Locks of Love...

Solace wanted to cut her hair and donate it to Locks of Love. She is famous for her very long beautiful hair, but she REALLY wanted it cut. In fact she begged and begged for over a month and then the other day she cut her own bangs in a desperate attempt to cut her own hair. She said she was far too hot with her long hair and really wanted to cut it and help the kids with cancer get wigs by donating her hair. Here she is before we left home... Lovely long hair...
So long...

Prep work

About to cut

Done...

Holding her 16 inches of hair...yes, 16...

All the hair... She loves the haircut, though it was shorter than we wanted it. However, she keeps telling me how happy she is to help the kids get wigs. She is glad they will have ones of real hair and not have to wear blue ones like Cathy did (Yes I explained that the blue wig was a choice and a joke, but nonetheless...). She said she loves her short hair because it is nice and cool, and because she got to help others, but she is not going to cut it again for 5 years.

In a stunning turn of events, while we were at the salon, I decided to cut my hair and donate it as well. I have much less hair though...I only donated 10 inches. This first picture is from Vancouver and is just for comparisons sake...

After, holding my hair...(I have to insert here that after they cut off the ponytail, Armour came over and stared at me in stunned silence for about a minute before he said "Mom, you're a boy now?" It was quite confusing for him...)

All my hair sitting there... I am not a fan of my haircut but will hopefully get used to it soon. Also I must tell you all that we did this yesterday, and the rest of the day was at least as traumatizing as the haircuts...it involved tires, nails, missing spares, and one happy shining spot in the form of a knight in green scrubs! More on that later!

Firehouse playgroup

Mothers Day

Among other nice things, on Mother's Day, my kids (and Wes) made me chocolate covered strawberries. Mmmmm...Here are the pics.

Muffins with Mom

For Mother's day, Solace's class did a "Muffins With Mom" celebration. Here are a couple pics of us adn a couple videos of the cute songs they sang!

Ender got a haircut...

I like the boys hair when it is long. Armour's gets all curly and Enders has this cute shaggy look. Wes likes the buzz cut-very short. This last time they both had very long hair and we let them choose if and when they wanted a buzz. One day Army said he was ready for a buzz. It was done. About 2 weeks later, Mr Shaggy's hair was getting REALLY long-even long for me, but he still wanted it long. Then about a week after that, he got sick of it and asked for a buzz.

While the boys had different hair, many people noted how they did not look as much alike.

So, what do you think, do they look really different? Big sister with the guys
Let the royal buzz commence...

After...

Dance Recital Still Pics

Dance Recital videos

On April 30th, Solace had her dance recital. It was awesome. Here are the videos of her 2 dances. (The camera battery ran out near the end of the second one...)

I just thought I should record my thoughts on this story for posterity. If you know Wes you will really appreciate it...

So, in April, we went to a banquet for one of Wes's attending physicians who was receiving a big award-this was an event at a country club where the society page of the newspaper was literally there. So, we sit through the dinner and the program, then as we are about to leave, someone goes up to the mike and says something completely muffled. It was impossible to understand. Upon hearing the miked announcement, Wes walks back over to the table and picks up the incredible centerpiece. I was like, "what are you doing?" He was like "They said to take home the centerpieces." I looked around and saw no one else was taking any centerpieces. So, I was was like, "Um...I don't think so." He looked at me, gestured toward the next table and said, "Hey, go grab the one off that table." I didn't. but we still left the country club with this...

I am still not sure about the announcement, but no one said anything, and they were BEAUTIFUL in my house!! See guys, Wes gets me flowers sometimes! :)

(I should probably add for Wes's sake that in retrospect, he probably did hear the announcement better than I did, and could potentially have been right about the "take the centerpieces" thing)

Life Cycle of a Butterfly...

This is Solace's last family project of Kindergarten. She had to do a project about either the parts of a plant of the life cycle of a butterfly. This is what she came up with, and we did together as a family. She quite literally drew up the plan for this and told us what she wanted it to look like and say. She was very confident and sure of the project-the big real tree leaf was a design feature that she based the whole project on. Originally it was designed a bit more complex with an actual moving and growing caterpillar/butterfly, coming out of the egg using simple machines such as pulleys. When she came up with this idea, Wes was all for it and excited to do all that. Sadly, he was on a bad work week, and was not home for the actual execution, so mom (me) streamlined the whole thing and the motion/machines part was booted. Even without that, Solace's teacher was really impressed and it was the most creative, and best project in the class...Here is the final project.

Eli's family visited

On April 26th, Eli & Trieste and the girls came for a fun visit. It was far too short, but we had fun. I got a few pictures, but they only turned out ok...here are some...

The day they were coming, Ender woke up early and fixed his own hair...

That's right, folks, he LOVES Mohawks...in fact, that is why he did not want to buzz his hair for so long...(it is buzzed now)
My 4 kids.

3 oldest

About a week before they came, Armour and Ender had a run in with Army's tooth and Enders "hard spot" on his head (that is what Ender says). Army's tooth died...you can see it at it's darkest in this picture (it has significantly lightened).

They came! (and played Wii while we waited for Wes to get off work).

Wii

The babies, Mariah & Kindle

MariahThe big girls, Madison and Solace. They are only about a month and a half apart.

Eli wrestling with Ender...hopefully getting his boy fix in! :)

Brynne was not going to miss out on the wrestling action! (notice Army watching in the back-that cracks me up!)

Ender & Brynne...Ender is a year older than Brynne.

Eli & Ender

Cute Brynne

All kids but Mariah.

Ender & Brynne (he is being the prince)

After the princely kiss...