I am so excited for my girl and this amazing opportunity to travel and better learn the art of ballet she loves so much...and especially to learn the art of Balanchine ballet, which I know she will love dancing. Congrats, Hays!!!!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T20:33:00.002-05:00

Hope everyone had a blessed Christmas weekend. We sure did...wonderful and cherished family times (though I miss not going to FL in Dec. for the first time ever...love you and miss you, Gritz fam). Now Kev and I are basking in alone-ness as the kids are off to Nina and Poppy Stegs for 4 days. Time to put my feet up for a couple days as this will probably be my last break til summer! Hopefully in 2012 I'll get back to blogging :)

Hailey's Nutcracker Weekend...Live Feed!

2011-12-02T12:45:00.007-05:00

Dear Friends & Family,

I know so many of you are wonderful supporters of Hailey and her ballet "career" :)...so I wanted to let you know that she'll be dancing in the Nutcracker THIS Weekend-- Friday, Saturday and Sunday (EST) and it will again be featured on a live feed over the internet. So those of you who are far away or would rather enjoy watching from the comforts of home (for free!) and would like to see her dance will be able to do that yet again. I have only watched the live feed once, but I do believe you can make out most people on the stage (though they don't zoom in much). Hailey will be a party girl again in the first act (Party Scene) and will also be a Russian Trepak (on pointe) in the second act (Land of Sweets). She is in all 4 performances (8pm on Friday and Saturday night and 2pm on Saturday and Sunday afternoon). She enters through the door on the right of the stage this year as a party girl and will be initially wearing a blue bonnet/shawl and muff...then she'll be in a light pink/white party dress like most of the other girls (she is the tallest of the girls). And then she will be one of 4 Trepak girls (but it might be harder to see her there since her hair will be in a bun and they are all dark-haired girls)...she is on the far left most of the time and comes right after the Chinese dance (yellow/red outfits). If you blink you might miss her in this...it's a very quick song (I'm sure you will recognize it...it's one I danced in years ago :)) and I believe she only dances for like 30 seconds (but she is marvelous on pointe and the youngest to ever do this part at age 11). She will also be in the finale on the far left.

Thanks to all of you who will be watching and thinking of her this weekend...and for those who have been saying little prayers for us along the way. Many of you know what an emotional two months it's been with the disappointment of not getting the lead. She has been very gracious and mature about it all. But, it's still a shame to not see her as Clara as I know she would have been an amazing one. She really is a most gifted and talented ballerina. We are certain God will open other doors for her!

Thank you all for your love and support always and special thanks to all who are going to the performances this weekend. Have a blessed holiday season!

Sincerely,
Kelly :)

http://music.indiana.edu/iumusiclive/streaming/

Below are some pics of our beautiful "Party Girl" and "Trepak" :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T08:36:00.003-05:00

Gobble, Gobble to all our wonderful family and friends in (and out!) of the country :) We hope you are sitting around a table today with family and/or friends and thanking the good Lord for the many blessings He's showered upon you. Even though we've had a challenging few months we are so grateful for what we do have. We know we are truly blessed. Hope you all are having a blessed Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful pre-Thanksgiving last night with our Best Buds and now it's off to see the Steg fam....and then tomorrow we get to see our Awesome FL Nina! Lots to look forward to and be thankful for.

Thinking of you, Mom! :)

2011-11-15T15:28:00.004-05:00

Just saying a little prayer today for my dear ol' Mom in FL as she is undergoing surgery (cryoablation) to hopefully fix her atrial fibrillation. We are anxious to have her heart beating normally again and praying she is up on her feet again soon so she can visit us next week! Love you, Mom/Nina. Hope Nurse Poppi will take good care of you since we can't be there to help! Love and hugs from all your grandkids who are especially concerned about you and your heart :)

Trick-or-Treat!

2011-10-31T11:16:00.004-04:00

Happy Halloween from our neck of the woods to yours! Bet you thought we fell off the face of the earth, huh?! But, have no fear...we're here...just having a challenging couple of months...and time is never my friend as far as updating the blog is concerned. Trick-or-treat from Darth-Dylan, Cinderella-Ash, Cowgirl-Hays and Kitty-Shelb!

Happy Birthday, Big 3 Year Old!

2011-09-21T15:21:00.010-04:00

How can it be that the baby girl of our family is now THREE years old?!?! I have no idea how that happened. But, indeed it did! She went and grew up on us and is now the sweetest and cutest little three year old we know. Ashley Claire, your mama is so proud of you and so smitten by you. You just make us all laugh daily with the big-worded, sweet things you say. You have a little heart of gold and I hope you always stay that way. Thank you for blessing us with your presence 3 years ago and I can't wait to watch you grow up into an even more beautiful, smart and lovely young lady. You are such a gift to our family. I love you, Sweet Ash!

The Newest Violinist in Town! :)

2011-08-24T19:33:00.013-04:00

Well, things are taking a turn here in the Steg house...into the musical world...specifically of VIOLIN! Yep, that's right...our little Shelby, who has been our "let's try something new every year" has decided this is the "year of the violin" for herself. I think it all started this summer when we were in FL and Nina G. introduced us to her old violin. For those of you who don't know she was an EXPERT violinist back when she was Hailey's age. She was even supposed to go to Juilliard to play...
So it is a very special thing now that Shelby had found a passion to play. Ever since that June day this summer Shelby has been relentless about wanting to take lessons....we had hoped she'd wait til she could play for free at school in 3 years, but she would not give it up. So....we gave in...and she started today!
Here she is getting fitted for her violin before her lesson....(no, this isn't her instructor...her teacher, Rachel, is one who teaches violin to kids her age at the local elementary school...so we thought she'd be a good fit for Shelby and she was :))
I didn't get any pics of her during her lesson as I was watching the younger siblings outside and daddy was in the room with her observing (he's more the music man than me :))....but she did great and loved it! Here she is afterwards outside...
We chose a very reputable music shop in town....
She was so excited to show off her violin after her first lesson...
Here's her lovely violin (rental). We might buy one if she sticks with it for more than a year...but for now this is our lovely new adopted Steg addition. Kinda weird to have an instrument in our house....this is a first...well, a first for me...Kev actually owns a trumped that he used to play that's in storage somewhere....but I was more the choir type back in school...
Here she is at home practicing....we actually couldn't get her to stop practicing :) We wondered if we'd have to "keep on" her to practice every day...that might not be an issue...and we might actually have to hide the violin so she does other things....haha :) (by the way...there is no bow in the pics as she wasn't allowed to use it for the first lesson...she just used her fingers and played the chords over and over again D-A-D) :)
All smiles with her fav. new instrument!
And these are some pics of how I kept busy for her 30 minute lesson....babysitting as usual :) But, I was glad this music shop had toys to keep the little ones entertained....
haha...check out Ashley's face after she lost her frisbee over the ledge :)

It was a great evening for our Shelby learning the one thing she's begged to learn for 2 mos. This might just be her "thing"! So exciting and so proud of her for trying something new and challenging! Maybe we'll have a Nina-repeat violin prodigy!?
(just found this pic from June and added it....this was the beginning of Shelby's love for violin in my old bedroom in FL :))

And so it begins...

2011-08-16T09:34:00.023-04:00

...school is back in session. Pinch me now. Where in the world did our summer go? Obviously we left it in the dust and now it's back to the grind of schoolwork and our crazy busy lives. And so it began this morning....early this morning, might I add (thanks to our longer/earlier school day). We were up at 5am to prepare for the daily festivities and were all out the door before 7am to take Hailey to school across town. Here is our sleepy bunch, who actually look fairly awake here, and even slightly happy! :) I think the non-school-girl looks the happiest :) Aren't they such a beautiful/handsome gang...all decked out in their new attire from both Ninas and Poppis??!! And, no, I didn't plan the blue coordination. They all picked out their own outfits (minus Ash)...very coincidental! :)
My oldest beauty off to 6th grade...her final year of Elem. school. VERY hard to believe.
My 2nd beautiful girl and joyful 2nd grader :)
And my always happy-go-lucky handsome little man and Kindergartner!! :) He was all smiles today!
Me and my school-age kids...I am so proud of all of them! And I love the girls new 31 bags. We've had them for 8 mos waiting to use them! Dylan was VERY proud of his Star Wars lunch box that he picked out (see 1st picture). He is all about Star Wars these days! :)
The big Kindergartner showing off his new Batman backpack from Nina and Poppy Stegs. We had a bit of a dilemma with backpacks for our boy this year. Nina and Poppy Stegs got him this cool one late last school year (which I love from Pottery Barn) and then they also got him a super cool Star Wars one recently. Well, he wanted to use both, but I had to nix that idea and instead he's saving the SW one for next year or until he ruins this one :)
Then it was then off to Hailey's school....I mortified her with lots of pics...she was not happy with me...for those of you with future 6th graders...be warned...they don't like photos of themselves, especially taken at school :) I didn't care though...I snapped away :)
Hailey's new, lovely teacher, Ms. C. sporting the new school logo on her t-shirt :)
At her desk...in a chair...this is a big deal this year as she's sat on a yoga ball in class for the last 2 years...
Dylan in the ever-popular recycled chair (that looks like a hand :)) in Hays' classroom.
I took one last photo of her room and can you see her in the background saying, "Mom, stop...leave" :) I love to torture my 11 year old :)
Then it was off to our healthy breakfast stop.....this has been our annual tradition the last 2 years since Hailey starts school 1 hour before regular elementary schools start. This McD's is on the way. Shelby wasn't happy we stopped. She wanted to get right to school, but didn't fully understand the time issue....Dylan on the otherhand was thrilled. This was breakfast #2 for him! He could eat breakfast all day!
So he ordered himself up a nice choc. milk and a cinnamon roll. He was in heaven. And don't worry...breakfast #1 at home was a healthy one, so that counts for something right? :) I love this smiley boy! :)
Then it was off to school....by the time we got there the kids were half asleep...haha...ok, they were fine, but it was VERY sunny! :)
One last shot of the two other elementary kids before the went into the school....
Walking the halls toward 2nd grade to drop Shelby off...notice Dylan doesn't have his backpack or lunchbox. He couldn't bring either the first day as he didn't know who his teacher would be til Thursday.
Glad to be in 2nd grade with her best friend, Sydne...and actually a few of her best girl friends, which was a nice surprise this year.
And also very thankful to have our fav. 2nd grade teacher, Mr. S....he was also Hailey's 2nd grade teacher so many years ago.
At her new desk :)
Then it was off to wait in line to get Dylan into his classroom. Is this not absurd?? Look at the line waiting to find out what temporary room the Kindergartners were in. We waited in this line for like 30 minutes.
Finally we got to the front. The ladies at the table thought Ash was there for K too. She is about the size of a Kindergartner! And she was ready to go with her lunchbox (a special gift from Poppy Stegs...he gave into her wanting it at the store :))
I remember when this school was built in 2005....Hailey was in the first Kindergarten class here....I was only a few months pregnant with Dylan then. And now look at us....6 years later he is here....proof that time REALLY does fly!
Finally we made it to our "temp" room with our temp teacher, Mrs. B. We won't know til Wed. night if she's our real teacher or not. But for our laid-back guy it really doesn't matter. He was just so happy to go to school.
Showing off his cubby area :)
Doing his first "real school" worksheet :)
A room shot...can you tell where he is? Already working hard....
And then it was mommy and Ash time...just me and my baby girl back at home....first thing we did...was go for a walk on our fav. trail. It was a hot day, but we didn't care. We had a good ol' time :)
She collected lots of her fav. weeds, I mean flowers, for me :) Look at the joy in her face :)

She is such a little beauty and I cherished my first day at home all alone with her....
She talked to Nina G for awhile....always a highlight :)
And then while Mommy was talking to Nina, Ash watched Scooby and fell asleep...such a peaceful dozing ballerina :)
And then before we knew it...it was time to get the kids off the bus (Hailey came home first and, yes, I took a picture, but I'll spare her from posting it :))....b/c the highlight of my day was watching my boy and his face getting off the bus. Is that not a HAPPY boy?! And the funniest part of this is that later on he says to me "Mom, you know how you met me at the bus....could you maybe not do that tomorrow!"....hahaha....I wanted to cry, yet I had to laugh. He's Mr. Independent like his sisters. I guess I should be glad for that. So now I have to wait down the street when he gets off the bus. Wouldn't want to embarrass my little man! :)
A nice pic of me and my boy after school :) I love this guy!
Look at what Ash did while her siblings were at school. She's so talented! :)
Another good idea gone bad...I was going to make our kids and the neighbor kids cute apple cake pops. I had really good intentions, but none of the right ingredients so I improvised (on the phone with Nina, might I add). Never a good idea (to improvise or do it while on the phone). My chocolate didn't liquify and instead I used frosting which didn't solidfy and thus these pops were on the table about 5 minutes after this pic was taken. But, the two sweeties in my fam (Ash and Dylan)...they didn't care...as long as it contains sugar they eat it. They were happy. Next year I'll not get so cheap and buy the right ingredients.
A couple pics after school under our weeping willow. Look at this handsome man!
And our pretty girl showing her new Justice "S" backpack and matching water bottle. Thank you, Nina and Poppy Stegs! :)
My fav. pic of her on the 1st day....
One last pic of the 4 together. I love them all. They have grown up so fast!
My bright-eyed Shelby. All smiles after the first day...
And then I had to post a pic of the "school supply" organization day. Never had 3 in school at once so this was sure a lot of supplies to buy and go through. Can't wait til Ash is in the school mix too!

So, there ya' go...a few newer pics of our gang. More to come as well as some "catch-up" summer pics that I hoped to post earlier in August. Hope back-to-school is going well for everyone else...and if you live in MI or somewhere where it's still summer...just keep to yourselves! :)

13 Years of Bliss!

2011-08-14T08:26:00.004-04:00

Today marks 13 years of wedded bliss to the love of my life and best friend. Somedays it feels like we just tied the knot...like there's no way we could have been married over a decade and be the parents of 4 children...as we often feel 21 and 23 at heart like the day we were married. But, then somedays it feels like we've been married for 23 years...like I've know this man all my life. I can't imagine one day w/o him and never want to. God surely gave me the greatest gift 13 years ago and I have been grateful every day since. Happy 13th, Babe...and here's to another 13 and beyond with our crazy family of six :)

(I had hoped to post more pics...some old ones, but my blogger says I have somehow exceeded my photo limit even though I don't blog much anymore...hmmm....so I guess more pics will have to wait....but we have had a nice relaxing anniversary day as I recover from some strange stomach bug and napped half the day. I am grateful for the restful get-away we had last weekend in Lexington, KY)

Happy 36th, Babe! :)

2011-07-27T09:29:00.009-04:00

Happy 36th Birthday to the most wonderful man I know...who just happens to be the best husband and father I know too. I am so blessed by this man in my life and I hope he knows how much we all adore him. Here's to 36 more years of life! I love you, Babe! :)

...now off to make him a garden cake full of fondant fruit and veggies...just what every 36 year old guy needs :)

My Beauty!

