We've got a tree down!!!

I woke up this morning to find this. . . . .





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Our gigantic tree that shaded most of our back yard was on the ground! Guess we're gonna need to borrow a truck and chainsaw from someone. And now, I know exactly what I'll be doing while the kids are at school on Monday. . . . .

Got it

Well, I got the job, I had an interview on Monday. Which was followed immediately by a second interview and a job offer on the spot (about an hour after I got there). Providing I pass the background check and the drug test (which I'm losing sleep over, hee hee) I'll be working next week. The pay isn't awesome but the schedule works for me, I'll be working three nights a week (part time) so that will help with the bills. My calendar is filling up for September and October shows for Pampered Chef so it'll be a busy month! But, I'm hoping between the two jobs I'll be able to bring in about $2000/mo extra which will help tremendously. Even if I only do this through Christmas it ought to help a ton. I've been working with the kids and Sushiboy on teaching them how to take care of things around here because I'm gonna need some help. But, here we go. Off on a long, hard journey that will hopefully end with us doing much much better financially.

A day of tough decisions

So, things have been tight around the Sushiboy household for about the last year and a half. Just when we start to think things might be getting a little better, something happens to send us right back to drowning. I have been making my Pampered Chef work but it just isn't enough. So, after a very late night last night of trying to figure out (again) how we are going to make it I made a very difficult decision. I applied for a job at Wallyworld. I want a graveyard shift. Something that I can do that will still allow me to do shows for Pampered Chef and be available for my family. Two of my kids will be in school all day this year so that helps. I'll get home from work, get kids to school and head to bed while they're at school. Hopefully I won't have to do this for long. If I can be bringing in $ with PC and $ from Wallyworld I should be able to have us mostly out of debt within about a year, perhaps sooner. I have no doubts that this will be extremely difficult but I honestly don't know what else to do. We need more money. So, here I go, stretching myself even more thin. sigh. I applied today, wish me luck.

Moosetracks

We got a guinea pig a little while back. It was never healthy, it died after we had it a couple of months so we got a new guinea pig. We had decided on her when the family we were getting her from thought they better check the sex (we thought we were getting a boy) they checked the sex and sure enough, it was a girl and it was fat and it had been in with all the other guinea pigs so we took the guinea pig "at our own risk". Ha ha, yep, she kept getting fatter and fatter and this last weekend while we were at my family reunion she finally had her babies! Three survived and the runt died. They are so cute! Did you know guinea pigs are born with their eyes open and with fur and teeth? They start eating regular food a few hours after they are born. They are basically just tiny miniaturized guinea pigs. Here are some pics, so fun! By the way, does anyone want a guinea pig in 6 weeks?

New fall products

Well, the new fall products for Pampered Chef arrived the other day. Holy cow! I got $1164 of new products! It was amazing. I put them up on my couch, it took me about a week to figure out what to do with all of them. I finally got the 4 HUGE boxes put away in my cupboards and the boxes themselves out to the recycling pile outside my door, which now looks very much like white trash live here. I need to make a trip to the paper recycling center tomorrow. But on the bright side, it came on a day that all of us needed a little pick me up. Here are some of the pictures of the day. My favorite is probably the one of all the kids digging into the boxes. Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE what I do?

Garden Plenty

Well, my garden is finally growing, I have about 10 small green tomatoes growing and I decided to try to grow tomatillos and they are growing! yeah! This morning I picked my raspberries and found some summer squash and zucchini! yeah! Last year I had a horrid garden, didn't even get zucchini. That is a bad year in the garden. Around here there is a joke that you need to lock your doors when you go to church, not because you're afraid someone might take something but because you're afraid you may end up with a car full of zucchini when you get out of church. hee hee. Looks like my neighbors may need to lock their doors this year. :) Just for fun I threw in a couple pictures of Cakes who lost her first tooth about a month back and Tank who was being very silly.

