APL by 12/31/12?

My sister and I embarked on our hair journey together beginning in March 2011. As expected, we have stalked followed other women on their journeys and paid particular attention to those who started around the same time that we did. Although this is not a competition, my sister and I have noticed that we have not experienced as much length as our counterparts (here are a few examples: She started around Feb '11, She started around June '11, and the list goes on).

I refuse to believe that either of us are slow growers - at worse we are likely average (thank God we have never had trouble growing our hair, we've both gotten short hair cuts on a number of occassions and grown back to SL within a little over a year), BUT I think our stylists may be trimming cutting our hair too much and too often. We go to different salons, but my sister mentioned being frustrated about the frequency of "trims" that she seems to get on a MONTHLY basis. How can you expect to see the fruits of your labor if you're constantly trimming? I can even see dusting frequently, but all out trims negate length retention. Since I went back to relaxing, I get my hair trimmed with each relaxer (3-4 months), but I did notice that my last trim seemed to take off at least an inch or more in some sections.

So how do we fix this? While doing an impromptu length check today, my sister noticed that she has a section that's close to APL, so she thinks she can get there by December. Of course I jumped on the bandwagon! We decided that we are going to hold off on getting trims through the end of the year. I feel like this is a bit drastic and I'm REALLY nervous because if there is one thing that turns my stomach more, it's seeing some long, straggly, thin, ends with a smiling face next to it claiming APL, BSL, etc. - not cute, at all! But, in all honesty, at this point I protective style 100% of the time, M&S daily, wash weekly, and use direct heat on relaxer days only (4X/ year) so in theory there is no reason for me to have bad ends. After my June relaxer I was planning to wear my hair out over the summer, but if I'm trying not to trim, I may just keep it wigged up to avoid needing a trim.

Anyway, the point is, although it's best to focus on health before length, we had the health part down pre-journey, so we're long overdue for length! I guess we'll see how this turns out in December! HHG.