2011-07-23T10:30:00.004-04:00

Besides some lengthy vacationing, this has been the other major focus of our summer...well, Hailey's summer :) Basically 6-7 hours of ballet each day for a month. That's like a full-time job! But, if you couldn't tell this girl loves to dance and these summer intensive sessions are a dream for her. Last night was the conclusion of her first intermediate session...and here she is performing La Bayadere (something she and this group learned to dance in just 10 days...amazing!)...she was chosen to dance the 3rd variation as a solo, which a part she worked really hard to learn and was super excited to wear this black tutu. She did awesome and I was so proud...and teary-eyed at the end. Watching my oldest girl dance is a never-ending gift to me. So proud of you, Hays! :)

More pics to come when/if I have more time....this has been our busiest/craziest summer ever!

Happy 4th!

2011-07-04T11:29:00.006-04:00

Happy Independence Day from our fam. to yours! We're having a great day so far...very lazy, just the way we like it! :)
From our french toast breakfast made into flags....
Here's more 4th of July treats we made (thank you, Family Fun Mag. for the ideas!) :) They were super easy and the kiddos helped. We had enough to share with all our neighbors. Yumm!
...to swimming in our "baby" pool outside...
...even daddy couldn't resist a dip in the pool :)
...probably the only stress of the day was trying to get a pic of the 4 kids with all 8 eyes open...phew! Life is rough in the Steg house! Off to see fireworks at church soon.... Happy 4th! :)

Back to Reality from our 4 Weeks of Amazing Vacationing!

2011-07-03T15:02:00.010-04:00

Well, I think I am going to need a big ol' reality check after our long month of vacationing....what an amazing time we've had the last few weeks both in and out of the country......here's a few of some of my latest pics from NC and FL....more pics to come hopefully later this summer as I get my rear back into gear here at home. Never been gone so much in one month...we only spent 6 days in Indiana in June...what a crazy, but wonderful summer thus far! :) Above is one of my fav. pics from NC....I just love the view of the Smoky Mountains from the Blue Ridge Parkway right near our "home" of Maggie Valley. Just breathtaking! :) God did a good thing when he created this world...that is always evident to me in the mountains particularly! :)
We surprised my parents on our second day in NC with a surprise 40th Anniversary party at the cabin. I guess we totally surprised my mom who went shopping all day this day while Candy and I prepared all the party goods. Kev and I made the big candy card of "Tom and Nancy Love Story" in the background along with wedding cake pops...and Candy made the cutest cake with edible images of our family on it. It was a fun celebration. Wow, 40 years of lovin' by Nina and Pops...very monumental! :)
A pic of our Gritz/Steg family of 12 on the cabin deck after the anniversary celebration. Nina and Pops have a lot to show for 40 years of love! :)
Great pic of Pops and his grandsons--Dylan and Austin (aka "the Big Hunks")
The matching little girls sharing a cup of ice (or maybe it was rocks)...they loved throwing both off the mountain at our cabin :)
The six grandkids....we gave up on matching them all so we did them in pairs this year :)
Me and my baby floating down the creek in Cherokee...so fun...
Ash and Brooke--the matching 2 year olds...aren't these outfits cute...Nina and I found them at our fav. Sawgrass outlet mall in FL :)
Here's our whole family sliding down Sliding Rock in the Pisgah National Forest. So fun, but so cold! We had amazing time in NC as always....and special thanks to my parents for making it all possible....
And we (me and my oldest girls) had some amazingly relaxing days in Ft. Laud. with my mom (and dad)...isn't this a great pic of me and the girls and grandma Gritz.
Our girls-day-out (for lunch) at the Grand Luxe at Sawgrass. It happened to be Father's Day and a terrible day to go out, but we still had a great time with us Gritz girls....and I think all the dad's enjoyed their free time w/o us! :)
The girls had FUN times with Pops in the pool...lol!
Nina spoiled the girls every day in FL with special activities...and special food...fruity drinks in special cups and lots of special snacks and treats. We were in heaven! I honestly think they averaged about 6 hours a day in the pool for the 9 days we were there....crazy, pool-lovin' kids! :)
We had a fantastic day at the beach...the nicest beach day I think we've ever had...we caught a fish, found shells and a crab claw, made a sand castle (sorta) and had a great time hanging with Nina....
And we really enjoyed our day at Butterfly World....always a treat to go there....
The big hit for Shelb was having this butterfly just sit in her hair for like a half hour. It loved her and even climbed up her eye :)
And we always love these birds (larakeets??)....they are so fun to feed....
Just lots of carefree summer days over the last month. Don't know how the rest of the summer can top all this. It's hard coming home to what seems like a very humdrum life, but I know come next week when ballet, swimming, tennis and camps start up we'll be whirling in life's craziness again. But, ah, what a wonderful June it was for us. Special thanks to wonderful Ninas and Poppies who made it all possible. We are so grateful for generous family members who love to vacation with us! They have made all these fun memories possible!!! Love you guys!!!

Hola, We're Home!

2011-06-12T21:49:00.011-04:00

What an incredible time we had in Mexico! Before I head off to FL, I wanted to show off some of my fav. pics.....if I haven't told you before I just love, love, love tropical locations...and this was no exception. It was one of the BEST vacations EVER! Thank you, Nina and Poppi Stegs, for making it all possible! Above is our tropical beach location. Every day we looked out and saw this beautiful ocean from our balcony. Aren't my kiddos just adorable?! :)
We tried to get a nice family portrait before we left, but this was the best we could get....the sun just didn't bode well for my fair-eyed kiddos :)
We loved playing on the beach...or I did at least...as did my littlest kids...I think Hailey is more of a pool person...she dislikes sand :) Me and my baby had fun in the waves though!
My fav. pic of our fam...at the Mayan ruins of Tulum...incredible scenery and such perfect blue water! Even the sailboat cooperated for the pic!
This is one of my fav. pics from Tulum. An iguana staring us down....lol! They were all over the place...the kids loved it!
At Xelha...we did awesome snorkeling...all the kids loved it!
Our whole family ziplined through the Mexican "jungle"...yes, even Ash! It was so much fun. And, yes, that macaw is trying to eat Hailey's hand :)
I love this entire family photo of us at Tulum....we loved spending time with our immediate family!
Hailey ziplining...looking like a pro!
Shelby was our daredevil....wanted to do it upside down!
Lil' Ash zipping through the skies!
Dylan all smiles too!
We even ziplined into a Cenote (water)...here's Shelb doing it and daddy and Dylan watching on the left side :)
This shows how much Ash loved the beach/ocean!
And how much Dylan loved the pool...they spent half their days in the pool!
Bathing beauty...lol! :)
One of our many awesome dinners....this one was on the beach about a foot from the water....loved it!
Love this night-time pic of my sweeties in the pool :)
And, yes, Kev and I even learned to scuba dive for the first time. That was an experience all in itself...let's just say I ended up not making it down due to extreme nausea (sea sickness) and ear pressure that I couldn't get rid of....needless to say Anne and I stayed on the boat and I puked the whole time the brothers were diving....but at least they had fun! :)
Here's Kev on the left and Bri on the right doing their Mexican dive! And below is my fav. pic of Shelby...isn't she a beauty?!
Now off to Ft. Laud with my oldest two to spend time at Nina and Poppy Gritz! Then off to NC and the cabin...busy June! :) Awesome times...and I feel so blessed by our great families and vacations!

End-of-School-Year Pics!

2011-06-02T11:15:00.013-04:00

Just so you know we're still alive, here's a few "snaps" of what we've been doing the last couple weeks....on Mem. Day, we took a nice jaunt out to the lake to spend the day on Nina and Poppy's boat. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be....the boat wouldn't start :( But, we did get a nice pic by it and Nina fixed us a delicious steak/hotdog/chix nugget meal :)
The kids LOVED just playing in the pool by the lake...Ash especially loved it! Look at her go...and look at Kev's face! lol! :)
We had our awesome annual Race Day Party last Sunday...so fun to see all the old Danville friends and their kiddos!
We spent some time at the park...having a picnic...
...especially with our best bud, Minette...we are going to miss her next year with her being at a different school than Dylan :( boo :(
We're so proud of our big boy...he had an awesome t-ball season AND he graduated preschool (with honors)...did I tell you he can add double digit numbers....he's a math whiz! To celebrate this we got him an ice cream cake (well half of one :))...have I mentioned we're on a budget?! lol :)
Here's the handsome man before his preschool graduation....hard to believe 2 years have gone by....
...and soon I'll have a goofy Kindergartner! Where has the time gone?
My darlings after the graduation...
And celebrating Hailey and Shelby's belated b-days at the Indy zoo with the Steg. fam. Wasn't it nice of the giraffe to pose...too bad Hailey didn't cooperate!
Kev watching his new container garden grow :) Maybe soon we'll have strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, peas and cucumber?
Cracking open a geode...one of Shelb's fav. thing to do!
T-ball fun for our boy...here he is with his preschool bud, Eli.
Hitting the ball...with his fav. pink bat :) Yes, we are proud!
Look at those running legs! lol :)
And the final days of school...Shelby competed in a talent show...she played the recorder (learned it all on her own). She was so proud of herself.
Saying goodbye to her fav. 1st grade teachers, Mrs. B....
...and Mrs. T...very sad she will not be returning to teaching next year, but so excited she gets to be a stay-at-home-mommy and we'll get to hang with her somedays!
And my final day volunteering at both the girls' schools...I didn't get a chance to take pics at Hailey's...they were busy working and Mrs. P. had lots of work for me to do :), but I had fun at my last lunch outing with Shelby's table group...they are a bunch of hams :) I have loved being in my kids' classrooms every week this year and have so appreciated Nina Stegs watching the wee ones at home so I can get out of the house. What a great year it's been...now off to our awesome June of vacations! Mexico, here we come!!

Weird week

2011-05-29T08:56:00.003-04:00

Been a very odd week for our lil' Steg family (odd not being especially good). We spent our first night together huddled and sleeping in our basement due to more severe storms that passed through (what crazy weather we've had!) The kids thought it was great fun being crammed in Nina G's bedroom :)
The oldest and youngest thought it was great fun to dance around in dress-up clothes :) It was very comical to say the least. And we might have 2 ballerinas on our hands. Ash is actually pretty good and I'm thinking it comes from 2.5 years of watching her biggest sis dance! Thankfully we survived the storms just fine and were thankful the twister that was coming our way turned at the last minute. Scary stuff.
This is how much rain we've had...our normal spot to enter the dock to the boat is completely flooded....thankfully there was another entrance, but the girls wanted to try this one :)
We finally got "the pukes" this year...just in time for Mem. Day weekend. Poor Shelb. Very thankful it was just her who got the "bug". But, she was miserable :(
And it finally happened...our a/c went "kerplunk". I won't even tell you how depressing this was esp. right before 3 big vacations....but we put our "Dave Ramsey" to use for the first time and paid all cash....bye bye savings :( Plus, it was a BIG bummer to go w/o a/c for a whole week....I have a new appreciation for whoever invented a/c units. Honestly can't live w/o them! What a week....good thing Cancun is calling our name in a week! Super-yay!

A Hamster-ific B-day Party!

2011-05-16T14:53:00.011-04:00

Just a few snipits from Shelb's Hamster-ific b-day party a couple weeks ago! As you can see I'm way behind on blogging as usual, but trying to get slightly caught up before we leave Mexico! Above is most of her b-day "spread"...or the food part of it. It was all-out hamster stuff for this hamster-lovin' gal! Ever since we got Cuddles at Christmas she knew she wanted a hamster b-day party...and she kept to it....though I will say....finding hamster related party food items was no piece of cake (no punn intended :)), so I had to wing it with my own rendition of rodent cake(s), hamster cupcakes (which looked more like bunnies or dogs than hamsters) and hamster cake pops!
Here's the sad cake I made her. I will just admit that I had a bit of an overwhelming breakdown a couple days before the party. Making a cake was just not something I was up to. I was in the middle of about 10 different projects for the kids' schools and whatnot and the party was just not something I could focus on.....so actually....daddy Kev saw my despair and came to the rescue and made his little girl the cake she really wanted (which I'll show later)....this was an "after the fact" cake that I threw together the night before with extra fondant and supplies we had laying around. It looks more like a guinea pig than a hamster...but still....a rodent's a rodent, right?
Here's the party gang. She declared this year that she ONLY wanted her BEST friends there and not like 20 or 30 people which we've ended up with in the past. I was honestly relieved as we can't fit that many kids in our small house anyway. So, here's the best of the best, aside from two good friends who couldn't make it (and some silly siblings who party crashed it!) :)
Isn't my hamster-girl a beauty? Oh and I forgot to mention...she HAD to have this party be an "almost sleepover"....her now MI friend, Clara, had done this last year and she loved it and since I won't let her have an official slumber party yet, this was as close as she was a getting...so a "hamster-almost-sleepover" it was....with the party animals in their pjs!
Here is the darling cake that daddy, Kev, made. I was so proud of him and I think he surprised himself with his talent for fondant. I only baked the cake and crushed the ice cream cones on top and he made all the rest...complete with fondant food (carrots and pellets) and, yes, that is even fondant poop...what rodent cake would be complete w/o it?! It was a masterpiece, I thought. He worked really hard on it and Shelby LOVED it! :)

The crazy gang started off the evening with a pizza dinner! We don't usually do dinner at parties, but since it was a later-than-usual party we went for it!
Then we did a little hamster-dancing. Have you ever seen this video on u-tube? (The Hamster Dance) It's hilarious. The kids loved it and we still listen/watch it almost every day. It's got a groovy, catchy tune :)
More crazy pizza fun with Riley. She's a party animal!
Then it was game time. We were thankful it wasn't freezing outside and thankfully the rain held off til later on, so the pj gang went out back and played some hamster games...this one was "find the hamster food"
Shelby's team won with the most apples, carrots, lettuce, and tootsie rolls (supposed to be pellets)...
Then it was time to race the zhu zhus. They had a ball with this, though it got a bit rough when a zhu zhu attacked Sydne and ate her hair. Who knew zhu zhus were so vicious! Thankfully Sydne's "Cheese" Zhu Zhu won the race so that made it all better :)
Then we made our own "twinkie" hamsters and had a contest with them. Shelby won...I think for most creative name?
Then it was cake time. Honestly, most of the kids had just eaten their twinkie rodents so we didn't hardly even cut into the cakes (big surprise!). Shelby is going crazy here cuz she thinks Ben is going to blow out her candles. She's a "candle" hog! :)
Then it was time for one more hamster game...roll the ball....tee hee :)
And then the party was over...actually it went an hour over what it was supposed to...the kids had so much fun. We even had Cuddles at our party. I took some pics of the kids holding him, but I'm too tired to figure out why they didn't post on here....Cuddles is a good sport though. Shes' the best hamster ever!
Here's Shelby with most of her wonderful loot! She has such giving friends who know what she LOVES...and, YAY, she finally got some hexbugs! :)
Oh and let's not forget to post some pics of the hard working Nina on Shelby's actual b-day helping make her hamster invites. This will probably be the only time you see Nina being crafty (on my blog at least :)) She claims to not be artsy fartsy, but I think she is :) Thanks, Nina!
I can't get this to post straight, but this is the back of the invite. You can see the front from what Nina is holding up with a picture of a hamster that Shelby drew herself. They were very cute and Shelby helped come up with the whole idea...it had to have pics of her and Cuddles on it and her fav. hamster poem. I love my creative girl! And below is our hamster goody bag! Thank goodness for Oriental Trading and their few hamster goodies. I was glad it even came...it arrived the day before the party! Phew! And we had to have a geode (for the kids to break open) in the loot bag too...Shelb's fav thing!
So, that was that....never thought I'd have a rodent party, but ya' do what ya' do for your little girl who loves these little rodents! She had the best time ever and so did her friends. Now onto the last days of school and our month of June vacations to Cancun, FL and NC! YAY!!!!