Thankful

Do you ever look at your spouse and think "whew, he may not be perfect, but I am sure glad he is who he is!" Yep, had yet another one of those moments the other day. Sushi (and myself) have our fair share of faults, but, he is overall so wonderful I'll take a few faults as long as he'll take a few of my faults. What a lucky woman I am to have such a wonderful husband who provides for our family, thinks I am wonderful, and is a great father to our children.

It's happened.

The unimaginable has happened. My house is clean, well, the parts of my house I spend time in are clean. I won't mention my cold storage, workshop or shed. But, my house is clean! That means the bedrooms, bathrooms, my office, kitchen, and living rooms are clean. This calls for a celebration! We're gonna Barbeque.

post

so I suppose I should post again one of these days. For now, suffice it to say it's been a very busy, exhausting few months. Sushi graduated, I promoted to Director with Pampered Chef, I went to new Director training in Chicago, and all the rest of the normal busyness. I am also working on stepping up my business by quite a lot, I want a lot more bookings now that Sushi is home every night. Time to make my business take off so we can reach our financial goals. I'll try to put together a real post here soon, inbetween all the madness.

Yesterday. . . .

Sushi summed up yesterday perfectly. He came home and called me and said "so, it looks like it was an interesting day around the house?!" lol. Yep, it was. He came home to all the laundry clean but piled up in the baskets not folded, the shelf in our storage room knocked over on the floor and everything scattered around it, a hamster cage outside because the hamster was dead, and the house smelling like smoke.
I was at a show when he called so this conversation happened when I was driving to pick up the children from my parents house.
Here is how my day went. I was trying a new kind of show yesterday so I spent all day preparing for it. When I got up yesterday morning I went to our storage room and found the shelf on the floor and everything scattered. ???? yep, don't know what happened there or when it happened. I just hope the shelf is not ruined. However, my day was full so we just carefully stepped around it. The laundry? yep, my family is lucky it got washed, the goal today? fold the laundry and pick up the shelf. The hamster? Well, it died sometime within the last day or so. Not sure, it's cookie's hamster and I check on it occasionally but the responsibility falls mostly on the boy. Oh, but cookie was sooo upset. He weeped, he wailed, he told me he doesn't want any more hamsters because they die too fast and he really loved that hamster. :( Part of why we have animals is so we can learn about death, I know it sounds morbid, but, it's really part of why my children have pets. The other parts? Responsibility, and happiness, pets bring happiness.
Lastly, about the smoke smell. This is a story I need to write down because it is both tragic for the microwave and funny. :) Yesterday as I was working on preparing for the show Tank ran downstairs excitedly exclaiming "I did it! I did it!" He ran from person to person telling them this. To which we all smiled and said "Oh! good job!" lol, we should have checked to see what he did. Not too long after that I needed to go upstairs for something. I walked upstairs and smelled smoke. Shocked, I looked around for the culprit. I looked over at the microwave and saw. . . . a very black plate of nachos, with thirty five more minutes to go! I hurridly stopped the microwave and opened all doors and windows. When I tried to take the plate out of the microwave only the outside half came out and the middle stayed in the center. He had melted the plate! I grabbed my handy nylon scraper and scraped off the melted middle plate. It was so hot it melted my nylon pan scraper! Yipes! Well, tank was not thrilled that I was throwing out his nachos so I had to explain that they were yucky and made him a new plate of nachos. But I am a little shocked! The two year old made himself a plate of nachos and put them in the microwave. He just knows if you push buttons and start it will cook your food. Stinker! I also told him he needs to ask for help next time he wants nachos. I am so glad that we only paid 10 bucks for that microwave! If it was a new $200 one I would have been sick. Our experience with this (after Anna's similar experience, only with a muffin, a black, smoking muffin) is that the microwave is not long for this world. This kind of thing seems to kill the microwave for good.
So, there ya go. What a day!

Director!!!!

Woot woot! I did it! I am now a director with The Pampered Chef! Yeah! I have been working so hard on this for the last year! I just submitted the last sales needed to get me to where I needed to be. I was amazed at how my friends and family stepped in to help me. At the beginning of today I was 238.02 away from the $5000 I needed for my team sales. Perhaps it was tacky but I put out a plea on facebook and what an amazing response I got! I met and exceeded the goal and now I am a director! This will help our family out so much, AND I can finally check off something on my new years resolution list!

