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.