Not giving up

A long while ago, I made the commitment to not cut my hair until I reached my goal weight.  That was about a year and a half ago.

I worked out.  I ate healthier.  I drank more water.  I drank a lot less pop.  I quit eating at night.  I had one helping of meals.  I had small snacks throughout the day.  I cut down on junk food.

Nothing worked.

I finally googled "how to lose weight with hypothyroidism."  There I discovered that it is nearly impossible.

So, I surrendered.  I realized that because of my thyroid, losing weight was probably not going to happen unless I had the money to eat EXTREMELY healthy and had hours of time for exercise.  Neither one of those are in abundance in my life.

My hair had grown very long.  I was sick of it and Seth has told me more than once he hates my hair long.  I knew my goal weight was unreachable so I decided it was time to cut my hair.

Don't get me wrong.  I am NOT giving up on being healthy.  I still want to workout, eat right, drink water, etc., but now I'm just focusing on being healthy, not losing weight.

I also thought that I could donate my hair.  I did some research on various companies that use donated hair to make wigs for those who have no hair of their own for whatever reason.  I settled on Pantene Beautiful Lengths.

Here is my hair the day I got it cut.  I think this is the longest I've ever had it.

 

She cut it in pig tails.

 

 

Right after the cut.

 

 

It was done!  No turning back now.

 

 

I was able to donate 10 inches, but I wasn't too thrilled with how it turned out.  Neither was Seth or the kids.

 

 

This is what it was supposed to look like.

 

 

But I got this instead.

 

 

This is my mom.  I looked so much like her that the kids called my "grandma" all day and Seth refused to look at me.  Hmmm, I had to do something!

 

 

I styled it differently.  Which I liked better, but still, too much like my mom.

 

 

So, tonight, I dyed it.  It's a little redder than what I was hoping for, but at least I don't look so much like my mom that Seth can't look at me.  Haha  He now says I look like my cousin, Amber.  Seth wants me to put in some highlights.  We'll see.

 

 

For now, this is my hair.  I'm glad I was able to donate it.  I never thought I would be able to grow out my hair long enough to do that.  It will take some getting used to, but I'm really ok with it.  Now to convince K...

 

Halloween

I love Halloween.  I just love dressing up and becoming a new person.  I don't like to spend a lot of money on costumes.  I tell the kids to figure out what we can use at home to create most of a costume and then we'll buy accessories as needed.

Well, this year, Halloween landed on Wednesday.  Wednesday is prayer meeting at church and since we want to encourage our children to attend all meetings of the church and to consider all of them an extremely important part of a Christian life, I couldn't say we could miss it for trick-or-treating.

The kids were a bit disappointed so I told them that we could dress up for the day while we do school but they couldn't be too crazy since we would be going to prayer meeting in the evening.

October came and suddenly, we had tons of things going on (which will be in a later blog).  I realized that dressing up probably was not going to happen.  We had no time to come up with costumes let alone get out and find those finishing touches.  I knew the kids would be disappointed so I came up with a fun idea to help ease the pain of not getting to dress up this year.

I created a scavenger hunt.  I bought colored index cards and wrote out 10 clues that eventually lead each one of them on a different path to their Halloween bucket full of candy.

Little A had the orange cards.  Since she can't read, yet, I helped her out.

 

J had the green cards.  He whipped through the scavenger hunt very quickly.  I guess I didn't make the clues hard enough.  Hahaha

 

 

K had the pink cards.  Here, she finds one hidden underneath one of the cushions of our porch swing.

 

 

They all found their buckets and said this was the best Halloween ever!  I'm so glad they enjoyed it.

 

 

I still bought candy for the trick-or-treaters who might have stopped by while we were still home, but no one came before we left for church.  After church, I thought maybe we could find something to dress up in for those late trick-or-treaters.  When we got home, we all dashed inside and found our costumes.

 

J is a ninja.  Little A is a fairy cat...I think?  And K is a princess, with a dog I guess.

 

 

Of course, I had to get in on the fun.  I am a nerd.

 

 

 

No one ever did come to our door begging for candy so I guess we got ourselves some extra.  :)