Manna

What a day today has been. It's been a roller coaster. I started off the day feeling overwhelmed, my house is soo dirty and we were having dinner guests tonight. I knew I needed to clean like crazy to be ready for them so I canceled my time at the gym. I started cleaning, and getting food ready to cook when I got a phone call. Our dinner guests had to cancel because their son had a fever. bummer. So, I lost all motivation to clean the house. whoops! We have had a rough month, earlier this month Sushi looked like he got two paychecks. I told him to check with his work and tell them they messed up. Turns out he gets a length of service bonus. We got told by his work that the extra paycheck was legit. So, we splurged a bit. Bear in mind, we NEVER would have spent the money had we known what would happen next. The next day our account was majorly overdrawn with 400 worth of stuff still left to go through. Turns out, there was a bank error, the contact at Sushi's work was too lazy to actually call payroll and just guessed that the "extra" paycheck was actually legit when it in fact wasn't. I was/am a little upset because we did all the "right" things and we still got screwed. So, I had to call my bank, stop payment on my mortgage, and transfer money from savings to checking to cover the crazy amount of stuff that was still going to be going through our account. As a consequence of this our mortgage was paid late this month. Because we didn't have the extra to cover all the extra crap. we have been extra squeaky tight this month because of this. Oh sure, we did our taxes and we are expecting a refund but it's not here yet. Today our manna arrived. The kids and I picked up the mail and in it there was a manila envelope. Cookie asked if he could open it, I told him sure, whatever. He opened it and said "Wow! Mom, there are $100 bills in here!" In shock I said what? let me see that. Sure enough, in a plain manila padded envelope with no return address, no post stamp and our address and a message printed on a printer was $1000. I have no idea who sent it to us, I have no way of knowing or finding out. All I know is that I feel incredibly blessed. That is a huge amount of money in my world. I'm shocked, I started crying like a baby. For those of you who know me you know I've very stoic and I hardly ever cry. For the rest of the afternoon whenever I thought about this I would start crying. This is literally something that will allow us to be able to pay our mortgage in April. I wish I knew who to thank. However, whoever did this probably also knows I'm very proud and even though we so badly needed this money I never would have accepted this had they written me a check or put their name on it, I would have said it was too much and too generous. So, I am thanking our angel in the only way I know how, I'm telling everyone how blessed we are in the hopes that whoever did this will know how incredibly grateful we are. Thank you so so so much, you have no idea what an answer to prayers this is. I literally feel as though we have been given manna from heaven. The windows of heaven were opened for us today.

Homemade dishwasher detergent

I'm trying something new today, in an effort to save some money I'm trying to make homemade dishwasher detergent. I go through one of those huge cascade boxes in about a month and a half, two if I'm lucky. So, I'm trying something new. I got the recipe at this website http://diynatural.com/simple-effective-jabs-homemade-dishwasher-detergent-rinse-agent/ and I'm gonna go mix it up right now. I'll let you know how it works, it took me about 14.00 to buy the ingredients for this and that will make multiple batches.
Also, an update on the microwave, went to our local classifieds and found a used one for $20 that is here in a town about 10 minutes south of us. I'm gonna go check it out tonight. I know, it only took me one day. What can I say, I'm sick of teaching the old dogs new tricks. :)



UPDATE- got the microwave for $10, can't beat that, it's hilarious, the kids are so happy to have one again they keep finding uses for it. lol.

