Happy Easter!

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!

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....

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!