Happy Mom's Day!

2011-05-08T11:34:00.007-04:00

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there...especially my two fav. ones...."The Ninas"! :) They are tops in our life.....
We had tons of fun with Nina G. here the last 2 weeks...and we are in a funk now that she's gone :(
...she shared in so many great times...like recitals...and outdoor fun....
...and we love and appreciate our Nina S. as well.....she never misses an activity and gives and gives unconditionally...
We truly are so blessed by such wonderful mothers/grandmothers in our lives...they make our life as great as it is! :)
We tried to pamper Nina Gritz with an early Mom's Day breakfast yesterday....we just appreciated all the wonderful love she's given us the last 2 weeks as I've been sick and we've been so crazy busy....she was a lifesaver and a great grandchild entertainer....
And we wish we could see Nina Stegs today and pamper her, but we didn't really want to share our germs with the family so we are laying low and enjoying a lazy day at home...
I am incredibly blessed by the wonderful moms in my life and just as blessed by the sweethearts the good Lord has sent down for me to mother. My life would be void w/o the constant craziness and love they bring. I am so grateful to the core every day for these 4 little blessings. Hope you all are grateful for the moms in your life too....they have helped mold us all into the people we are!

Small B-day Recap!

2011-05-07T16:08:00.008-04:00

A quick lil' recap of Shelby's real b-day festivities....her b-day (May 6) was a CRAZY day...crazier this year than every before....which I guess just goes along with our lives lately! Anyway...here's a few pics of the day...of course she was in school all day....and actually even before that we went to Hailey's school for a presentation at 8am....and then after school we quick had cake (a starfish cake, of course!)....and then....
...off to her recital (jazz at One Step Above)...she was a mermaid this year and did fabulously! I love her cute costume. She is beautiful, isn't she?! Wow, 7 years old!
So glad Nina G was here from FL for all festivities...and here's some of Shelb's fav b-day gifts...earrings and a GEODE! YAY!
And, yes, she got pierced for the big #7. We did this on Hailey's 7th too so it's sort of a Steg girl tradition now. She was so surprised though when we showed up at Claires this evening. She was brave for the piercing and chose really cool blue flowers earrings. Thanks for this awesome gift, Nina and Pops G.!
Here's our fam. after the piercing...all smiles! Shelb actually got this done the day before her b-day since we knew her b-day was going to be nutso!
And her pretty Sam's double cookie cake for her school celebration. These cakes are our fam's fav. I could eat them every day. Yummers! It was a fun, but very busy b-day for our girl!

Happy 7th, Sweet Shelby Girl!

2011-05-06T05:57:00.008-04:00

I'm a little emotional today looking back on all these pics and realizing how time has just flown by...the miracle baby we hoped and prayed for almost 2 years is now 7 years old! It's hard to wrap my mind around that, yet every day God reminds me with her spunky zest for life, how real and vibrant our Shelby girl is....so here's a little memory picture recap through the last 7 years....from her beautiful birth....
...where Hailey finally became a big sister...she was in all her glory with her 1st sister in her arms...
...to the 1st birthday....
...to becoming a big sister to a little brother just 20 months into her life...
...to her 2nd birthday....
...and her 3rd birthday and introduction to American Girl (bitty baby twins!)
...and her 4th b-day...
...to becoming a big sis again with the birth of her 2nd sister...
...her 5th b-day
....and 6th b-day....
....and the fun never ceases when you're around our witty Shelb!
She is full of life always and feel so deeply about everything....I love this beautiful 7 year old of mine! Happy B-day, Shelby Grace!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T08:51:00.006-04:00

Happy Easter from our family to yours....here's a few spring pics to brighten this rainy Easter day (at least rainy for us). Special thanks to Nina (and "super shopper" Pops!) in FL who found all the coordinating Easter clothes this year for the gang. I LOVE the nice, simple black and pink. Above are a few pics from last weekend when we went to see Mr. E.B. Ash might look like she was ok with the whole experience, but she is still deathly afraid of any human-size dressed-up character. Thankfully Hailey protected her from E.B. :) The family pic of us was taken last night after church since it had temporarily stopped raining and we knew it'd be raining today (which it is!)...and below is our wet Easter egg hunt downtown yesterday...poor Hays has a big project due this week so she stayed home to work on it :(

Blessed!

2011-04-11T12:04:00.007-04:00

Just feeling very blessed today and wanting to share my sentiments along with some pics of my greatest blessings :) My beautiful ballerina in her latest ballet pic....she is in the midst of spring recital rehearsals and lovin' it. 3 more weeks til her performance date...
Our middle girl in all her glory this weekend on her long-awaited geode find...this girl LOVES geodes and was so excited our city offered a class on it. Here she is after she "unearthed" one and cracked it with a hammer :) So fun! And notice her teeth....she is FINALLY about to lose her first one...any day now! I think she is officially the last 1st grader to lose one! :)
Our basketball boy with his beloved medal. He sure loved his season of b-ball!
And our littlest beauty in her newest "Ashley" creation from wonderful friend, Sharon. Ash's eyes just lit up when she got this in the mail. She had to wear it right away and dance around our kitchen. She is a girly girl at heart! :)
And I've been very careful not to breathe a word about our journey to "potty-land" lest to jinx myself, but I do think our "baby" is almost officially potty-trained. And I have to say she did it pretty much all on her own (behind closed locked doors b/c she didn't like us watching/helping...can we say "Little Miss Independence"?) I am so proud of her! She will be the earliest potty-user of all the Steg kids. Go Ash!

And the above pic has really nothing to do with the kids or being blessed (though whoever invented the cake pop is a blessing!) :) But, check out my first cake pop "job". I was semi-hired by my awesome friend, Jill, to make almost 200 cake pops for our super fab. mom-daughter event at church this past Sat. I had a "ball" making these delicious pink creations. Thanks for "hiring" me, Jill! :)

Have a blessed day!

The B-day still continues....

2011-04-06T13:27:00.009-04:00

Yet, ANOTHER b-day party for the 11-year-old of the house. Yes, I know...we are crazy party animals around here...though I will say...I think this is that last time any of our kids gets two friends party. Just too much work/hassle! But, for sure the fun outweighed the stress.....
The theme this time around was "the beach" (an indoor beach party to be exact)....Hailey made really cute flip flop invites all with scraps from around our house :) And here was our party table....complete with beach-themed cake pops, flip flop cookies and a flip flop tropical cake....and so sweet of Shelb to loan us her precious starfish collection (courtesy of Pops in FL)...it made our table complete....as did the shell creation from Nina G (with shells from my grandma which I treasure)...we used them to play a game (guess the number of shells :))
Hailey with the fondant cake creation we made. It turned out to be more work than the sleepover cake from last week...but I really liked it...but then again I love bright colors and tropical-anything! :) I think the consensus was that last week's cake was still our fav though :)
A close-up....Hailey made the beachball (she did a good job!) and actually all the girls helped me. Shelb made some of the fondant shells and starfish...aren't they cute?! And thank goodness for crushed graham crackers that look like sand!
8 1/2 years apart, but still best buds! :)
If you haven't tried to make cake pops, I definitely recommend them! So easy and so yummy! These were especially fun with the bears in bikinis and one boy in swim trunks for Dylan :)
Ash even proved herself a fondant queen...look at her flower and other creations! :) Future cake maker??
Playing in the swim rings with static hair!
We don't usually serve dinner at our parties (too much work!), but we thought an indoor cook-out would be fun....complete with fruit-kabobs and those cute fruity flowers from Family Fun Mag. Yumm!
Since we moved our table and chairs we had the girls camp out on the floor and eat on beach towels!
Then they played games....this was the end of the relay that Hailey planned....where you have to have your team stand on a towel and flip it over using teamwork...not as easy as it looks :)
We did indoor sand castles in our garage....Shelby won for tallest and Julia (front left) won for best artistry! Very fun, but very messy...esp. those two rascals in the back!
The cake is starting to look very bright these days with 11 candles on it!
The whole "old friends" gang (as apposed to the new friends who slept over the weekend before)....we missed old friend, Emily, though who was on vacation :(
Then it was time to decorate flip flops with ribbons....fun, but not as easy as it looks :)
We intended for the party to go from 6-8pm, but last minute Hailey asked for a sleepover and since we knew this was such a good group of girls we agreed. They had a blast that night watching the new Scooby Doo movie and eating popcorn and smoothies and talking into the wee hours. Then we had a yummy pancake breakfast and off to church early the next morning. It was lots of fun! Now to celebrate with the Steg family and then we can say adios to Hailey's b-day and on to Shelby's in just 4 weeks! The partying never seems to end! Hurrah!

The B-day continues....

2011-03-29T13:06:00.010-04:00

Things are nuttin' but crazy around here right now (normal, I suppose!), but I know my dear mama has been requesting some b-day party pics so here's the latest....of the "best friends from her class" sleepover this past weekend. It really allowed for very little planning on my part and they girls had a ball (more pics of that to come later...who knew a bunch of smarties could be so crazy?!) :) Anyway....here's the darling cake I made for the event. I actually think it's one of my favs and it was surprisingly very therapeutic to make (almost like playing with playdoh, but fondant style :)). Anyway...it was supposed to be a two-layer cake, but Hailey nixed that idea (much to my chagrin...cuz you know I like to go ALL out!) :) Anyway....this is what she wanted...small and simple, which was more than enough for 5 girls.
A close-up of the detail work. And, yes, I know some of my peace signs are upside down. The cake I was copying from had it this way too and I never noticed til it was done that it looked sorta funny...I just love the coke, pizza, popcorn and teddy bear :) So, so cute. Hailey was thrilled with how it turned out....and in some of her fav. colors (the original cake I copied was pink and green...she's more a blue/green girl :))
Here's the party table sorta of set up. I also made some sad looking bowling cupcakes (and, yes, I know it's not a full pin set....I chucked some in the garbage in a semi-cake-making rage :)) And I made some very last minute sleepover cake pops. The theme was "sleep masks"...Hailey had made her invites to look like sleep masks too....
Another close-up of the cake....and, yes, I know the peace sign on the front is upside down...that I didn't do on purpose and didn't notice til it had been stuck on there for 12 hours :) Oh, and I added the little sleep mask per Hailey's request :)
Here's the crazy girls.....bowling at IU (the first thing we did that night). Hailey was bummed cuz she lost big time....I think her final score was something like 34 and that was with a friend who helped her out :( She hates to lose :(

The girls came right home from bowling... (it was snowing I might add :( )....and they had a pizza-making contest....Audrey and Baileigh won, though I think the judge (daddy, Kev) was a bit biased as he picked the two with fungus on them. Personally, I would have picked Hailey's four leaf clover with no fungus!
After some crazy fun the girls had cake...they loved eating the little fondant decorations :)
Much later on they had fondue....they loved it and got crazy eating choc. and strawberries and I do mean CRAZY...we found choc. later on even in the basement. We tried a new fondant this time....choc/marshmallow. It was yummy, but very sticky....
And this is the next morning...doing their annual "sleeping bag stair sledding"...Ash joined in the fun too! :)
And last weekend I got to take my girl out for her b-day...to our fav. spring event...the spring ballet...this year it was NY, NY...superb!

And then above is a cute pic I took of the kiddos in the sweet hats that Auntie Joy knitted for them. I love them and so do the kids. Thanks, Auntie Joy! :)

Quick St. Pat's B-day Recap!

2011-03-18T18:14:00.006-04:00

A few quick pics of the "green" girl and her b-day celebration :) I have one beautiful 11 year old! :)
And 3 other green cuties too! :)
Here's the b-day cupcake pizza she requested. I felt slightly guilty that it was soooo easy to make and free of time-consuming fondant! :) If you don't have those cupcake cake books....get them! :) They are super fab!
It was the most beautiful day EVER! God was smiling down on us...sun and 70 degree weather...it was almost like FL w/o the humidity! Hays and all her backyard buds played outside the entire day. It was the perfect day...and she got to ride her new bike all day too (thanks Nina Stegs for driving it down earlier this week!).
And what a surprise it was to get this yummy Cookies By Design treat delivered to our doorstep from N&P Stegs. A yummy highlight of the day!
Hays and most of her b-day gifts. For a girl who "wanted nothing" for her b-day, she really hit the jackpot! Thanks to all who sent her well wishes, emails and cards and gifts...and phonecalls. She was showered with love and she LOVED it! :) And below is her biggest gift of the night...her new ballet barre from N&P Gritz and Aunt Mary and Great-Grandma in FL. I think daddy esp. looks nice showing off his dancing skills. What an awesome gift for our ballerina girl!
It was such a special day and we didn't even leave the house (well, except to take a short bike ride). It's been by far the nicest day of our spring break...and what a blessing that it hit just the right day...our Hailey's b-day! More pics to come....right now I am waiting for my hubby to come home for our weekend alone. Thanks to Nina and Poppy S. for taking the kids so we could rest in peace. Adios!