RIP Microwave

well, dangit, the microwave died yesterday. My diffuser died saturday, so many of the things we own are limping along. Sigh. Maybe we'll be blessed with a "new" microwave from someone who takes pity on us. We are broke, not a little broke, completely and totally broke. sigh. I know time will fix all things. And we need to focus on what is important, not on things. But, it is a little discouraging to see so much that needs to be fixed and not be able to do anything about it. But, on the bright side my wonderful brother, Elder S is going into the MTC (Missionary Training Center) this afternoon and from there to the Columbus Ohio mission. I know he is going to be a phenomenal missionary. Most the time you get these boys who have lived squeaky clean lives who go on missions (don't get me wrong, that is a wonderful thing and definitely preferable to the alternative, but, most of us are not squeaky clean). Elder S has experienced the power of the atonement and has chosen to turn his life around. And I'm very, very proud of him. He is such an amazing person and he will be an amazing missionary.

Tax Return

Finally, I figured them out. Our silly, difficult, complicated taxes. Whew! It's done. We are getting a nice return, too bad it'll be in our account for about a day before it's shipped off to pay off the furnace! At least that will be done. :)

Update

Well, I thought I would give an update today. I had a doctors appointment today, I went to an Chinese acupuncturist/herb doctor that I went to before I had Tank and he helped me with my infertility then.
Let's rewind a bit here. When I went to the regular OB's the other day she told me I didn't fit any profile but that something was definitely wrong. She put me on metformin for the insulin resistance she thinks I have and was really strongly pushing for me to be done with my family and to just go on birth control. I have a problem with that. First, it's not her decision, second, hormonal birth control is terrible for me. I gain weight, I get moody, I break out, it is NOT a good option for me. The one good thing she said is that yes, for how hard and how often I work out I should not have a problem losing weight. So, I immediately felt prompted to go back to the acupuncturist. However, I saw no way for us to afford him. He's not covered by conventional health insurance and it gets expensive quickly. Defeated, I talked to many people who had gone through what I had gone through and they told me to just go on the birth control for a few months and then go off it and I should be able to conceive and move on. I was telling my mother this and she immediately offered to pay for the acupuncturist. Did I mention I have an awesome mother? Well, I do. I finally went to him today. Whew, one of the expenses is the time and gas it takes to get up and back from Salt Lake! It basically takes an entire afternoon. He gave me some Herbs and I started taking them. He agreed that taking the metformin was a good move and that with my history taking birth control pills was a very bad option. So, for the next little while I get to take yucky herbs but hopefully it'll lead to a great outcome! I hope to finally lose the weight I have been holding onto for the last 10 years and get to a healthy weight. According to the BMI I am obese. According to BMI I need to lose 50 lbs. While I think that is crap, I do believe that I do have about 20-30 lbs. to lose. So, wish me luck it's a long journey ahead of me, hopefully with the right medicines my body will heal itself and the hormonal imbalances will right themselves because I really do believe that is the root of the problem.

Ole' Swampy

I thought I should put a happy post up. Lately my blog has been a sounding board for my many problems and I thought something fun would be great.

I bought a book called "Hello cupcake!" a couple of years ago. I love it. It has adorable cupcakes decorated in ways that anyone can do. They use candy and simple frosting techniques and it's so fun. I don't pull it out often because I am often very busy. But, we are having a get together with one of my friends today and so it was the perfect excuse to make something out of the book. I also made my "surprise pupcakes" with it. They are chocolate cupcakes with a surprise baked into the middle. Cream cheese and chocolate chips! yum! So, it should be fun tonight, I love excuses to make fun things for my family.

A Bit of a personal question-updated

I want to ask some advice from some of you but it's a bit of a personal question. I think I am having ovarian cysts. Has anyone ever dealt with this? I would swear I'm pregant, I have all the symptoms, nausea, tired, soreness, all that. But, I know I'm not. I haven't missed a period, in fact they seem to drag out a little longer than normal. I've been sore and tender on my right side, so much so that I had to take 800 mg of ibuprofen to make it through the day on wednesday. It's just a constant dull, painful ache, in the same place. The pain seems to be worse the week after my period ends. I've looked it up, cysts fit the symptoms. Sigh. I'll probably head to the Dr's here soon. I called Sushi's insurance and asked them to send us some cards and info on our plan. The fact I had to call them is a post for another day. So, any experience? Words of wisdom? Anything to help?


