Hello Hippo!

Hello there, 2012. Ok ok, so it's really mid-Feb. Don't judge. Lots of things happening this year! Woooo! One of the first things to happen? The haircut "incident". So the first week of January I looked at my baby girls hair and thought, "man, it's getting so long, and the ends are so snaggly...it's time for a trim for sure. Celeste is going to freak out if I tell her she needs a hair cut....*sigh*". So I tell her, "Hey CC, what do you think about getting your hair cut? It's really long, so we should just cut a little bit to make it pretty." "Weeeeeeeelll......ok Mom." "How short would you like it?" *CC puts her hand at the base of her skull, above the neck* "I want it THIS short!" "Uuuuuuh....PROBABLY not." "Aww."
A few hours goes by and I'm thinking of our conversation. I remember chopping off my hair every two years for Locks of Love, and think MAYBE I can let her chop her hair if it's for a good cause....So I measure her hair and it has at least 10 inches to cut off. Barely. But still 10 inches. And so I showed her the pictures of the sick children with no hair and explain how she can give her hair to them if she wants. Of course she was soooooOOOooOo happy to give her hair. "I want to give my hair to the kids who can't grow their hair cause they're sick!"

As you might imagine, I wiped away a few tears during the process.

 She kept making scared funny faces...she wanted to do it, but actually DOING it can be scary..even for a 5yr old.

And then all her hair was on the counter!

And the real work began, Miss Sarah is so awesome and made sure that every day Celeste's hair would be the easiest hair EVER. Just spray with water and brush it out.

In the end, I'm not entirely sure why I was so scared. She sure can pull off a bob, and it makes her look so much older. I kept having to wipe away those pesky tears though.

Celeste got to mail her hair to the sick children all by herself. What a sweet girl I have.



As for the Monster, he is all sorts of silliness. Hes been helping me clean the house. Seriously. If I'm sorting dirty clothes into piles of lights and darks, he will start putting them back in the clothes hamper. If I'm cooking, he will take all the measuring spoons and cups out and play on the floor. He will even hold the bottle for Noah occasionally (and closely supervised)! He throws trash away...he will throw away dirty diapers if I ask him to (his and Noahs), he will walk around with a bag of fruit snacks, eat the snacks and throw away the wrapper when he's done without being asked.

 He will put random dishes in the dishwasher for me. He will even clean up his toys if I ask! Once he was walking around with the guitar hero guitar and I told him to clean up....

Yup. My silly sweetest baby boy. Mommys joy.

This month seems to be going by in a flurry of projects. I'm constantly sewing, crocheting, knitting, gluing, and banging my head against the wall. True Story. A few weeks ago, what I like to refer to as "black Monday" occured. First of all....Greg will be deploying this year. He has had a few opportunities to volunteer to not go, and every time I urged him to go. I know he wants to deploy, get his new medals and go somewhere new, and I have seriously the best neighbors EVER, who make up the best support system I could have ever asked for. On "Black Monday", I was informed that my friend Sara was moving far far away in a few months. I'm STILL trying to persuade her not to leave....I don't think it's working. A few hours later, Rachel let me know they got orders to move far far away.....in a few months, within weeks of Sara moving. She also informed me that my other neighbor was moving during the summer. LAAAME!! So there I was...facing a 'support system vacuum'. All I had left was my one last neighbor and a friend who occasionally stops by. Aaaaaand my last neighbor made a super fast decision to move far far away while her hubs is gone, and packed up this week and is already gone. Even Noah's parents, whom we've been friends with for YEARS are moving to JAPAN in the summer! And so begins the mass exodus of our neighborhood. Everyone is moving or deploying, and it's going very fast. By the time Greg comes home, only one person he knows here will still be here. We will have completely new neighbors, and I'm just hoping Celeste will get a friend, and maybe Caleb will find someone his age too. I also hope I make friends with them, and that they're at least half as awesome as my super awesome neighbors now.
Here's an example of awesome neighbor-ness. Sara invited us to the tide pools.....and it was super awesome.

I had to tell my daughter that her best friend is moving. But at least I got some sweet pics of them together.

We sure will miss all these kids running around here. But I'm grateful for the good times we had together, and look forward to the next few months we still have.

Of course....there WERE actual tide pools involved..

..........and then my camera got dropped in a pool and ceased working. Bah. So now I will be doing some new camera research. Yay! And that is all for now.