My Baby's 11! :( :)

2011-03-17T15:23:00.011-04:00

Well, it's mind boggling to me, but somehow 11 years have gone by and my little baby girl is now a young lady :( Golly, do I feel old! And for some reason my mind is just overwhelmed with the feeling that in 11 more years she could very well be married and maybe even be pregnant like I was at 22 :) All that is just too much to think about right now...but I think it just goes to show how time truly does go by at warp speed. Seems like only yesterday we were all huddled together over this hospital warmer shocked that we'd had a little girl (we guessed she'd be a boy for some reason!) :) And she truly was the prettiest little girl with all that dark, crazy hair! :)
Can't even believe she was ever this small....7lbs, 2oz...the smallest of our babies....they just got bigger and bigger after her! :)
What a doll baby she was....the apple of our eyes! :)
So precious in her hand-knitted outfit from great-grandma Stegs :) (one of my fav. baby pics of her :))
And by the age of 2 she was budding ballerina always loving to put on a dance show for her family :)
...and now look at her...on IU's stage...so confident and beautiful as one of Clara's best friends :)
...there is no denying she is a lovely ballerina...and she loves every second of it!
...she's always been so full of life...
...and craziness...
...and love for her family (especially babies....and especially Cousin Austin this Christmas :))
...so trendy and hip...
so beautiful in every way....

That's our Hailey...she always has been and always will be...someone very special....just a diamond in the rough. I am so very blessed that God thought us somehow worthy to be her parents so long ago...when we were so young and so clueless. I think her miracle of life is what changed my life...she made me a better person...and now every day that I look at her I am so very proud of who she is and the way she uses her God-given talents. I honestly think she is a better person than I am (and maybe even smarter!) and I can't wait to see what awesome things God has in store for her.

So, Happy Birthday, Hailey Nicole. My life was forever changed that Y2K St. Patty's Day! I love you so very, very much!!!!

Waaay behind on life...

2011-02-28T14:07:00.012-05:00

Well...here it is...a very long-overdue post....and b/c I am short on time as usual...it won't even have "explanations" to go with the photos for now...but hopefully later this week I can add them....but for now I thought this would calm the picture-need of some grandparents down south :) From a 5th b-day boy, to basketball, to ballet, to a Jungle Book production...all the way to having the flu and losing a pet to waaay too much snow, ice and dismal weather....the Steg kids (and parents!) continue to lead a very full life.....

Happy V-day!

2011-02-14T06:38:00.004-05:00

Happy "Day Of Hearts and Love" from the Long Long Steg Crew! One of these days (real soon!) we'll be making a blog comeback...I promise! But, until then we couldn't let this day of love go by w/o a quick "hello"! Hope everyone has a valentine (or two or three or more!) to hug today :)

Happy 5th B-day, Buddy!

2011-01-30T07:56:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm fairly certain that most have begun to believe I've dropped off the face of the blog world (and maybe even the real world)...and in all honesty that is fairly true. I simply just don't get online much at all lately and I think those who are close to me know I am not super great at keeping in touch in general. Blogging, in particular, has fallen to the bottom of the priority list.

But.....I couldn't let my little man's b-day go by w/o at least saying how much I adore him....cuz I DO! :) So, here's to you, my sweet man...mama's little buddy....I love you more than words can say. You are the little testosterone surprise we really never thought we'd have and our family is full of spunk in part b/c of you. And I love that and I love you...every superhero, crazy part of you. Looking at old pictures of you just now makes me cry...to think 5 years has gone by in the blink of an eye...and soon 5 more will be gone and 5 more and before I know it you'll be married with a family of your own. I am so blessed by you, little guy and I am so grateful God saw us fit to be your parents. Happy 5th, My Handsome Buddy Boy! :)

(and to those of you wondering how we are...we are ok...not great....but surviving...it's been the strangest month....not incredibly busy til just recently, but just lots of odds and ends stuff that has happened to really wear on our hearts and our energy.....maybe sometime in Feb. I can regroup and process things...but for now this is all I can muster up...."Happy" New Year)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T17:58:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas to all our dear friends and family near and far. Ours was a white one (though this pic wasn't taken today). We had a wonderful day of staying home and just enjoying our crew of six :) Big gifts of the day were a Wii from Santa (we are probably the last people on earth to own one, but better late than never...thanks S.C.!) :) AND even bigger than the Wii news was the addition to our family of a little dwarf named Cuddles (a hamster that is!)...Shelb is over the moon by the newest baby girl of the family. Hope you all had a lovely laid back day....I'd love to write more, but we're off to sunny So. FL bright and early in the a.m.! So until the New Year....adios! :)

Never-a-dull-December!

2010-12-23T10:34:00.023-05:00

Well, in keeping with normal tradition our Dec. has been absolutely insane. And in the midst of thinking about trying to leave for FL (I say "thinking" as we are seriously considering not going)....but in case we do I didn't want my blog to be empty of some Christmas pics! :) So, here ya' go for those of you who haven't given up on my blog yet :) Above is our little jaunt to see Santa at our local downtown mall last weekend (not the easy/quick task we thought it'd be)....this was one of the best shots I could get of the tired crew...the three oldest are showing off their new do's :) They all desperately needed haircuts, esp. Hailey who is in "grow mode" now til next Nutcracker! :)
Seeing the jolly ol' fellow. Ash was very unsure again....she would only go near him if biggest sis was holding her :)
Snow, snow, snow. I am sick of it honestly. It's has snowed all of Dec, or so it seems. We never see this much here in So. Indiana...but at least the kids have fun it it esp. on their first snow day a couple weeks ago. Ash loved sledding with all the big kids!
She is all smiles when Ali goes down the hill with her....Ash seems to be the one all the big kids fight over to sled with :)
Dylan was a sledding maniac, until he slid into our deck post and got a bloody tongue :(
Leave it up to Shelb to find a big slab of ice. We had the weirdest snow this day...snow covered in ice....it was crackly to the step...
The neighbor gang....we feel so blessed by all these kids (though we missed Miss Mad...she must be a warm girl at heart like me and wanted to stay inside!) :) And I think Ash is wondering "what in the world is Jacob doing with that snow??" :)
Sledding solo!
And a few snaps from our mini Steg Christmas last Friday at Kev's parents....isn't this the sweetest of Ash? It's one of her fav. positions....she was watching the train go around under the tree here.
And as is always the case, Nina (and Poppy) Stegs had a marvelous spread of delectable food for us to enjoy (complete with an Edible Arrangement of fruit!)....but the reason I show this picture is to spot out the special addition to the feast...look closely behind the punch and to the left of the ham....lo and behold there is a new Christmas meat :) Yes, Nina spoils her grandson :)
Hailey's big gift of the night...her new mountain bike in her fav. color-blue! :) If only it wasn't snowy and cold out, she would have been peddling away :)
What every girl w/o a hamster yet needs--A Hamster potty :)
Dylan was one of the funniest acts of the night with his over-the-top excitement over EVERY gift. He would fly through the air after he received a gift just to give the gift-giver a hug! Hilarious! He LOVES presents...and especially loved his new Batman cave!
Here's a far-off glimpse of Poppy trying to protect himself from the gift-giving-hug of Dylan :)
Ash opening up one of her gifts....she got really into it this year...well sorta. The first gift she opened was the cutest little Gap shirt from Nina and Poppy. I'm guessing she wasn't all that thrilled about it cuz she got right up and walked that shirt over to Nina and handed it to her and said, "I no like!" :) LOL! Ya' can't say the girl isn't honest!
She did show much surprise and excitement over her zhu-zhu-like doggie :)
Awww, don't Brian and Anne look so sweet together by the beautiful Christmas tree?! (this is Kevin's brother if you don't see the resemblance and his lovely wife :)).
One of the best pics I could get of Nina and Poppy and the kids...yes, this is normal drama for Shelby :) And Dylan HAD to have that thing on his head...and I guess Bailey the dog sneaked in for the photo shot too :) Never a dull moment!
Special thanks to Nina and Poppy for an awesome evening of food, gift-giving, laughs and love :) They are the ultimate in hosting and generosity!! :)
A fond memory of our arctic jaunt to the Indy Zoo last Saturday with Nina and Poppy S. I had such high hopes of this being a splendid event and although we did have lots of fun, I think I still have complete body frostbite due to the cold and my lack of proper layered clothing. But, on the bright side the Kev and the kids and his parents stayed warm enough! How nice for them :)

A highlight of the zoo for Shelb was getting to see the starfish (they had quite a few and this one in particular was moving all over :)). This was a highlight for me as well cuz it was one of the only places I was warm :)
And this is the best shot I have of Ash and her awesome "Sharon shirt". For those of you who don't know, my mom's friend, Sharon, in FL makes awesome embroidered shirts...she did 4 personalized ones for Ashley for her 2nd b-day. This was a cute "gift" one she made for Ash for Christmas. I love it! And I'm so bummed the one she made for Shelb got lost in the mail :( Darn postal service! :( Thanks, Sharon!
We spent one evening last week making lots of treats to stuff in our teachers' goody bags. We gave most of the teachers 31 lunch totes (personalized bags with their monograms on them)....the kids enjoyed helping make the goodies...Ash really got into making the pretzel/rolo treats! :) Yumm!
Sweetness :)
Some of our sweet creations....and we also made puppy chow, chex mix and truffles :) Super Yum!
Shelb was a huge help on the Santa Nutter Butters :) And below is the super AWESOME gift my Aunt Sue sent to Hailey right after Nutcracker. It's the most incredible Nutcracker music box. Plays like 12 Nutcracker songs and has 3 different scenes where the curtains close and reopen and all the dancers move around. It has been a big hit this holiday season. Can't thank Awesome Aunt Sue enough! She is one of the most creative gift givers I know!
So, that's all I've got for now. I'm feeling very run-down, very overwhelmed at the thought of trying to pack up 6 people in the next couple days while also trying to get Christmas stuff ready for tomorrow and Sat to have our "perfect" holiday. We still aren't done shopping either. Nothing like last minute. But, in the midst of it all I know how very blessed we've been this year and I am trying to keep that in the forefront of my mind when I feel those tinges of stress. So, until next time....Merry Christmas and happy end-of-2010!

A Couple Pics :)

2010-12-10T09:39:00.006-05:00

Just a couple quick pics of last weekend (borrowed from Hailey's friend Sophie :)). Lots more pics and news to come, but for now this is all I can offer. We are plum tuckered out over here. Nina and Pops left this morning...we had a wonderful time with them both here :(....but it's just been a long week for me....I am feeling very burned out. Wishing December didn't feel this way.....but trying to keep it in perspective......hope everyone is doing well out there! :)

Nutcracker Live Feed

2010-12-02T09:01:00.003-05:00

Just a quick post for those of you interested in watching Hailey dance live this weekend via internet. Her BIG Nutcracker Party Girl debut starts on Friday and goes through Sunday. As in year's past IU is streaming all 4 performances via live feed, so if you are interested and have a free 20 minutes I know Hailey would love for you to see her dance in her big role. She's in the very first scene (the party scene...and is a party girl--one of Clara's 4 friends) and she will actually be on stage when the curtain goes up (though you won't see her yet). She'll be the one by the Christmas tree with another party girl when the lights go on. I think she's the easiest to see since she has a darker coral-colored (and white) dress. The scene is only 20 minutes long (for those of you who have a hard time sitting through ballets :))...and she is the girl who falls asleep and gets carried off the stage by her "dad" at the end :) It's a very exciting role for her and she's been SUPER busy preparing for it! I hope those of you who can't see her in person will watch her from all around the country (and world!) :) She would love your support....and your prayers...for a safe and healthy weekend of wonderful dancing! More info and pics to come after the craziness ends on Sunday.....(but for now just know we're doing well and enjoying having Nina Gritz here to help (and Pops flies in today!) :).....

http://music.indiana.edu/iumusiclive/streaming/

She'll be performing Friday, December 3 at 8pm
Saturday, December 4 at 2pm and 8pm &
Sunday, December 5 at 2pm

Have a Blessed Thanksgiving!!

2010-11-25T08:00:00.005-05:00

Happy Turkey Day for our Crazy Bunch of Turkeys! As you can see the Steg photo shoot humor never ceases :) Here's a few out-takes from our Turkey Day Morning!
(yes, Ash& Dylan are complete hams (or turkeys :))
finally a normal-ish shot :)
While Thanksgiving is all about turkey for most, in our house today it was ALL about hamsters! (see below) No, the "triplets" (Huey, Duey and Luey) are not ours...they are on loan from Shelby's 1st grade classroom as a trial run for possible hamster ownership in the future. But, let me tell you, these lil' buggers are FAST! (they are dwarf ones).
More to come later on the busy Steg life.....but hope ya'll had a lovely and blessed Thanksgiving Day surrounded by family and friends!

The Costume Debut!

2010-11-12T20:42:00.004-05:00

The highlight of every Nutcracker season for us is......the costume fitting! Today was that day for our Party Girl. She was sooo excited. And I might have been even more excited than her (you see, it was always my dream to be party girl too, but alas I was too tall (or not a good enough dancer) and had to be a party boy).....So, here it is.....THE costume! :)
It really is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship and is apparently the "favorite" dress of the wardrobe crew. I think Hailey was among the first of the girls to try on her costume so they have her first pick. I'm not sure she picked this herself as I was in the hall with the rowdy wee ones by the time she got it on...but I heard all the costume girls (and some fellow Nutcracker dancers) say it was their favorite party girl dress. It really is beautiful...almost like a coral-color and has lovely lacing with flowers on it. I assume it'll look great on stage! :) And even better on her when she has a mass of pin curls in her hair. I love that behind her hangs her blue angel costume....reminding us of the distant memories of that role she started out in...and how far she's come.... :)
And here's the back shot (it's slightly narrow in the shoulders so that's why it's not zipped all the way....they will let it out a bit for her performances).

But, sooooo exciting to know what dress is Hailey's and to be only 3 weeks from performance dates! Can't wait!!!

Happy Halloween!!

2010-10-31T21:22:00.006-04:00

Trick or Treat from 50's Poodle Skirt Girl, Shelby; Athena (the Greek goddess of Wisdom), Hailey; Cowgirl (aka Wild West Cutie!), Ash; and Superman, Dylan! :)

Fall Photo Update!