Updated- just back from the Dr's. sigh. No answers and just lots of not good guesses. I've never been so strongly urged to go on birth control and so strongly challenged on whether or not I should have more kids. Too bad we want to add to our family. I'm a puzzle. I don't fit into any diagnosis. They are guessing, either Endometriosis or PCOS again. Because delving into endometriosis is such a costly affair we are going after the PCOS thing. They have put me on metformin again. It was nice to hear that no, I'm not crazy. I work out an hour and a half a day five days a week and I eat healthy but I can't lose weight. She agreed that with as much as I'm doing I should just be able to shed weight right and left. sigh. We'll see how the metformin goes. The good news is it doesn't look at all like cysts. I'm a little sad and a little defeated. A day to think and ponder will do me some good.

Happy Valentines day!

I suppose I should say it. Although, to be honest with you I kind of feel like Valentines Day is the over rated holiday. Don't get me wrong. I love any excuse for chocolate and flowers but I want them to come to me spontaneously, not because my husband is afraid he'll be in the doghouse if he doesn't bring them to me. The things I value have to do with time. Quality time. Time he spent really thinking about me, and what he can do FOR me. One of my favorite gifts he's given me (repeatedly because I like it so much) is a playlist on my ipod. I love that he took the time to find music I like or music he likes that he thinks I will like and put it together for me. It's simply something I don't have time and patience for. I listen to them over and over and over. It also makes me feel like we're in high school or Junior High and he just made me a mixed tape. The feeling makes me giggle! I also love a heartfelt card. But it always means more when he just surprises me and gives these things to me for no reason at all other than that he loves me. We do celebrate Valentines Day, but we NEVER go out on Valentines day and I never expect flowers ON Valentines Day. Often those things are done a week before or a week after. What we usually do? I make a fun dinner for us on Valentines Day and we exchange cards with truly heartfelt words. Tonight we are having heart shaped BBQ chicken pizzas because that is what the kids requested. :) What do you think, am I too practical and not romantic enough? What are your Valentines traditions?

And the drama continues but I do believe it's coming to an end.

I hope. I hope the drama of the washer has come to an end. At least for a little while. It's dead, it's gone. $120 worth of knowledge later, it's dead. sigh. I got 13 years of use out of it. It got moved 6 times, lived through roomates, and it did 10-12 loads of laundry a week near the end of it's life. I guess I got my $300 out of it. That's how much I paid for it 13 years ago. Now? For the one I want? $1000. eeps! That is certainly not in the budget for now. Our manna from heaven? The free washer our good friend is giving to us for free. It'll last for a little while and once it dies we'll either be able to buy the new one I want or we'll get a refurbished one for a couple hundred dollars. Sigh, I am slightly ticked about the $120 we spent to "fix" the old washer, however, I gained so much knowledge! More than I ever wanted to know about washers. The good news? I now know how to fix a washer early on.

Today is insanity. I have to go to the laundromat early this morning, then I have visiting teaching at one, a dr's appointment at 1:45 and I need to close a show and make treats for team meeting tomorrow, read/plan my part for team meeting tomorrow, clean my car because I'm carpooling and my car is a freaking pig pen, and print/mail receipts for another host. I think I'll combine my studying for visting teaching and team meeting into the laundromat stuff. I'll just be sitting there for a couple of hours. I may as well accomplish something.

A DATE!!!!

It's a very rare occurance here at the sushi boy household. But, because sushiboy was so awesome at his company christmas party we won some gift certificates. I'm so excited I can't stand it. We're going to go see "The Foreigner" here at a local play house and then we're going to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Now I just need to get the house picked up so that sushi's sister and brother in law who graciously agreed to babysit don't think we're total slobs. :P Oh, and I need to make myself look pretty, that takes some time. I'm not what you call a natural beauty. It takes a little work here! :) I'll update later about how it was!

