300 Posts & Time to Say Good-Bye!

This is the 300th post on this blog..and the last. It has come to our attention that a scam website has shadowed our website address. The only way to prevent this is to delete this blog. I am busy transferring over all of our old post so we won't lose our memories. But I will no longer be posting to this site. I will be deleting it by the end of the month. CLICK HERE to see our new blog.

Matt is Officially a Civilian

Yesterday Matt officially became a civilian. Woohoo! We had a small family celebration last night. We had a delicious Chinese dinner--friend rice, egg rolls and potstickers--YUMMY!! Of course we also had chocolate cake with fudge icing for dessert. We also finally hooked up our Wii console that we got for Christmas. Yes, I know we are crazy and sad. But we had a blast playing with it tonight. Here are some pictures (and yes, all the Wii pictures are of everyone's back but I was not about to stand in front and take the chance of one of them taking out my precious Nikon)...

Locks of Love

Chloe's hair used to be so thin and fine that I couldn't even get a clip to stay in. But about six months ago it started growing in super thick. It has been quite a battle to keep it brushed and combed. Chloe has a very sensitive head which is not fun when it takes a good ten minutes to get all the tangles out each morning. She has been begging me for months to cut off her hair. I held her off until after the wedding and dance recital.

We had decided that since her hair was so long and gorgeous that we should donate it. So we decided to donate her hair to locks of love. Chloe loved the thought of her hair being made into a wig for another kid who cannot grow hair. It was also a great way for her to selflessly give up something that is near and dear to her. (Yes I know she has been whining about her hair for a while but she really does love her long locks).

Today was her haircut appointment with Aunt Lisa!!

Here are the before pictures. When I look at it now I still cannot believe how long her hair was.



Here is the actual cut. In order to donate your hair it must be put into a braid. This also makes it easy to cut off so much hair.




Here is Aunt Lisa holding up her hair. We cut off close to 11 inches. You need 10 inches to donate for a wig.



This is where the tears came. Chloe's tears (and yes, Mom's too). Here you can see her face as the realization of what she had just done hit her.



She just couldn't stop the tears after that. When she realized that all of her beautiful hair in the back of her head was gone she lost it. She wanted it back already.



It took both Lisa and I a few minutes to calm her down and remind her that she can grow it back. It was hard to see her go through the heartache of losing something so important to her. But it was also beautiful to see her smile and say, "At least another kid will have hair."

The haircut continued...



Chloe decided that since she had cut off all of her hair that it was Mom's turn to cut off her hair. So I had about six inches cut off so she wouldn't feel alone.

Dance Recital 2009

Today was Chloe's dance recital, a fabulous way to wrap up a year of hard work. Chloe has been blessed with an extremely patient teacher who is willing to work with Chloe. Chloe loves dance. She looks forward to it each week and cannot wait for it to start up again in the fall. She has made some incredible friends through her dance classes as well.

This year Chloe took a Ballet/Jazz combination class. She loved the ballet, which is new this year. She has always just done ballet but never really enjoyed it until this year. She worked extremely hard this year getting her toes to turn out correctly and having correct posture during plies. She liked the jazz portion of the class as well and enjoyed being able to move a little faster to the music. She also took tap this year. Tap has been a struggle for her and at the beginning of the year she wanted to quit. She stuck with it though and is making huge progress.

Chloe was in four dances in this year's recital-She was a wildflower in the Ballet Story, a jazz dance--"You've Got the Beat", a tap dance to "I Love to Walk In the Rain," and the finale - "Hoedown Throwdown". She enjoyed each one but especially the last one since it is a Miley Cyrus song.

Here are some pictures of Chloe at the recital....










Chloe did her ballet and jazz dances in the same costume. The only difference was that she had a tutu under the skirt for ballet. This made her costume changes this year a breeze!!

Here she is dancing her tap routine....






I got Chloe a recital sweatshirt this year. It has the names of all the girls who danced in the recital. I thought it would be a fun way for her to remember this year at dance. They got to wear their sweatshirts during the finale. Which was great in theory until you had a bunch of sweaty girls putting on sweatshirts. You can imagine how warm they were.




This was Chloe's best dance recital ever! She did beautifully! She has grown so much this year. Every time I look at her I am reminded of how much our little girl is growing up. Chloe got two beautiful bouquets full of roses for her performance. She loves giving and receiving flowers so you can imagine how excited she was. It was a great night and she is already asking when she gets to go to dance again. =)

Teepee Time

Matt got an incredible deal on this fun teepee tent. The kids were ecstatic and couldn't wait for him to put it together. He first put it up outside but it now resides in Aidan's room (as you can imagine he is thrilled). So here are some fun pictures Matt took of the kids hanging out in their new teepee.

Oak Trees

We have been back from vacation for a few days but I still have a few more pictures to share with you. We went to a little local park one of the days we were in Angels Camp. The play area itself was not too exciting but all the giant oak trees in the park were awesome. Chloe climbed up the trees (which surprised me because she is usually too scared to do stuff like that). Aidan of course had no fear and was already to climb up the tree to get his picture taken. Here are some great pictures I took of the kids.