2010-10-28T08:27:00.020-04:00

With little time to spare as usual all I can provide is a little photo glimpse of our fall festivities as of late....We had some lovely semi-professional pics taken by a mom from our church a couple weeks ago at the beautiful Spring Mill Park (remember when my awesome friend, Jill, took pics of the kiddos here last year?) I don't have the professional pics to show off yet, but here's a few I snapped with my not-so-great camera :) (not quite sure what Hailey is cracking up about in the above pic :))
And this pic would be adorable except some buzzing bees in the plant to the left had Shelby's full attention and concern :) Alas, my life of trying to get good photos of 4 children :)
More proof of the non-cooperation of another Steg kid....Ash had thrown her hands up in dismay...she was DONE with pics! But, isn't the water wheel in the background beautiful. Such a pretty park!
Hailey practicing her party girl part (with a pumpkin as her doll) and Ash as her under-study :)
Our trip a couple weeks ago to our church pump. patch. I love that our church does this...makes for great photos...if we had a more cooperative photo bunch! The above pic was the best I could get!
Our fam. amidst the pumpks! :)
You see what I have to work with here...they only wanted to make funny faces...esp. love Hailey's half-dead look :)
After much hemming and hawwing we finally decided on a big pumpkin (and 4 small ones for each child)
Ash is very happy about her lil' pumpkin hiding in the background. Have you noticed how blonde she's become? People are commenting about it all the time lately. I guess I never noticed til now....Hailey is really our only true brunette...interesting.
It's been very windy here lately....which was awesome for Iron-man kite-flying!
If kite-flying were an Olympic sport, daddy could win for sure! :)
A little jaunt to our church pumpkin patch party/fall festival....we could only stay for a brief time before our park photo shoot...but it was a beautiful fall day and actually very hot. I show this above pic cuz it was the humor of the afternoon. You can't see it, but Ash is crying over fear of the puppet show going on in front of her and running to Hailey for comfort. If you will remember she does not like any type of animated/dress-up thing (i.e...Disney is bad news for her and Halloween might not go well this year either!) :) Her siblings finally calmed her down, but it wasn't easy :)
Leave it up to Dylan to find the one hole in this blow up toy to put his head through...can you see him?? :)

And no party is complete w/o cookies! :) Shelby was apparently in deep thought over what sprinkles to add to hers :)
I love this shot of Ash with her daddy (and lollipop in mouth) :)
Shelb started ice-skating lessons last week. Isn't she a lovely big-eyed beauty?! :)
And then the highlight of my week last week was Hailey and ballet....it was parent visitation week and I was able to watch 3/4 of her classes :) She was most annoyed by my constant presence, but oh well! :) Check out her flexibility above!
She is a lovely graceful sight to see :)
ummm, ouch, but impressive! :)
Her very full pilates class...she's on the far left in the front with the green shirt :)
Getting down in jazz/musical theater class! She has quite the rhythm in her step!
I know this above pics is terribly blurry (bummer we didn't have Kev's parent's camera!)...but check out Hailey's leap through the air during jazz....nice!
More gracefulness!
And more...
and some pointe-action :) I love watching my girl dance!
Last Friday we had Shelby's school fall festival....we had very little time to bake, but she did make this pumpkin cake for the cake walk :) She was very proud of it.
Here we are at the festival. Ash was the pink poodle that Shelby was at this age (and no this isn't her real costume....that's saved for Halloween only :))
Dylan as Darth. This was supposed to be his real costume, but he's not a big Star Wars fan yet, so we got him something more up his alley for Halloween. But, he loved the ghost painting on his cheek! :)
Kev-the caramel apple man! :) Bless his heart. This was supposed to be my job, but I had already spent time setting up for the festival that afternoon, so he graciously let me have a break and hang with the kids while he sold apples. Proof that he is a man of many talents! :)
Darth Dylan mixing up some concoction :)
Ash--a woman with her own style :) (in my FAV. outfit from Nina in FL!) :)
Dylan shooting hoops at his fall-ball sport shorties practice...he loves b-ball now!
Me and my two littlest ones after Dylan's last b-ball game :)
Showing off his fall ball certificate. He had so much fun playing soccer, t-ball and basketball for 6 weeks.
Shelby had her last Upwards Soccer game last Saturday. They tied. It was a great season of great fun, but we are glad to not have to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturdays anymore! :)
Ash on the pot! Ok, so she's not really potty-training yet, but I bet she could do it if stubborn-ness wasn't her best friend! :)
Hailey spent a spectacular 3 days at Bradfords Woods camping with her school class. It's a tradition here in our city. She had a blast! I only got this pic b/c I had to pick her up for her first Nutcracker practice the first night of camping. Great timing, go figure! :)
And then I had to post these pics cuz you can you believe it's been so hot we could go sprinkler-jumping in October!? Crazy!
Not sure who came up with umbrella idea (probably Shelby), but they apparently thought it was great fun!

I am so blessed by the smiles these kids bring me! More pics to come soon of Halloween fun.....Happy Autumn to ya'll!

Check this out! :)

2010-10-18T13:45:00.004-04:00

Check out this lovely surprise that arrived via UPS-man last week! Have you every seen so many pumpkin/ghostly PEEPS!?! Kev and the kids (aka the Steg-marshmellow-lovers!) were in heaven...and probably will be til Easter with this mass quantity of mellow-goodness! Thanks, Aunt Sue...you are the PEEP Queen! Oh, and have you ever tried the dark chocolate Peeps? I am not a Peep-lover normally, but those were a delicious addition to this goody package! (Ash claimed one right away as you can see) :)

Random Monday

2010-10-11T14:32:00.007-04:00

A few recent snapshots to pass the time.....is it me or does the "baby" of the house look like she's a mini teenager....she cracks me up in her new boots from Nina and Pops in FL (she LOVES these boots...and thinks she hot stuff like her biggest sis when she wears them!) :)
My Handsome Man...need I say more? I love this little guy...he melts my heart!
And check out how competitive he's become lately....he never used to even field a ball in t-ball and now he's a BALL HOG! :) He has loved playing soccer/t-ball and now basketball (I think basketball is his new fav...wish Pops Gritz was here to give him pointers!) :)
Shelby showing her soccer skills. She's not too shabby if she puts her mind to it! :)
All smiles while sitting on the "bench" :)
All smiles before going off to jazz class! :)
And here is Hailey at her open house at school last week in front of her class postcard "wall of fame". About 1/3 of these postcards are probably for her sent from our wonderful family and friends. For those of you who don't know about this awesome school project I will just say that Hailey received over 65 postcards from friends/family all over the U.S....as she was learning about every state in our country. It was such a fun project and I think she was the winner of the unofficial contest, followed closely by one of her best friends, Ella :) Thanks to all who contributed so graciously. She can't thank you enough!!! (and if you don't see your postcard(s) on this board it's b/c they've gotten so many there is an overflow board in the room :))
Me and my beautiful oldest girl on Sat. before leaving for the fall ballet :)...and below sitting in our nosebleed seats surrounded by IU students :) It was a fun night of beautiful ballet! I cherish evenings like that :)

The New Steg-Mobile :)

2010-10-09T17:14:00.007-04:00

The seven of us :)
Look at her sky blue color shine! :) A lil' interesting tid-bit about her...she's from FL just like me :) And below is Ash licking her lips (or maybe it's her boogers?) with excitement over the stow-n-go area! :) Little does she know we could stow her in there if she's bad :) J/K :) (fyi...she dressed herself today...she is quite the fashionista :))
Well, we Stegs weren't expecting this lil' bit of good auto news today, but sometimes God works in little mysterious ways and we are now the proud owners of a new minivan--a Chrysler Town and Country! :)

I actually don't think I've had the time to complain about our old "piece o' poo" silver speeder Dodge minivan, but since I have a lil' sec here I'll just tell you that it hung in there for a long time (6 years?), but recently convinced us that it's "Steg hauling" days were over when it was going to rack us up a nice bill at the auto shop to get the brakes/AC, etc fixed. We decided not to put any more money into her, so instead Kev's been driving her all over town with iffy brakes while Nina and Poppy Stegs' old Yukon became our temporary Steg mobile.

Anyway...long story short...Kev's dear and wonderful parents spent pretty much all day today car shopping with him (and Hays and Shelb) all over town and finally stumbled upon this beauty. She's a 2010 and as new as we're gonna get...great mileage and a nice, fairly low price. It was a no brainer for a big ol' fam. like ours in need of a safe, new vehicle. We grabbed her up. I won't say I "love" the color, cuz I really, really don't...it makes me feel old lady-ish to think about driving her...it's an old granny blue hair color, isn't it?! But, when you're in need of a vehicle and can't afford a brand new one you gotta take what you can get. She's really nice inside, has awesome stow-n-go seating (which we've wanted for years!), automatic side doors and back door (the back door is a new thing for us), but pretty pretty much has no bells and whistles....just the plain old necessary stuff, which is what I wanted. I was especially glad it had no DVD players. I much rather my kiddos read in the car than be glued to a video (plus the fact that we own portable DVD players for long trips). Oh, and we plan on getting a lifetime warranty on her...that's awesome news for us Stegs who have back luck with car repairs. Anyway...so it's just a plain jane lil' Bessie van that looks like an Ol' Bessie with it's sky blue exterior :) But, I'm ok with that. Function is what I'm about. The girls love her blue color and Dylan is most thrilled with the built-in flashlight in the back. I'm just happy that now we can travel to FL sometime in the next year! :) So, YAY for us and our new Blue Speeder! And extra thank you's to Kev's parents for going through the "new" car experience with him, while I stayed home with the rowdy little ones! :)

And the Newest Nutcracker Party Girl is....

2010-10-02T13:56:00.008-04:00

....you guessed it!!!! :) Hailey is super excited to be one of the four elite Clara friends in this year's Nutcracker!!! We just found out early this morning and she was jumping up and down with excitement when she read the casting board. She said at auditions 2 weeks ago, "I think it went really well" and I adore her optimism and high self-esteem, but I have honestly been a nervous wreck as we waited and wondered and prayed for the best. There is a lot more to this wonderful and exciting story, but for now this is all I have time to jot down. We are super proud and thrilled for our beautiful ballerina and I can't wait to watch her in my most favorite scene of the Nutcracker in just 2 months! Can't wait to see her all dressed up in her party dress.....

What a happy day in the Steg house!!!

(here's some pics from audition day 9/19)
The girls (and boy, not pictured...who is the one Hailey danced with in her pas de deux...he is Fritz :))...all lined up and ready to go (we parents have to wait it out in the basement...fun, fun!) :)...And a side shot of Hailey...who is very patiently (and non-nervously) waiting :) I love her confidence!
And here she is below right after jumping up and down and finding out the big news this morning....whohoo! Can you tell we had an early morning...the poor ballerina looks exhausted, but there is no rest for the weary with her 6 hours of ballet on Saturdays! :)

And another random beautiful picture of my beautiful girl....I'm so proud of the young lady she's become! Love ya' Hays! :)

Over the Rainbow Party!

2010-10-02T07:28:00.005-04:00

A few pics from Ashley's "big friend" party....more pics to come.....but it was so fun! :)

Princess Party....

2010-09-27T06:10:00.009-04:00

A few more pics of the family princess party....Ash LOVED her castle cake, which made the busy baking mommy and daddy very happy as we spent almost all day Saturday making it! :)
Telling us how much she really, really likes her lil' princess Ash cupcake :) She was fascinated by this...too bad I only had time to make one in about 5 minutes time before we left for the party...
A close-up of the cake very early that morning...we were proud we finished right after midnight instead of 2am with previous fondant creations (yes, we (or more like me) are crazy!) :)

A crazy lil' gang before the whole Steg family arrived...at Nina and Poppy Stegs house...we were so grateful they hosted so the family didn't have to drive far...
A sweet pic of my girl playing outside...it was a gorgeous day!
Playing in Nina and Poppy's new rock fountain...her fav. part of the day...until she got yelled at (by Poppy!) for drinking the water :)
Above is the best pic I could get of our busy girl in her darling outfit from my parents and Sharon (our gifted craft lady!) :) Sharon again, made two more beautiful shirts for Ash (both of which she wore this day since she got watermelon all over the first one). I love them! Love the coloring and just everything about them. They went perfect with the darling skirt from Nina and Pops in FL. She looked as cute as a princess should! And below is Ash with one of her fav. presents...a new pink princess stroller (and doll). She was all smiles over this...she LOVES babies! :)

....this post is a work in progress...but for fear it may be a month before I go through my 1000's of pics from the last 2 weeks...here's a few pics from Ashley's Princess Party celebration with the Steg fam. I think the fondant castle cake turned out pretty darn cute and we had a fab. time celebrating with the family! :)

2nd B-day Recap...

2010-09-22T22:08:00.006-04:00

A few wonderful pics from a simply wonderful 2nd b-day! This is also a work-in-progress post as I took over 800 pics that day thanks to Kev's parents new camera that they let us borrow. I "heart" that camera! Makes beautiful children look even more beautiful when you have awesome quality pics! :) Anyway...here's a few snip-its of our lovely, sunny, happy b-day-day! :) I love how happy our girl always is and she is happiest when she is outdoors (and lately...swinging!) :)
Is she not precious?! I think I have failed to mention how much we LOVE the awesome shirts that our awesome friend, Sharon, in FL made for Ash (this is one of 4...more pics of the others to come)....she does fabulous work and we felt so blessed that she took the time, energy and money to make our girl some memorable attire for her b-day and beyond. I think soon her "Sharon's Shirts" business will be under way! :) :)
And I made the sad little skirt. Good thing it only took me about 30 minutes and was way cheap/easy to make! Our girl apparently hates tulle (aka is not a princess at heart)...I had to use Skittles to bribe her to wear it and smile! :) Thankfully she abliged! :)
Here she is showing off her running skills...will tongue hanging out and all! (a Steg trait might I add! :)) Happiness exudes!
Showing off her dancing skills....is that an arabesque?
Sweet/slightly mischievous smile :)
She also hated the b-day hat I made for her (thankfully that took about 10 minutes :))....she did ablige and take one pic without throwing it off her head in disgust :) Have I mentioned how much I love our strong-willed child?! :)
I think this is one of my fav. pics of the day. We went on a long, hot walk down our trail to Great-Grandma and Grandpa's memorial tree...we had lunch there and we took along the only portable treat we had....these Little Debbie chocolate rolls....I thought Ash would gobble them up, but instead big brother ate them much to his excitement :) But, aren't they sweet together?! Almost looks like they get along...almost...
The big sisters and our super easy cheesy b-day cakes. For the life of me I was just not inspired this year for her b-day. I couldn't find a cake that jumped out at me and said "make me for Ashley's 2nd b-day" (not to mention we are super duper busy)...so instead I chose the easy route. I had the siblings make a cake (they chose a butterfly...each of the girls decorated a wing and Dylan did the marshmellow middle)...I made the very simple doggie cake (fyi: Ash LOVES dogs!). I was glad to make it a fondant-free event! :) So simple! And below is Ash huffing and puffing to blow out her candles. Besides balloons, she really loved blowing out the candles on her cakes.....
It was a very special day full of lots of special memories. I love this 2 year old!!