Update: What a night! We went and saw "The Foreigner", it was hilarious! We laughed to hard! After that we were planning on going to Texas Roadhouse but when we got there at 5:30 there was an HOUR AND A HALF wait. We were hungry, Peanuts just weren't going to tide us over. :) So, I had brought our other gift cards we had gotten and we decided to go try La Jolla Groves. We called over there and there was NO WAIT. It was awesome. Our friend put it this way "I forgot it was winter for a minute!" I did too. The ambiance was wonderful. They had these fake lemon trees covering the ceiling everywhere so it felt like we were eating in a lemon grove. The food! Oh! The food! They pride themselves on using local produce and only vine ripened tomatoes. I don't know how they did it but they were fabulous. It made me wish it was July and I could go eat tomatoes out of my garden. My mouth literally starts watering when I think about it. They served these fantastic rolls- some were a honey white, honey wheat, pesto and sundried tomatoe. Our table literally ate three bowls of them. They were awesome. We got a caprese salad that was so so so good for an appetizer and then Sushi got a fantastic steak sandwich ( I even had a bite and it was good, that's saying something, I don't care for beef. It had a fabulous balsalmic vinegar flavor to it) and I got some awesome chicken marsala. I have a major weakness for chicken marsala. This was fantastic. It was served on a slice of potatoes au-gratin but these are NOT your mother's au-gratin potatoes. I think they had marsapone cheese. They were so good. There was also some fantastic pan fried butternut squash. On our way out we decided to visit the little sweet shop they had in the restaurant. They sell those fabulous rolls and everything in the dessert display was 50% off so we got two slices of turtle cheesecake to share with my sister in law and brother in law. So fun, it was a very long, well needed date. Sushi and I replied we felt so relaxed and it was so fun!

And in answer to Leslie- you are too kind. I often look at those pictures of stars without makeup and think "hey! That's what I look like without makeup!" It's alright, I just know that to look my best I have to work a little at it. It cracks me up how surprised people are who usually see me without makeup when they see me made up. They literally say "wow! you look so pretty!" To which I reply "It's amazing what a little mascara will do for a girl, huh?!" ;)

Enjoy the moment

I'm trying. . . . I really am. . . . but right now when all the children are insisting on being within a 2 foot circle of where I am at all times I'm struggling to enjoy the moment. Mom needs some personal space!!!!!

And the saga continues

The washer. Wow. I have learned more than I ever wanted to learn about washers. There is one more part that I ordered this morning that should hopefully fix the darn thing. We've spent about $120.00 on parts for the silly thing. I'm trying to take a positive attitude and be thankful for the knowledge I've gained. Sigh. I wish we had about $1000, there is a super cool super capacity, super energy efficient washer from LG that I want. Oh well. Hopefully my knowledge will help our washer work for another 5-10 more years. I AM grateful for the self sufficiency I have gained. I can do something most people don't know how to do. :) It's amazing what necessity will create. Oh, the picture above? The washer I want, but can not get. :(

Long, rough week

Whew, what a week. Sushi was sick all last week. Because he is working with a contractor he doesn't get sick days. He was sick all week. I think he went to work one day. What does this mean to us? Basically no paycheck this week. NOT GOOD. To top things off, my washer finally stopped working yesterday. AWESOME. NO money and a broken washer. A washer is not something we can go without at this house. I do 10-12 loads a week. It's insanity. And I have the super capacity washer. I did some research, we went to the clearance outlet. yipes! The last time I bought a washer was about 13 years ago when I was single. They are so expensive! We know we don't want a front loader so that isn't a problem, but even a top loader is a lot. The best price we could find for a new one that has a large capacity was $318 and it is a brand we've never heard of. An estate. I looked it up, it's basically a whirlpool, just not called a whirlpool. There was a Whirlpool at the clearance center with a big scratch on the lid for $369. Before we jumped into a new one I thought I would give fixing it a try. Thank goodness for videos on the internet! I was able to fix the two most likely reasons for the washer not spinning. That cost about $48. I went to reassemble the washer and looks like I am missing a c-clamp that holds the brake cam driver in place. Kind of an essential part. I had to special order it. That was another $7. Now I have to wait until friday to get the c-clamp and then I can reassemble the washer and hopefully it'll be fixed. I really hope we didn't just spend $60 we don't really have on something that didn't fix the washer. I guess if the $60 doesn't fix it we'll buy a new washer. Our local store has a 90 days no interest program that we'll use. I should be able to pay it off with Pampered Chef by then. Sigh. I can't wait until we are doing better financially. I hate the constant worry. :(

