Wowzers...whatta day!

A 5K (mine and Shelby's first run!)...
Two bday parties...
Our own party planning...
A last minute wedding...
Loggy's baaaack!....
And the boys are still camping....

Eek...I am not even sure where to begin...and I have hours more to do...
These are days I wish my sister-in-law and mom lived next door...they are awesome helpers and my mom is the eternal night owl!  I am fading fast....

More later...zzzzz (I wish!)

A loney day...

 Well, it was a bit of a lonely day in the Steg house for me...I miss my rascally Lo!  I attempted to get some party stuff done, but for some reason it is all slow-moving and I am not all that motivated....
At any rate...it was Twin Day at school today.  All the kids dressed up to look like their best buds...Ash and Quinn were blue girls today...and Leighton joined in too!  They did good matching themselves w/o parental help :)  D was soccer twins with his teammate and his best bud, Caden, but I didn't see them together...

 Seriously....those are some very matchy twins!  Truth be told Shelby bought this skirt bc she wanted to look exactly like Sydne..they even have matching violins! lol!

 Syd came over to help with party prep...she is an awesome gymnast and she is gonna help at the party too. The striped twins did some hula hooping!

 Then some arm-hooping :)
                                          
LOL...fun with gymnastics ribbons!
                                        
They were cracking me up!

 Then they watched then American Girl McKenna movie (what we are basing our party off of)...I had them make gymnastic's mats for dolls while watching...gotta multi-take here, people!

 ...and then we made some AG Starbucks drinks and cake pops :)

 So sweet...

 Our yummy food and drinks :)

 Then we walked down to our playground...to plan out our gymnastics relay.  Sydne was sweet enough to watch Ash and her cartwheels and give her tips on how to straighten her legs a little more :)

 Is this a gymnast move? 

 Best buds :)

 Making twirling ribbons...on a late night...

It seemed like a longer than normal day w/o my Loggy. I miss that booger! :)  I am glad he'll be back tomorrow!  I do have to say that I was able to clean my house today and it actually stayed clean!  Amazing!  But I don't really care about a clean house.  I look forward to tomorrow when my baby is back.  For now I am off to bed...the boys are camping, and my Shelb and I are running a 5K in the morn.  What was I thinking signing up for that?  I haven't run since college.  Ugh.  Wish me luck!

And our Hays was a watchful eye in NYC today as the Pope drove by.  She tried to see him, but she said it was too packed. She did spot some nice Pope-memorabia, which oddly enough she did not purchase.  What a Pope-party-pooper :)  She did get in a whole day of school even with bus service shut down...so that is a plus :)  Love you, Hays...and miss you so much!

Bye, Bye Baby Boy...and Bye Bye Cakes til Dec!

 Well, it was a slow-moving day...but in spite of that, I did get a few things accomplished....first off, the kiddos had sports day at school.  We were a mixed team of FL and Indiana...Go Heat, Purdue and IU!

 My boy and I vegged a bit...and packed his bag to leave...

 The shirt says it all :)

 Giddy over his most fav. food of all time...the fruit snack...seriously...if he could live off these, he would.  He is obsessed!
                                                
 I love this boy and this smile...so angelic...

 Seriously...could he get any cuter?  I miss this boy to death tonight...crazy, but true.  There was no bedtime drama here, no boy snuggling up next to me. Felt weird.  I hope he is behaving at Nina and Poppy's!

 We got to facetime the cousins! YAY!  And Ash got a very cool gift in the mail from them...thanks Aunt Candy, Uncle Jeff and Brooke and Austin!  I also got to talk to my mama three times today...a highlight :)

 My sorta finished cake....the first time I have made a gymnastics one...and the first time I had no template to go from...I totally winged it.

 My first time making an gymnast.  She turned out kinda cute in her own way...I admit, I wanted to chuck her down the sink at one point or two :)

 The mess that comes with a cake...YAY, for not making anymore cakes til our boy's Dec bday!  I need a cake-break!

LOL...my gymnast is at not as angelic as the one I tried to make...and her neck sunk into her leo...but oh well...she's done! :) 

Fall is here!

     Whohoo...fall is here...the leaf is proof!  Best news of the day!!  My fav. time of year!  I love this tree at IU...it always turns the earliest...and it reminds me of the color of this world this time of year....yay!
                                                  
 It was Disney Day at school....the girls had easy costumes...poor D wanted to be Darth Vader, but dad wouldn't let him wear it...so Baymax, he was!

 I didn't get out much today...but we did get to go see D shoot his rocket off at school.  Here he is talking about it and answering questions.  He did awesome!

 Here he is shooting it off!  You can't see it go up, but it's up high!

 Can you see it...it shot up and over...5 seconds...a great time! (6 was the highest, but 5 was awesome too!)