My Baby's TWO!

2010-09-21T06:25:00.004-04:00

Well, pinch me now cuz apparently overnight my little newborn baby girl went and grew up on me... and is now the big 2! :( I'm not sure what I think about that aside from the fact that I want to shed a few tears over my baby growing up so fast. But since I can't turn back the clock or stop time I guess I'll just say that I love this 3rd daughter of mine...love her to pieces. God sure knew what he was doing when he gifted us with this feisty stubborn-headed, strong-willed lil' mama :) She is the one who makes me want to pull my hair out daily, but she's also the one who makes me smile constantly with the things she does and says. I love this little trouble-maker of a sweetheart and I am so grateful every day that God gifted our family with her. So, here's to you lil' Ash! Happy 2nd b-day from your crazy lil' family. We love you, sweet girl!

Our Busy Life!

2010-09-10T11:03:00.015-04:00

Well, life is....busy....same ol' sad story for not blogging! (sorry to those of you who worry :)). I would love to tell you this will change soon, but I've realized the reality of our household...it is just going to continue to get busier. My goal for now is to at least post once a month. Hopefully I can at least succeed in that! :( Stinks really...since I love blogging and it's a great outlet for me...and even more important, it's sometimes the only way for my family down south to see pics of us. Shame on me for not having 10 times the amount of hours in the day! :) But, I do the best I can...and right now my family is my priority and they are busy, thus I am busy :) Anyway....all that to say that here's a few new pics of what's been going on in our busy lives the last couple weeks. I love the above pic of my littlest darlin's on one of our recent hot and humid walks on the trail. We've gotten smarter and are now taking sugary drinks and fruit roll-ups to get us through the walk w/o any (or much) whining :)
LOL...this is how Ash takes her walks lately...not in a stroller, not pushing a stroller (like most little girls do), not riding a bike or trike...she has to CARRY her lawn mower (she won't even push it most of the time)...has to carry it. What a strong, funny gal!

We've hit the ground running this week and are back in the rat race of activities...mainly ballet....Hailey is now in a new, more intense level and dances about 10 hours a week...she has been exhausted and between that and her busy school schedule there was at least one night this week of tears of exhaustion. But, she loves school and loves to dance (this pic is actually from the summer...she is very anti-photo lately so the ones I took this week aren't great). She is really excited about her new pilates, jazz and musical theater classes tomorrow....
Our miss Shelby girl is catching the activity fever like her big sis! (and she's almost so speedy I didn't get her in this pic...LOL!) She started Upward Soccer at our church this week. She LOVES it even though her coach never showed up. She started jazz last night (pics still on my camera) and LOVES it too...and soon she'll be doing art class and ice-skating. She is usually my homebody so this is a change for her! Go, Shelb!
We had a lovely Labor Day on the Lake with Nina and Poppy Stegs (and their boat). Is it me or do my "babies" look all grown up all of a sudden :( Crazy how that happens! They sure are a beautiful bunch aren't they?! I love 'em!
Hailey showed off her knee-boarding skills. This is a new thing for her...I think she had gone a couple weeks prior when Kev and I were gone for our anniversary. She caught on quickly and loves it. Kev and I were bummed we couldn't show her our awesome kneeboard skills...this board is just for kids :) Hailey was the only one who even ventured on this past Monday...it was soooo windy and rough on the lake this day :( (though it doesn't look like it from this pic)
Nina and Pops and their grandkids chillin' in the boat :) What a day it was...so windy and kinda cold and then the boat motor kept stalling and they could barely get it parked at the dock. Phew...sometimes boating isn't as relaxing as it looks! But, it was still a fun day and Nina made us a very yummy lunch! :) Thanks Nina and Poppy!

Shelb's fav part of Labor Day....swimming in the resort pool (where the boat is docked). She LOVES to show off her swimming skills which improved tremendously this summer! :) Go Shelba girl!
We switched the girls' rooms around this past weekend. I LOVE Ash and Shelb's room....the bed looks so much better here, I think. But, mainly I just like change...I love to move furniture around much to my husband's dismay...and I think my girls' inherited this lovely trait as well :) We also decided to take the rail off Ashley's bed so now she is officially a big girl and not even 2 yet! We even got rid of the baby monitor (first time in 10 years w/o them!) Things are changing here in the Steg house. We are saying bye bye to baby stuff!
Seeing her lil' sisters' room changed around motivated Hailey to do the same...so she came up with a plan for her own room and had daddy help her move it. Now she's just waiting 'til she can get rid of the baby girlish bedding and move on to her fav. colors of hot pink, bright green and bright blue (we said she could maybe redo he room when turns 12...in 1.5 years). She's waiting patiently (more or less)........
And next room redo will be Dylan's. He needs a total boy (cars) overhaul. Hopefully I can tackle that before the craziness of the holidays!
This past weekend the Stegs did a monumental thing! We camped out (in a tent) for the first time ever!!! And better yet...we survived! And even better yet we did it all with the help of our bestest buds, Dave and Heather and kiddos! Thanks guys for inviting us. We had a blast.
The old marrieds chillin' at the camp sight. Don't we look like natural campers?! haha :) Ok, not really...but it was a TON of fun and we would love to get a tent and camp more often with our bestest buds! And isn't this campsite the bomb?! It was on a little lake...in Starve Hallow (Brownstown?) about an hour away from Bloomy. So pretty and soooo relaxing!
Our borrowed tent (thanks Dave and Heather!)...notice who is napping inside! Kev and I slept in here with Dylan and Ash. It would have been great aside from our air mattress popping that night. But, Ash and Dylan slept great. Hailey and Shelby slept in the camper with the more experienced campers :)
Daddy and his lil' girl chillin' in the camp chairs. Ash claimed this darling chair even though it wasn't hers :) You know how she is...Miss Take Charge!
Ok, I can't get this above pic to post horizontally to save my life, but the craziness of the picture goes along with it posting sideways. Here's the crazy 6 year olds at bedtime in the camper. They are a nutty couple aren't they?!
And last week ALL the kids had eye appts. It was a long 5 hour ordeal (no joke)....I'm not complaining since it was all free (we do eye studies for Indiana University and our payback is free eye exams...nice for someone as cheap as me!)...anyway....I post this not b/c it's super exciting but to sadly say that poor Shelb's eye turn is back with a vengence :( We are not going to do surgery again at the moment (since I don't even think it worked this last time and it was quite traumatic), but we might try doing some eye muscle therapy. We'll revisit this in the New Year when she goes for her next visit. I'm bummed to say the least though :( In happier news, Dylan was chosen to go in their upcoming new pamphlet so he had his picture taken for that. They really, really wanted Ash to be in it cuz they thought she was so cute (especially in her adorable outfit from Nina G), but if you know our girl you know she is very stubborn and she just wouldn't allow any acceptable pics be taken of her. Poo on Ash!
Last week Monday our little 4 year old started his final year of preschool (pre-K). He was super excited and now goes 3 days a week (M, W, F). We were super excited he has Shelby's old teachers, Miss LeaAnne and Miss Angela (who was also Hailey's teacher soooo many years ago!). This is his first official day (last Wed.) of school....
Here is last Monday (orientation day) with mommy and daddy and Ash in tow :)
And soon our busy, energetic boy will start soccer, t-ball and basketball....we have some VERY busy Saturdays ahead of us with all three in sports those days....I can't even imagine when we add Ash in the mix, who we think might be a prima ballerina like Hailey :)
My baby! Is she not the sweetest??!! I am really enjoying my few days a week with just her and I chillin' out! Before too long she'll be in school (thankfully 2 more years to go) and I'll be all alone at home :( But, for now I am loving my almost 2 year old. It's crazy that her b-day is less than 2 weeks away. And even crazier (sadder) that I have nothing planned :( I am so busy lately and so not motivated to plan a party. Poor girl. Good thing she's only 2 and won't notice. I love this crazy, funny toddler!
Our last-minute late anniversary trip to Cincinnati 2 weeks ago was super-fab! I hope to post more about it later, but for now here's a couple teaser pics....of my and my handsome hubby....we saw a very cool castle (Kev loves castles) the one day built all by one man when he was like 80....
...and then we saw lots of sights in the downtown area. Very fun and very restful.
We REALLY loved our half-day adventure at the Cincinnati IKEA! It was our first time experiencing this store and boy does it make me want to reorganize and refurnish my entire house! What an awesome place! Thanks Cor for this idea!

So, that's a quick lil' run down of the going ons in our lil' household. Busy, busy, busy is the life we lead, but blessed, blessed, blessed we are by all of it. I wouldn't have it any other way. The kids are lovin' school and doing so well (Shelby is the "hot girl" in class apparently...she has two boys in the class who are in love with her (one even told me he has a crush on her)...they play kissy games on the playground...lovely!). On the homefront Kev has been busy getting us refinanced...we had our house reappraised (which went great!) and can't wait for lower payments, especially considering we are in need of a new vehicle (our van basically bit the dust a couple weeks ago). It's always something.....

Well, friends/family...thanks for checkin' in. I know some of you have mostly given up my lil' blog, but please don't lose all hope in me. I have great intentions, just very few extra minutes in a day.....

I have a Nephew!

2010-08-25T18:38:00.003-04:00

Well, in the midst of our germ-crisis there is a bit of good news on the horizon today which has made us smile! :)

I am happy to announce that my one and only brother and his wonderful wife welcomed their second child and first boy, Austin Thomas, today! (8lbs, 2oz--no idea on length...born at 4:57pm)

YAY!!!!!!

We're soooo excited for them and so happy the Gritz name will go on! I hear he is an adorable (handsome) little guy and looks a lot like his daddy. Though I'm still waiting for some proof in the way of pictures (trying to be patient...hint, hint :)). As soon as I get some I'll try to post them.

Hope Big Sis Brooke is enjoys her new lil' brother as much as I always enjoyed mine (aka dressing him up like a girl and sharing my cabbage patch kids and care bears with him :)). Good times to be a big sis and have a lil' bro! But, we're so happy for you guys and the new Gritz addition and love the name, Austin. Hailey was possibly going to be an Austin if she was a boy...so if we had it on our baby name list you know it's a good one! haha :) Though I still do like George W. too (Austin's in-utero name which was a Pops' favorite :)).

Welcome baby Austin!!! Your Aunt, Uncle and 4 Cousins in IN can't wait to meet you...hopefully you won't be almost a year old by then!

another one bites the dust...and another...

2010-08-25T06:31:00.003-04:00

...well, that's pretty much the jest of it around here as far as sickness goes....

The germs are winning the war in the Steg house this week...Dylan and Shelb were up at the exact same time this morning puking in their beds (oh joy!)

Worn out is an understatement for how we feel around here...it's been the longest 2 weeks ever and I am ready to wash down this house (and all the people in it) with Lysol.

Ash and Daddy are the only ones who have been spared thus far, but I'm not holding my breath they will be puke-free much longer :(

Sigh :( :(

Not meant to be :(

2010-08-23T09:18:00.002-04:00

Well my hopes and prayers for a better week were just not meant to be...at least not yet :( Hailey started puking at 1am this morning and was up pretty much every 30 mins since then (apparently I was wrong about the food poisoning...it's a nasty vomit virus?). Poor Hailey is so disheartened...not only to be sick (she is never sick...she's the healthiest of our bunch), but to miss school (she hasn't been absent from school in 2 years)...and to miss one of the first few days of school too....just really stinks. Neither of us slept much last night so we are just worn down. The whole family is worn down. If you could just say a tiny prayer for our health and for a tad bit of mental sunshine to come our way we'd greatly appreciate it. Being sick for 9 days is just no good for anyone, especially a busy mom who needs to be there for her kiddos :( Praying for a better rest-of-the-week....and for the germs of the house to vacate the premises and not invade the other Steg 4...

Better week?

2010-08-22T07:25:00.003-04:00

Just when I thought things were getting better after my week-long ordeal with no voice and no sleep due to a nasty cough/upper resp thing, I get (what I think) is food poisoning at Shelby's school pool party on Friday. Puked all that evening and slept all day yesterday. I don't think I'll eat hot dogs again for a long time. I am starting to get depressed over here...this is now how I anticipated "back to school" week :(

Lord, please make this week be a better one, cuz a sick and worn out mama does not make for a happy house :(

Back to School...already! :) :(

2010-08-18T09:58:00.003-04:00

Well, it was Back to School today for the oldest kids in the Steg fam. I have a whole post started on "the big day", but I am very down and out with some kind of respiratory thing (lost voice included) so I can only muster enough energy to post this one pic of my darlings after their first day of school (the a.m. pics I took made them look so sleepy--which they rightfully were at 6am). All I will say about the day right now is that it was overall great....5th for Hailey was perfection (same teacher, same classroom, same best friends...she couldn't be any happier!)...and 1st for Shelb was fairly perfect as well (our fav. 1st grade teacher (Hailey's old one) and some good friends of hers in class with her...aside from the boy next to her who took her new box of kleenex and getting on the wrong bus to come home...all was great!) :) More about that all later. My question for the day....why does time have to go by so quickly? I still remember sending both my girls off to preschool for the first time....now look at them....being a mom and watching your babies grow up in the blink of an eye is tough sometimes :(

Random-ness

2010-08-15T14:48:00.015-04:00

Just a very quick, very random post of just a few of the many, many comings and goings of the Steg gang the last few weeks. School starts this week so I am hoping I can get my rear back in blog gear and start updating...but for now this is all I've got! :).....first off, we had some AWESOME times in FL last month! Lots of pool time for the 2 lil' ones and I and Nina and Pops...so fun and so relaxing...and definitely a highlight for the kiddos!
We had the most awesome time at the beach...the BEST we've ever had. Remember that usually we go to FL in Dec/Jan. when it's not exactly warm and nice. Going in July was ideal and the weather was just perfection. Yes, it was hot, but not terribly humid and the water was perfect and clear and almost flat. My fav. part was watching Dylan run back and forth in the waves...he was in heaven. I haven't seen him that happy in a long time. He just loved every sec of it and I loved watching him (and his blow-up worm :)).
Ash was equally cute and had an awesome time as well! Thanks, Nina, for taking us! Maybe next time we go you will obey the rules of the sun and put on sunscreen?! Your legs will thank you!
Here is Dylan learning how to jump off Pops' shoulders into the pool (at night, might I add :)). I think we were all a bit shocked to see how daring our little boy got when his Pops showed him some "tough love" :) He came back to Indiana an AWESOME swimmer, that's for sure! He can swim the whole length of a pool now. Amazing, what a real pool in the backyard can do for a kid!
And since I am doing this post partially for my bored buddy, Lein who is patiently waiting for her overdue mystery baby to show his/her face...I had to post a pic of her in her nursery with baby in belly along with crazy Ash (not sure what she's doing to her face??) Soooo excited for Lein and Marc and their 1st little bundle that hopefully arrives this week! :) Isn't the nursery adorable? I love the brightness of it.
Another funny beach shot...if it's one thing the "picky eaters" in our fam. loved to eat in FL it was watermelon! I think they at two big whole watermelons by themselves in those 9 days! :)
And then a few random pics from NC...one of our fav. new things to do this year was go to Sliding Rock (thanks to my bro who came up with this idea). The kids loved it....basically you slide down a big rock into a deep pool at the bottom. Very fun, but very cold :) (above is Hailey sliding)
A family pic of our NC gang/the Gritz fam at the cabin. Aren't we a handsome group?!