Pampered Chef

Sorry about my extended absence. I have been busy! I am so excited about this year with Pampered Chef. I mentioned in my last post that Pampered Chef had changed their requirements for directorship. Woot! They are requirements I already meet most of the time. This makes me happy.
I am so excited about the incentive trip they announced this year though. For the first time, they are making it so that not only can I go on a cruise in April 2012, I also get a chance to earn a trip to New Orleans this coming November! Woot! So, needless to say I am motivated, Sushi and I haven't been on a real vacation for years. We are long overdue. I jokingly said to my friend that it would be awesome to earn this trip because then Sushi and I could spend some time together and pretend to be married again. She cracked me up, she told me to be careful or "I might end up pregnant." Little does she know we would be fine with that. Tank is two now, another baby would be great. We feel like there is at least one more to come to our family. So, I have been working hard to get at least 8-10 shows a month because I need a vacation! And a free vacation is even better. :)

Resolutions. . . . . .

Well, it's that time of year again. I don't even want to think about my resolutions from last year. It's just too dang depressing. NOT ONE ACCOMPLISHED. sigh. . . .

To be fair it was a rather stinky, difficult year here at the Sushiboy household. We had high plans and hopes for the year that were quickly dashed by Sushi's layoff around the beginning of January. It was rough but I think we handled things the right way. The first thing we did was take all our credit cards and put them in a sealed envelope. The next thing we did was call all said card companies and applied for financial hardship. We did NOT give up on Sushi going to school. For that I am particularly proud. Now we're down to 16 weeks this coming friday until he graduates. woot! :) We also contacted our Bishop and let him know what had happened and that we were going to need some financial help for a little while. I don't know what we would have done without the help of our ward. Food orders, help with utilities even help with our mortgage one month. I am so so greatful for the blessings of the Church welfare system. And I have gained such a testimony of the fast offerings and how they help so many people. Thankfully we only needed their help for a few months and then Sushi found a job that worked around his school schedule and paid basically the same as his last job. The good news is he is in such a better place. He is appreciated and liked at this job and that is priceless. When Sushi was layed off we asked my Father to give him a blessing. In the blessing we were told we had just been handed a great blessing. Looking back on this last year I can see how it was a great blessing. I have gained an even greater testimony of the love our Heavenly Father has for us. I know that our lives are watched over and guided by a loving, kind Father in Heaven. Our needs were met. What a blessing. Sushi and I are finally on the same page as to what needs to happen with our finances. That is a great blessing as well. So my resolutions this year are going to be a little less rigid and a little more spiritual. I hope those of you who are not religious who read my blog will forgive me.

1- Read my scriptures every day. Not only as a family but individually as well. This is something I have struggled with for a while. I know I should do it, I just seem to let other things in my life get in the way. I need to make the time for this. I make time for everything else.

2- along the same token, say my prayers morning AND night and say family prayers. I'm awesome about the night time thing, not so great about the morning thing. My children can wait a few minutes while I say my prayers. :) I'm sure I'll be a much more patient, kind mother if I do this.

3- go to they gym at least 3 times a week. I'm done trying to put a number that I will lose. Apparently my body has decided that it will be impossible to lose weight so I'm just going for healthy. If I happen to lose a few lb's along the way that would be awesome.

4- Promote to director with Pampered Chef. I KNOW this will happen this year. Pampered Chef changed their career plan putting the control back in my hands and I am stoked. I CAN do this. The things that were stopping me before were things that were out of my hands I'm already meeting the guidelines that will be coming out so I know it's possible.

5-continue to not use those cards and pay those suckers off. The sooner they're gone, the better off we'll be.

I think that is it. That's enough I think! I hope you have some awesome resolutions for yourself! Tell me what they are!