Hola, We're Home!

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!

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

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!

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!!!!