 Lo isn't sure of the rocket...
                                                
 But our lil' friend, Lou, picked it right up and tried to drink it! :)

 The rocket after lift-off :)

 My princess by the IU tree during violin...

 Pancakes for dinner...yay for a chocolate chip 7!

 What in the world is this thing on our house (yesterday)???...looks like a cartoon worm! lol :) We are calling it Hailey-worm :)

     We got to talk to our real Hays tonight!  Loggy was a phone hog for a bit...he loves his Hayeeeee!
                                                   
They had fun making faces at each other :)  We miss our girl and we feel for her with her weird schedule...today was another day of no school (Yom Kippur?)...and tomorrow is the same....we figured it out and after this week (week number 3 of school), she will have only gone to school 6 1/2 days.  Ugh. Poor kid is so bored.  And her other friends/roommate are on a different schedule/different school so she can't even do stuff with them. I worry she might be bored to death.  She is so used to no down time and a tougher school schedule and ballet at night...this schedule is so different.  But I know she'll get in the grove and figure it out.  I just want her to be challenged in school and dance!  It was good to see her face though...we miss her...and it would have been nice had she just come home for a week instead of twiddling her thumbs for a week of no school.

Time to reprioritize!

Well, we are at our limit here in the Steg house. I know this not bc of my own self...but bc the daddy of the house has reached his frustration limit.  I hope this Sunday after Ashley's party is all said and done that we can sit down as a family and reprioritize!  We need to make some major changes in this house and it gonna take some tough love on all our accounts.  Kids need to be helping more, I need to be not doing as much busy work (parties, cakes, checking hw, etc).  We need to have a more concrete bedtime.  Chores need to be done by all of us (me included).  Activities and friend time need to be at a minimum until we can get our lives back on track...heck, I can't even remember when they were on track.  And we HAVE to finish unpacking this house. We just cannot live like this anymore.  I feel we never got settled and never had a chance to sit and enjoy the fruits of our laborious move(s).  We need to make this upcoming autumn season a time of change and rest.  We HAVE to even if it goes against everything we normally do.  Please pray we can do this.  It will be very tough on us to say no and take time for us....but if we don't I fear our family time and our rest time will be lost....

 Here's a few pics of the day....started off with "Mismatched Day" at school....for School Spirit Week. I think they did pretty good being clashy!  D was pretty funny with his... :)

 Bella and Isabelle (in their new gym outfits!) helped me finally get Ashley's bday invites in the mail...better late than never!  The AG Gymnastics party is Sunday.  I was stuffing the envelopes and realized we put the wrong day on the invite...go figure.  Sharpee came to the rescue!  Normally I would reprint them, but honestly my energy level is at a low and I just didn't care.  I think this is progress for me to let stuff like this go....

 Excited to mail her invites at P.O.! She hadn't even gotten to see them yet...rarely do I do all the work...usually the kids help, but we are just strapped for time this year...ugh.

 I took this pic for Aunt Mary bc she gave her the new gymnastics leo...but I had to post it bc her new way of posing is to make sure you see at least one of her new earrings :)  She is VERY proud of them!  And below is how we spend our days....going from activity to activity trying to keep the wee one amused and allow the others to do hw.  Today Loggy crayola-d the violin hallway...lovely. 

A Super 7th Bday for our Ash!

 Well, my baby girl is 7.  How and why does life goes by so fast...I will never know.  But surely enough 7 years have gone by since the wonderful Sept 21 day when our Asher joined our fam.  She was a bundle of energy then...a little funny spitfire...and those lovely traits have just grown and flourished with age.  She is such a blessing to our family...even with the extra drama that comes with years passing!  We had a wonderful day with our Ash.  I think she had already told me 1/4 of the way through the day at school, that this was the BEST birthday ever. And that just seemed to get better and better as the day went on.  I am too pooped to post all about it all or even recollect what happened...but I picked a few random pics of some of the highlights....best part of the day was getting pierced!  She was over-the-moon happy about that surprise! 

 And then the best start and end to the day was talking to and seeing her biggest sister...she texted her first thing this morning on the way to school and she facetimed during gift time.  We miss our Hays especially on days like today...family celebrations are not the same w/o her here.  But we did manage to get a family pic (though Lo was in rare form :))

 Our horse got sweaty over night in the fridge.  He must have been running laps in there!  Too bad he came in 7th! :)

 This was candle-try-#2...thanks to Dylan who blew them out the first time...and looks like he might do it again :)

 End of the day pic...does she look happy or what?

 Morning pic...happy here too!  Love the shirt Sue Sue made!  A big hit!

Our last-minute bike ride...on the trail to D's soccer practice.  A beautiful day!

And lots more highlights....but mama needs sleep...

Love you, Ashley Claire....so blessed by your life in our family....love your energy, love your chattiness, love your love for life, love who God made you to be...and love watching you grow up (though you need to slow down!).  Happy 7th, Girl!