new do

Angel has not seriously cut her hair in 6 years. She's had many trims, but nothing big & drastic. It was time for a change. She specifically waited until after her ballet recital as the teacher has a strict policy about having the hair up in a tight bun. She also wanted to save her hair for Locks of Love.

Before:

During:

She had to have at least 10 inches for Locks of Love. All together she has about 12" taken off.

After:

It's so much easier to care for. Just in time for this summer heat.

Mandy also went for a haircut. She wasn't really planning on getting a whole new look. We got to looking through books though and spotted a really cute cut. My camera malfunctioned and I wasn't able to get any pictures of her during the process : (. But here is a look at her new do:

It makes her look so much older. Just like Angel's....just in time for this summer heat.

ballet recital

Angel participated in her 7th ballet recital. She did a fanstastic job and put in a lot of hard work & hours to her dance. She absolutely shines when she is on stage, a real natural.



Aunt Jackie & Aunt June made a 3 hour trip, each way, to see her perform in her recital. It gave us a little bit of time to visit and see them, but it was worth it to have them come down for this special event. Thanks you two!


There is no picture taking or video allowed during the actual recital. However we can do either during their dress rehershals. I didn't get nearly as many pictures as I wanted, I was struck with a short sickness that made it impossible for me to do so. I got very limited video as well, but here is a small peek at her dance. Don't forget to turn off the blog music & note that the lady is street clothes walking around the stage in the ballet director.

End of school year awards assembly

Mandy, Brianna & John were all awarded the Successful Steele Student award. We are proud of them & thier hard work in school. Angel also recived honor roll status for her academic acheivements, I just didn't get a picture of her & her award.

Determined

I'm a little OCD on somethings in life. One of them being my blog and how things *MUST* be put on here in chronological order. Although if you look closely at the dates on some of my pictures & match them with the order of them on the blog, some ARE out of order. I noted such entries, took a deep breath and decided to just let it slide. I might have also chanted some phrase like "it's ok, it's ok, it's ok" But you get the idea, I'm still alive, right?

So I've slowly been chipping away at our most recent events and I'm FINALLY caught up.....on the month of May that is. Things sort of hit the fan once we hit the middle of May, all sorts of craziness of the end of the school year. Then it kind of overlapped into June, because school didn't end until until the 8th. We started of summer with many big events (coming soon on the blog) and just in general the weather has gotten really nice & the kids are home all the time now. So you can easily see where things are on the sly. Which I know is ok with you all.

However I am determined to get the blog all caught up before we leave for vacation next friday! My pictures help, when I upload them I organize them in chronoligical order, like flipping through a photo album. I use them for reference in what has happened when. So watch out this next week for many entries. If I'm successful then Ill be quite satisfied. Although leaving the blog untouched for 10 days and coming home with hundreds of pictures and loads of fun to tell you about just puts me back to square one. So my cycle continues....: )

5th grade Springfield field trip

Every year the 5th graders get to rent a charter bus & take a special trip to Springfield. It's something big to mark their last days in the elementry school. This year Mandy is in that class. So, yes, that means *gulp* she will start jr. high in the fall.


Two years ago when it was Angel's turn, her trip fell during the time we were in Mexico for my uncle's wedding and she had to miss going. We promised her we'd take her sometime ourselves. We meant to do it sooner, but opportunity never presented itself, so we let her miss school and go along with Mandy's class. Except she was not allowed to ride the bus so I drove seperately to take her along. Once we were there we were part of the group in every way. I was a chaperone and was given this nifty sticker to mark my status & help track the group of kids I was in charge of. They might as well have crowned me the queen of England as special as I felt.

First we went to visit Lincoln's home. This is the home that housed the Lincoln family while he lived in Springfield and was a lawyer and later a legislator. The site is considered a National Park and is the only one in the whole state of IL. They have done a fabalous job of preserving the site. Many of the items in the house were the original items from Lincoln and the house itself also has a lot of the original work still intact. For example, the wallpaper is the exact wallpaper that was on the walls when Lincoln lived there over 100 years ago. The banister is the exact same banister that Lincoln slid his hand up and down while using the stairs and so on. I got some goosebumps on that one! It's a very neat place to go and see.

Outside the Lincoln home:

Inside Lincoln's master bedroom. That brown box is a toilet.

Lincoln's shaving mirror up on the wall.
Next we went to the Lincoln Museum:

This place is strictly dedicated to Lincoln and the civil war era. It was again very detailed and gave me a deep sense of patoiratism. There is not too much that you can take pictures of inside the museum. Here is Angel & Mandy with Abe & his family outside of the White House:

Memorial Day Weekend

We headed "home" to Iowa on Memorial Day weekend. I had my 15 year class reunion. It started with a private tour of Muscatine High School. The place has drastically changed since I last roamed those halls, so it was nice to get a peek at what is different.

Here I am standing by my old locker 4049. I had the same locker all 4 years at MHS. Angel was quite appalled at how small the lockers were.

Later that night some of my former classmates gathered for dinner & some social time. Jim was beyond thrilled to accompany me to this event. (Please note extreme amounts of sarcasism in that last statement.) My older sister Lisa also went to the reunion. Although she did not graduate with my class, from 4th grade through about 10th grade she was part of our class, so she knew many of the people in attendance. I had a great time at the reunion seeing & talking with a lot of classmates that I haven't seen in years!

The next day was Muscatine High School graduation. My neice Allison, who is the oldest of my parents 12 grandchildren, graduated as part of that class. We are very proud of her & her accomplishments. It was special to be able to attend the graduation as well. She has earned a full ride 4 year scholarship to the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!)

Here is my older sister Lisa & her 4 kids: Allison, Derek, Krystyne & Hannah

My parents, Jose & Donna with Allison

Of course with all of us together for this special occasion we had to take the traditional grandkid picture of all of them. They are suppose to be in birth order, but it wasn't until I was uploading the pictures onto the computer that I realized the Parker & Mandy are switched. Although Parker is bigger in size, Mandy is 4 months older than him. Oh well, we still got them all in one shot. It seems that we only have all of them together once or twice a year.

In order they are: Allison, Derek, Angel, Parker, Mandy, Krystyne, Brianna, Hannah, John, Andrew, Brian & Carmen

And, of course, the Luna sister shot with Blanca, Carmen, Lisa & Chris

OUCH!

Mandy was sick back in May. Although we don't know exactlly what was wrong. She had been running a fever, but when we took her to the dr. he found nothing wrong. He wanted to test her blood, he had a hunch that something was brewing inside of her. I was dreading the scenerio of a blood draw as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Surprisingly though Mandy did much better than I anticipated. I could not resist snapping a few pics (she will thank me someday). I wish I had caught the expression & squeal she let out when the needle was inserted, but these still say a lot.