Just saying hi.

Right now, I’m cuddled up under a quilt (thank you Momma!), next to my sweet husband.  I’m wearing my biggest, comfiest sweats, and I have that fuzzy-headed feeling from just waking up from a nap. Yes, that’s right–a nap!  That’s unheard of.  Sheer exhaustion drove me to snuggle down this Sunday afternoon and drift off. It was heavenly.

We had a FULL and wonderful holiday week.  Dutch turned three, had two parties, lots of visitors and gifts (read: our house is overrun with toys and I have no idea how to tame the monster).  We had some big ministry situations.  All our families came to our house for Christmas, which was a dream for us.  We did Christmas Eve service, then a big day on Christmas, then Jeff got sick but was scheduled to preach all three services this weekend. So he did, of course.  He did great, but the confession is when Jeff preaches I am a nervous wreck.  I love hearing from him, but I have yet to develop the alligator-hide skin that is necessary when in ministry, so sometimes I struggle with processing the abundance of feedback that one receives.  There were also a couple other relational needs throughout the week, which is awesome, but left me, by today, feeling like if I didn’t lie down I would collapse into a heap.  So I napped, and O thank You Jesus that You give your beloved sleep (Psalm 127:2).  I now have warm-fuzzies, am snuggly warm in my sweats, and am happy again!

So I’ve been remiss in that I’ve not given a CCE update like I said I would. Jeff made me promise that I would not turn this blog into a coupon-cutting site, so I promised him I won’t start making every post about my “deals”, but I do enjoy passing on what I’m learning in all areas, even hair-highlighting.

One cool thing is that I did my first ever try at getting free stuff at the grocery store and it was actually a great success.  I went to Safeway and Albertsons, armed with my coupons, and got:  10 lbs. of potatoes, 4 boxes of Corn flakes, 3 boxes of Raisin Bran, four cans of corn, 4 packages of shredded cheese–all for $5.  So that’s kind of cool.  And we’re the kind of family that on a busy day is happy to eat cereal for dinner, so 7 extra boxes is actually perfect for us.

Secondly, the hair. Well that’s part of the reason I needed a nap today. My hair stinkin’ wore me out this week. 🙂  My friend did mine on Sunday and it was fine.  It looked natural, and I was happy.  The problem came when, later in the week, I decided that you couldn’t really tell it was highlighted, it was so near my natural color, so I decided (start cringing now), that 2 hours before the Christmas Eve service, while my children were in the bathtub (I was right next to them I promise), that I would just “touch up” my own a little bit, add a few more highlights. You know, spice it up a bit.  Oh dear.  It was a disaster.  It was so blotchy, uneven, and the color was a brassy awful color.  Of course I was home alone, couldn’t leave the kids, and had to be at church in an hour, so I had no choice but to swallow my pride, get creative with how I fixed my hair (bobby pinning pieces in place to cover the blotches) and go to church.  Right as I finally got composed and resolved not to cry, I went to get Dutch up (minutes before we had to be out the door), and he had taken off his diaper and diarrhea pooped all over the carpet.  Yes.  That’s when the tears came.  Of course it all worked out, no one was injured, and thankfully church was a candlelit service.  That night I ran to rite-aid (with my coupons!), and bought a dark blond color that matched my natural color, at the root, and dyed my whole head a dark color to at least just cover up all the awfulness.   That was fine, then Christmas night, Jeff did the little cap-and-hook highlight thing for me and it turned out just fine. So now I am happy, my hair looks fine, and it still only cost an extra $15 for the mistake. I think I’ll stick with it and learn how to do it better each time.

I guess I’m only sharing that because what this whole CCE thing is showing me is that it’s ok that I’m not going to get it perfect the first time.  I don’t have to “get” all the deals just right.  I’m going to learn as I go.  I’m really really bad at highlighting my own hair so I shouldn’t try.  I’m learning, you know?  And because I’m not very good at trying new things, it’s good for me to try things.  Just like my sweater-collage concoction. The more I look at it the more I realize how it looks like a preschooler sewed it together. But how can I get better unless I try?  I’m learning.

So it was a fabulous, exhausting week.  The kids are up now and break time is over.  Thanks for adventuring with me on this little journey. And don’t forget to nap!