Dirtbag motivation

If I ever get the photo that a friend took of Emily and Patrick covered head to toe with dirt that was stuck to their sunscreen I will post it, but in the meantime I assure you it was beyond ridiculous.  I couldn't even take their photo myself when we got home because I was terrified that they would somehow make it to the furniture if I didn't immediately carry them to the bathtub.  Patrick had streaks across his face, his hair was full of that fine dusty dirt, and he had fallen and scraped his knee and that had dirt all in that.  Emily even had her back covered with that sunscreen dirt because Patrick kept pouring dirt on her when he was digging.  This was at field day for the girls' school and apparently someone thought I had signed up to work a game like I did last year.  Umm, do I look like a fool?  I know my limit.

Anyway, I was so mortified by the filthy littles and then the sweaty bigs with their ratty hair that I finally found the motivation to take them in for haircuts.  I originally was just going to have Megan and Patrick get theirs done since they needed it the most and Anna was protesting but when I was checking them in at the super fancy Great Clips, the gal was like, only two?  Are you sure?  Okay, make that three.  And then Anna shocked me by wanting to go short like Megan.  This will make showers after the pool this summer so much easier.  Emily is still growing out the haircut she gave herself, hopefully someday she will look normal again.  In the meantime, here are shots of the other three:

I may need to finally upgrade to a fancy phone just so I will have a camera with me at all times because the hair lady was having a good time with Patrick.  He is always very stoic and refuses to smile no matter what they say.  And he won't answer any questions.  He did do a very subtle head shake for "no" when the lady spiked his hair up high before she started trimming the top this time.  It was so funny because his hair was so long and she made it look like a spiky mohawk.  I was afraid he would like it and the last thing I need is the boy being the one in this house who primps in front of the mirror.   He is already quite enamored with his reflection.

Afterwards I let them each pick out a movie at Target and a family of girls there felt sorry for Patrick and wondered what he would get to watch.  I assured them that he loves the Barbie movies too.  Yes, I have broken them of the nonstop TV show habits but now they have figured out that begging will get them a movie.  They adapt well.  The DVD player is old, that actually might break on its own.  After that they insisted on going into Famous Dave's to eat instead of getting takeout as was my plan.  It wasn't busy and they were not fighting as much as usual so I braved it.  I am not stupid though, I immediately ordered their food but then it took forever.  Finally our waiter brought out the kids' food and was so apologetic because my meal had fallen on the floor and it would be out in five minutes.  Umm, he thought I'd get to eat at the same time as the children?  Hilarious!  I wish they'd always drop my meal because it gave me time to get the kid food cut up and ketchup distributed and then my meal showed up-- and it was still hot.  And they didn't charge me for my meal or Megan's salad so it was a very cheap dinner.  We made such a mess that the tip had to make up for that though.  It wasn't health food but at least everyone ate enough that they didn't want cereal an hour later.  I figured we all deserved some lazy time so everyone split up to go watch their own movies.  I won't break the DVD player just yet...