Our gang on the Blue Ridge Parkway...gotta love the mountains!
Uncle Jeff tubing down Big Creek with Shelby...
Nina and Pops with the 4 oldest grandkids....I have one of them with Brooke included too, but can't find it in our masses of pics right now....
Pops making Ash laugh with his whiskers :)
Hailey jumping off the big rock after our almost 2 mile hike here...she was very nervous doing this since the first time she tried she got stuck in the current...

Shelby with her new pet (Sally the salamander)....who we discovered later that day did not like to be removed from her natural habitat (RIP, Sally) :(
The twin cousins having a staring contest :)
Dylan and Thomas! This was a surprise trip...we discovered that for the first time Thomas the Train was in NC when we were. We surprised Dylan and took him the last day we were in NC. He loved it!
And one of my fav. summer moments...watching Hailey dance. She spent most of July in her summer intensive ballet sessions. It was an overall great experience, but it came with some valuable life lessons learned too. But, she was in ballet heaven learning the ins and outs of Swan Lake...is she not gorgeous in the above real tutu (the first time she'd worn a real one like this). She danced beautifully and it was such a joy to watch her. (the above pic is of her first intermediate session that I was able to see)
I sadly missed the second advanced session performance (as I was in FL)...but thankfully Kev's parents had their new, good camera along and took a few pics...here are some of them. Wow, check out how flexible our ballerina is. All I can say is "ouch". (she's 2nd one on the right)
And here is Hailey after the performance with her beautiful flowers from Nina and Poppy....and below is her in action...wish I'd had this nice camera for the 1st performance. Much better pics than what I got with my camera.
Anyway...trust me when I say I have many more pics I will attempt to share in the coming weeks. But for now random-ness is all I can give. Happy end-of-summer!

12 Years with My Man! :)

2010-08-14T07:39:00.008-04:00

12 years ago today I married the man I'd waited my whole young life for! :) I knew I was blessed on that beautiful wedding day, but honestly I didn't know how blessed I'd become year after year being married to this wonderful man of mine. It's been the craziest 12 years I could have dreamed of, but there's one thing that holds true in the midst of it all...I wouldn't have wanted to spend a single moment of it w/o him right by my side. I love you, Kevin, and saying "I do!" to you 12 years ago this afternoon was the 1st greatest blessing of my life...followed by the 4 little beautiful blessings that were a result of our love and God's greatness :) I love you, Babe...more and more every day and as cliched as it is to say...you complete me! Happy 12th Anniversary to my Man!

Finally Home! :)

2010-08-04T14:15:00.002-04:00

Well, after 2 1/2 weeks of loafing around like a lazy person in the mountains of NC and the coast of FL I am home and back to hum drum things like housekeeping and laundry and blogging! :) I have so many thoughts about the last few weeks, but I am still just plain tuckered out from all the traveling and being thrust quickly back into the chaos of 4 kids and life. But, be rest assured I have TONS of pics to share and lots of sentiments as well. For now I'll just say that NC was heavenly...wonderful times spent with family (though very little down time...we need to work on that for next year!)....and FL was just perfection...hanging out with Nina and Pops and swimming almost every day in the pool with the two littlest ones by my side. It was just good, good times. Now the countdown is on for school...2 weeks from today. Where has the summer gone?! More to come....

Happy 35, Babe!

2010-07-27T08:29:00.004-04:00

Well, today my sweet and wonderful hubby turns the big 35! And I'm 100's of miles away from him in FL unable to celebrate with him in person or even give him a hug or a kiss :( That stinks. But, hopefully his mother and our oldest girls will make the day special for him in some way cuz he deserves it. He's the most amazing person that ever crossed my path and I love him more than words can say and every day I wonder what I did so right to call him my own. I am blessed beyond measure by his love, patience, guidance and companionship. I know this every day that I'm with him, but I guess it's becomes even more evident when we're apart :) So, happy 35, my handsome man! I wish I was there to make you a big ol' cake or take you to Cold Stone or out to a big Japanese dinner or something....but I'm a loser this year and am apart from you for the first time on your big day :( I promise I'll make it up to you and we'll celebrate as one big happy family next week when I return. Ash, Dyl and I send all our love and hugs and kisses from sunny So. Fla! XOXOXOXO :)

Off to NC (and FL) we go!

2010-07-17T09:21:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been crazy busy as normal around here and although I'd love to post about things like ballet and such, I simply have no time....as it's off on our 1-2 week vacation in NC/FL we go! Can't wait to relax in the mountains with the Gritz fam! More about that all when I return in Aug. Is it just me or is summer flying by WAY too fast :( That really stinks! Such is life in the fast lane of the Steg fam....

My Cute Kids!

2010-07-13T18:25:00.005-04:00

Just a few newer pics to brighten the day. I love these 4 more than words can tell and I am so blessed by their beings in my life. I am one overly blessed mama (and it doesn't hurt that they are quite beautiful and handsome to boot!) :)

The Stegs' 1st Annual Declutter Event!

2010-07-10T08:16:00.031-04:00

Just a lil' post with a few pics to show off the proof of our blood, sweat and tears over the 2 weeks of our summer 2010 declutter event. I'd like to say I'm pleased with the resulst, but the sad fact is it looks like we hardly touched the house. It still feels overrun with toys, clothes and paperwork :( We probably needed like 2 mos instead of 2 weeks! But, Kev the eternal optimist assures me (the eternal pessimist) that we did good and it's better than it was and we should be proud. Not so sure about that, but I love the guy so I'll partially agree :) Anyway....above is our kitchen...probably the cleanest it's been since we moved into our house 8+ years ago. I decluttered the counters and went as far as to get down on my hands and knees to scrub the floor with a toothbrush. Now that is something I haven't had time to do since I had Dylan! It felt good to possibly be able to eat off the floor! :) As you can see Ash was excited about the cleanliness of our kitchen too...or maybe she just wanted her milk out of the locked fridge! :)
I don't remember if I ever showed off our new dining room table! Is it not the most beautiful piece of furniture!? I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! It's nice and tall (counter height) and my fav. dark wood and seats 8 and is just pure beauty (not that the 30 year old hand-me-down dog chewed one we owned before wasn't the cat's meow)...but this one is just slightly more awesome! And I love the simplicity of our dining room now. Just some artwork and my cuties on the wall! That's all I need to eat in peace! :)
I finally hung all 4 (hand/feet) wall plates in the kitchen (made by my sweet kiddos). I love them! I'm definitely thinking I need a window treatment though...and to repaint my kitchen! It needs some color!
Proof of our now clean (usually messy) tupperware cupboard, silverware drawer and cup cupboard! Not as clutter-free as Nina tried to make it when she visited in April, but it's not too shabby either! :)
I should have just made the above pic simply a pic of our junk drawer (far left)...check it out...it's sooo organized now. I should have taken a before pic of some of this stuff, but I was honestly too embarrassed...we could hardly open this drawer cuz it was so crammed full of pencils and pens and junk and we had food falling out of our terribly small pantry.
Our "keep on truckin" lil' old 13 year old fridge. It's been a trooper and this is probably the cleanest it's been in 8 years too! It's hard to keep a clean fridge with kids who love to spill and hate to clean up! :)
This is probably one of our best "clean-up" solutions! A bigger garbage can...and one that slides out! I love it! If you know our home you know we have a lot of trash with 6 people living here...and we were living off a small office supply garbage can (which my mom has hated when she visits...she has not hidden her opinion on that!)...anyway...this is the biggest we could fit in this small space, but it's been a ton better for our overflowing trash problem! This might very well be a gift for Nina too! :) You're welcome, Mom! :)
Ok...here's a few "before and after pics". Our spice/sprinkle cabinet (yes, we have A LOT of sprinkles!)...a terrible mess....too much junk.....
So, we invested in a tiered spice rack....love it! Kev even alphabetized it all (we'll see how long that lasts!) :)

And I love this idea....if you ever need more storage and have a small house (with lots of kids and stuff!) like us...use these over-the-door hangers for EVERYTHING! We already have them on all the doors for shoes and gloves/scarves, etc....but this time we used them for school supplies (just nailed it the wall)....so the kids could get stuff out easily....love it and it left us with a much less-cluttered coat closet with also doubles as the kids' craft supply closet!
The kiddos playing with all the Little People stuff that we've had in storage for probably 8 years. It was like Christmas in July for them! :) We put a new shelf up in the "cat room" in the basement just for them to store all this. Did I mention we have every Little People toy imaginable...we went a little crazy when Hailey was 1 and 2 years old! :)
In the midst of our declutter, Hailey had 4 double headers! CRAZY!
We thought this would be her last game, but turns out she had 1 more tournament game. Now the season is over...it was a great chance for her to try a new sport...but not sure it compares to ballet?? Her team and coaches were great though. Go Storm!
The only thing Dylan wanted to do on his first weekend home after our cleaning escapade was to find everything with a road on it and put it all together. You know our boy and his cars and roads!

Kev going through our mounds of cookbooks! We are vowing this coming fall to try one new thing a week in one of our cookbooks or cooking magazines! There is tons of yummy stuff in there! And, yes, the man loves his Crepes!
The kitchen stuff we got rid of. This wasn't actually that tough. There have been a couple boxes of things that we got for our wedding 13 years ago and never really even used. Those went (or are going) to Goodwill! It left us with a little more cabinet space, which is nice!
Some of the 20-30 bags of stuff we gave away to our local crisis pregnancy center, goodwill, backstreet missions, etc. Kev made a trip to one of these places almost every day of our declutter You'd think our house would be empty after giving away that many clothes and toys, but no siree bob...we are still a cluttered mess in Steg-land! :(
Our messy corner by the fridge. For as long as I can remember we have wanted a pantry here. We were promised one when we purchased our house, but the salesman messed up and was fired so we didn't get that promised (much-needed) pantry. And we never took the time/money to order one. Anyway...so this is not normally how messy it looks, but it goes to show that the small bookshelf we had here was not suitable for all our cookbooks and mainly for all my cake-decorating books....this mess coincidentally occurred when I was looking for a recipe during our declutter (all these books fell on me)...lovely!
This is our "new" space! Don't you just love this new chrome shelf?! I do! It's perfect and it got some of my bigger appliances off my counter.
A lil' look into the small amount of work we did upstairs...our hallway (kids') closet/linen/medicine closet is always a mess...it's really hard to keep it clean since the kids are in charge of it mostly...
But, I was proud of my all-day clean out of it....
and even more proud of Kev's awesome idea...to hang another over-the-door hanger behind our closet door in our master bath....to put all extra bath supplies in...love it and it totally cleared out our linen closet! And you never see this cuz it's always behind our open closet door (which is closed in this picture)
We said goodbye to the crib (well, sorta...it's still not out of the house as we haven't had time to post it on Craiglist)...but we moved it out of the nursery and moved Dylan's new bunk bed to the perfect new spot...and moved Ash into her new bottom bunk in Shelby's room. Now it's a shared room. Ash has done great in there and is sleeping like a charm. We are very, very lucky! But, it was sorta sad to say goodbye to our Ragazzi crib that we loved so much and picked out just for our 1st baby over 10 years ago. Even after 10 years and 4 kids it looks brand new. I hope we can sell it and our dresser/changing table to a nice couple expecting a baby. We sold Shelby's old furniture to a wonderful lady who had a little girl turning 2. I loved knowing it was going to a sweet little girl who would love it like we did. We also sold the ol' organ! Good riddens and now Nina can have more space in her basement room!
Here's proof or our 2 days of basement declutter/clothes-sorting...what a chore...a very taxing (and emotional) of a chore for me (and Kev)...
Even after 2 days of decluttering and giving away 20 bags of clothes...we were still left with all this....
And I'm sorta embarrassed to show this off...our master closet...it's the catch-all for...well...everything! I cannot let it get this bad again so I am posting this to remind me! A walk-in closet is really meant to be what it says "walk-in"...and thankfully now it is. This doesn't show off how it really will look since Kev just hung a new shelf in here this week and now I can actually refold all the towels and his t-shirts....but this pic was proof that we actually have a closet floor (haha!) :)
Anyway...so that was that....about 9 days of decluttering (minus many hours due to softball games and running kids here and there)...and we probably only crossed a few things off our list of 20, but like so many of our dear friends say "it's better than it was!" :) I guess that's true and I need to stop being so pessimistic! But, it does go to show that we need to keep doing this kind of thing and make it an annual event or even biannual. And I need to be better about not letting things pile up. This is so hard to do when you are a very busy mom of 4 and you spend so much time immersed in your kids' lives. I'd much rather have happy, smart, well-rounded kids than a spic-n-span house any day. But, I must say...having both happy/smart kids and a clean house for a brief moment is nice too! :)

(Special thanks again to Nina and Poppy Stegs who took such wonderful and amazing care of all 4 kiddos for those almost-two weeks...we truly could not have done this w/o their love and support and generosity...if you don't know them and love them like we do, you should...they are two of the most amazing people you will ever meet and we owe them immensely!)

Swim Lessons!

2010-07-09T10:35:00.010-04:00

Two posts from me in one day...unheard of! Well, it's been a lazier day than normal for me with no swim lessons, canceled play date for Hailey and canceled photo session for Ash due to scratch on the face in the bath last night (go figure)...so I guess I was meant to have a free, laid back morning. And with that I'll post a few pics of swim lessons this week. Monday was our first day of swimming and we were off to IUOP (Indiana University Outdoor Pool...our fav. place to take lessons)...the three youngest are swimming for the next two weeks. Hailey will swim in August once her vigorous ballet schedule is over. This was Ash's first time doing lessons (parent-toddler ones) and boy has she been in rare form (that's a nice word for it) in the pool all week....but isn't the above pic so sweet of my lil' swimmers!?!
Since Monday was a holiday for daddy he was able to watch us and take some pics...Ash actually looks semi-happy here trying to swim to her duckie...but don't let the semi-happy face fool you...she was a BEAR this day in the pool (and almost every day since)! :(
Dylan on the otherhand LOVES swim lessons and puts his whole heart into it. I love this happy boy! We put him in a level probably above what he was able to do, but he is doing awesome and trying so hard!
Can you tell what she saying? "NAH!" The smile on my face is lovely isn't it?! If you only knew what I was really thinking....stubborn baby!
Hmmm...daddy actually got semi-happy looking (non-crying) pics....don't know how he managed that?
Dylan and his instructor...
Little guy jumping in...he loves to jump in the pool!
Shelby in her advanced class...we too put her in a higher level and she almost cried the first day cuz it was "so hard"...but she's doing great and learning to work hard w/o complaining (a challenge for her) :)
And I love these pics....this was all Ash wanted to do the first day...was jump into the pool...and she didn't just want to jump into my arms...she wants to scoot as far down the pool as she could and then jump so I wouldn't catch her. Can we say Miss Independent?!
1, 2, 3....
...go! She almost didn't make it into the pool :)
And here is a pic from Wednesday...still being stubborn and ornery and fussy! :( (finally by Thursday she hardly fussed at all...phew!) And then a lil' pic of our prima ballerina on day one of "ballet camp"...she is LOVING it! It's very intensive, but an awesome learning experience....she has been exhausted each day, but is lovin' learning Swan Lake choreography and I can't wait to see her perform next Friday night.

Friends...and an Ice Cream Pool Party!

2010-07-09T09:50:00.011-04:00

Just another quick post to show some of our summer fun. I decided very last minute this week to throw a fun little ice cream social/pool party for Hailey and her best school friends. She was thrilled with the idea the only issue is that she now has intensive ballet session 5.5 hours every day til we leave on vacation next week so we had to try to squeeze in something in the evening hours. So, we emailed all the girls and sure enough most (all but 1) were available this Wednesday. They had a grand ol' time hamming it up and eating junk food. Here's the pics to prove it. I realize I never posted Hailey's b-day party pics from March/April, but these are the same slumber party girls...Baileigh, Audrey and Ella...(Erika not present :()
Before the official party started we had Baileigh and Sydne over for supper (we made bagel pizzas and cheesy bread...yumm!)...Hailey was still at ballet at this point, so she missed out...
But, as soon as she arrived home her friends surprised her with a bombardment of water balloons...can you see Shelby made it up the deck first to get her! :)
Hailey reciprocated with all she had in her hand...sunscreen!
We put the slip-n-slide on the side yard...much more fun (and fast) on the incline! We had to put Ashley's deflated baby pool at the end to catch the girls from flying into the grass!
Ash decided it was GREAT fun to go down on her own. :)
LOL! Check out her happy face!
The girls making a pool whirlpool and Shelby taking all the "big girl" fun in :)
Bathing beauties :)
Baileigh (aka The Wild One :)) and Shelby....going crazy shaking up a root beer and letting it explode!
Digging into the ice cream sundae toppings before I had even brought out the ice cream! Oink Oink!
Ash getting her first whipped cream in the mouth...she had no idea what to do with it after this so it fell right out of her mouth :)
The girls diggin' into their sundaes.
We made the "siblings" go up on the deck and leave the big girls alone...they weren't too pleased about that. Ash was the first to polish off her sundae...no surprise there!
Sydne and Shelby chowing down.
The girls showing off their George Washington hairdos...to which I mentioned they looked more like Elvis...so they did these Elvis poses instead :) Crazy girls!

It was a quick, but fun evening and nice to get the girls together before many of them (and us) leave on vacation and before school starts again. Hard to believe summer is half over already :( We have just been trying to cram in as much friend-time as we can!

Happy 4th!

2010-07-04T07:20:00.018-04:00

Well, I'm a couple days late in posting this though years down the road you'll never know that since I am always quick to "save" things on blogger on the correct date! haha :) But, we had a FAB 4th full of good ol' times with our "fam" and bestest friends, Dave, Heather & kiddos. We just love them to death and they truly made our holiday complete...here's the pics to prove it...(oh, and I always take a lil' patriotic pic of our kiddos in their attire...this year I got cheap and didn't buy new red, white and blue stuff...we just recycled the old....having just decluttered and found the old stuff this was the perfect/free solution...they are the cutest 4 I know!)
Gotta love "babysitter Abby". Ash sure did....mostly cuz she kept getting her snacks (our girl's best friend is anyone who'll give her junk food...thanks, Ab!)
Nothing better than eating Doritos in the pool :)
Contemplating how awesome cheesy Doritos are :)
A view of our backyard 4th fun :)
The gourmet meal (burgers, corn on the cob and some new "healthy" onion and zucchini kabob creation that Kev wanted to try) :)
The grill master himself! :)
Our family feast...
And then it was back in the pool....Babysitter Abby even let Ash squirt her with the squirt gun...what a great gal!
She's a cutie even with a gun in her hand! :)
The kiddos in the pool...
The big kiddos kept running back and forth and diving in their big pool...well, Ash notices everything the big kids do and she had to do the same.....run....
JUMP! :)
And then make sure mama had seen it :)
Abs getting feisty with the gun!
Then it was belated b-day celebration time....we missed both Heather and Emily's b-days about a month ago...so we celebrated in style and made them 2 cakes...yum! I love this pic of them singing to each other :)
using up all their hot air!
Our lovely cake creations (Kev and I slaved over the hot oven making these babies :))....we made a red velvet cake with oreo ice cream in the middle and cool whip and choc. shavings on top...and then Kev had the idea to do a strawberry/vanilla poke (jello) cake....both were super yummy!
Ash loved her red poke cake!
A big "family" picture! We love these guys! (even sleepy/silly posing Ethan :))
And a goofy one...
...and one more goofy one!
Ash was super excited when Ethan surprised us all with patriotic mints! Can you tell our girl just lights up for treats!
Then it was off to church for the big fireworks show...we camped out here by the preschool playground.
Here's our gang in the dark chillin' and eating popsicles
Ash was getting sleepy at this point (almost 10pm), but she kept on eating!
Awww, aren't they the cutest...someday we'll show this at their wedding :)
LOL...Abby pretending fireworks were starting...we waited for what seemed like forever....love Emily's face too...and good ol' Hays doesn't miss a lick...she saw the camera and hid...poo on her!
the boys being silly :)
And finally it began....this is the only proof I have....digital cameras take terrible fireworks photos (at least ours does)....I was hoping they'd do a big finale and I'd get a pic of that, but it kinda fizzled out at the end...below is my most fav. pic of the evening...check out Ashley's face as she watches the fireworks with daddy. So sweet :)
What a fun 4th with our forever friends! :)

Award-Winning Parenting :(

2010-07-02T22:08:00.007-04:00

Well, tonight was a "proud" parenting night for Kev and I...

Our first call to poison control.

Maybe I should be patting myself on the back that after 10 years and 4 kids this is our first time calling this number, but I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it in all honesty, esp. considering I am a nurse (though I will say I am not surprised by the culprit at hand...our mischievous "try anything" toddler).

More embarrassing is the fact that it was my fault. I'll blame it on being kid-less for 9 days and being out of practice in the "baby safety" area. Hopefully you'll agree (if not, keep it to yourself!) :)

So, let me back up. We got our kiddos back today. I'm glad about that. I've missed them. And I've not particularly enjoyed cleaning, decluttering and organizing every waking hour of the last 2 weeks (and not having a ton to show for it, by the way...the house seems cluttered still and not as clean as I'd hoped...I should know by now to lower my expectations). Anyway....so....the kiddos got back around dinner time after a long day of boating on the lake with Nina and Poppy). They were tired. We were tired. Kev and I were still in the middle of cleaning our dining room when they got back. We tried to finish when Nina and Poppy left. I assume this is when the "incident" occurred as we were busy then and the older girls were cleaning their rooms (Dylan was asleep on the couch). We went about our business of cleaning. 9 o-clock rolled around and it was bed time. We got the kids in bed, got Ash all psyched about sleeping in her new bed (the bottom bunk in Shelby's room). She wasn't thrilled. So it took about an hour to get her used to the idea. Finally she settled down. I went in to take a shower and happened to notice this small puddle of blue on the floor by the tub. I didn't think much of it at first since I had been cleaning and had tossed the dirty towels in our garden tub (my usual place for dirty laundry :)) and just figured one of the towels had been wet and made a mess. Then my heart stopped. I saw the empty Lysol cleaner bottle. I knew it was only 1/3 empty when I'd used it this week. I almost threw up. I screamed for Kev. We frantically searched the bathroom for more remnants of blue. We found about 1/3 of it in a bowl in the bathtub, but we knew there was more missing. We both ran to Ash. I smelled her breath. Nothing but bad baby breath (phew!), but she had drank 2 cups of milk since a couple hours ago. We asked her if she'd drank it (I know this sounds silly, but she's a very smart baby and usually "fesses" up to things)...she said "nah" (her no). Not taking her toddler word for it, we begrudgingly made our first call to poison control. The lady on the other end was very reassuring and we were told that Lysol is a very strong soap (basically) and that if she'd drunk that amount of it she'd probably be vomiting by now. But, that we were to sit up with her for the next hour and watch her and she'd call back then. An hour went by. I admit I was tired. Ash was tired. We tried to keep her busy with late-night tv...she wasn't enthralled (she is not into tv or movie girl)...at one point she actually crawled out of my arms and marched up the stairs and into her new bed and laid down. I let her. Hailey crawled down from the top bunk and offered to watch her for me while I got ready for bed. She made sure she didn't fall asleep (thank goodness for our mini-mom, Hailey!). I admit shortly after this I must have fallen asleep (daddy Kev was with Ash at this point)....it was well over the hour that the poison lady said she'd call back. We let Ash fall asleep and shortly thereafter the poison lady called. I was out like a light at this point, but thankfully Kev was responsible enough to stay awake and answer that our baby was ok. Phew, what a night. In the end we discovered that the shirt she had been wearing when she picked up the cleaner only had a couple drops of blue on it, most likely proof that she either only drank a couple drops of it and then decided it was "yuck!" and poured the rest down the drain...or she didn't drink any of it but accidentally spilled it into our tub while carrying it (she likes to carry heavy bottles of liquid for some reason). Either way, it was scary moment and a lil' awakening that we need to be more diligent about putting things away. Praise the Lord for watching over our baby...I know it could have been soooo much worse! Phew!

The moral of the story for me: I need to go back to cleaning less...it's apparently much safer for our family! :)

Misc. Picure Post! :)

2010-06-24T19:53:00.013-04:00

Well, life has obviously come in the way of blogging lately and I don't see how I can really apologize for that....I wouldn't have it any other way than to be busy with my 4 babies and my wonderful hubby. But, I still feel a tad bit guilty in those moments of blog-blankness...when I know my sweet parents are hoping to see new pics of their growing grandkids. So we'll see if Nina Gritz notices I've updated the blog after going on hiatus for so long...I really think she's given up on me! :) Anyway...above is my most fav. pic of the week last week of my two littlest sweeties giving each other a big smooch. They actually are like this a lot...both very lovable and both very much affectionate with each other. I love that my little boy can take care of his little sister. They are very sweet together (fyi...she was kissing him cuz he was sharing his lollipop :))
Here's daddy on the day before Father's Day. We surprised him with a trip to the Jap. Steakhouse in town and the kids made him their old Cold Stone snickers ice cream cake :)
Me and my bestest bud (and our two fams)...at the drive-in last weekend on opening night of Toy Story 3! We had a great, great time! Love ya, Heather!
We've been to the pool too many times to count this summer already. Usually I avoid the city pool like the plague, but it's a been a great way to cool off this summer...Ash has LOVED it!
We went one day with Dylan's best bud, Minette! They are so cute together, aren't they?!
We've also been to the new Splash Pad in town a few times...it's awesome and free and the lil' kiddos love it!
Silly Bandz are in (or at least they were a month ago)...our kids have them up the wazoo...or at least up their arms! If only I had come up with the idea of inventing wearable shape rubberbands!
VBX Rock Hero at our church ROCKED! We saw almost 700 children and I made it through my final year of craft leadership! I think I'm actually going to miss it! :(
Shelby somehow got very big over the last month! haha :) She and her bud, Sydne, like to make their own fun at their sisters' softball games!
Ash had her first encounter with mommy's makeup while mommy wasn't paying attention. Mascara can be a doozy! :)
Shelby got a new bike for her b-day...she LOVES it...now if only we can get the training wheels off!
We celebrated Shelby's very belated b-day with Nina and Poppy Stegs and Uncle Brian at this interesting black-lighted indoor monster golf place. Sorta scary, but Shelby likes that kind of stuff...like an indoor Scooby golf adventure :)
We've had some nasty, scary storms around here. We got caught once in one on the way home from a canceled softball game...lots of tornado sightings and time in our basement. Not so fun :(
Hailey's been putting her best foot forward on the softball field :) I think due to rainouts she might be playing til winter time (her games were supposed to be done by now!)
Her and Best Bud, Baileigh! Go Storm! (maybe they should have gone with another name this year...we've had a few too many stormy game situations!) :)
We've had lots of friends over...Shelby and her best bud Maya loved the triple slip-n-slide...and Dylan can't help but join in the fun...this was before he broke the slip-n-slide :( grrrr :(
Dylan and I had a mommy-son day out (last Sat)...we went to Miss Shanna's wedding (one of his preschool teachers)...Dylan enjoyed it so much that he slept through the entire ceremony right next to his best bud, Minette :)
About a month ago, Dylan got himself a new bunkbed! He LOVES it! It is now on the other side of his room and he just slept on the top bunk last week for the first time. Ash has already fallen down the ladder a few times too :) I can't wait to get his room all painted and looking boyish and car-ish!
On June 4th Shelby finally had her Splashtastic Kitty birthday party at our new Splash Pad! It was an awesome time and a perfect day! Above is her scary (run over by a car?)fondant kitty cake we made for her :) She LOVED it, but I thought it looked like it ran out of its 9 lives :)
Here's all her bestest buds doing their crazy faces!
The cupcakes I made in about 30 minutes...so easy and thoughtless.
Ash LOVIN' the party! And below is us on our first outing on the boat/lake this season on Memorial Day with Kev's parents. We can't wait for lots more summer time out there!
So...that's a lil' pic rundown to pass the time while I'm decluttering over the next couple weeks. The first few days of clean-out have gone ok...slow, but we can see some progress. I think I saw the floor in our closet for the first time in like 6 years! It's nice to WALK IN my walk-in closet! And we've sold a couple of our furniture items on Craiglist...yay! So.....yippee for us! Happy Summer ya'll!