Realization....

that I just don't have time to blog--and I am really okay with that!

Work from 9am-4pm Monday thru Friday-thankfully my commute is only 5 minutes away!
Freshmen on the volleyball HS team.
7th grader on softball team.
4th grader taking piano lessons (and wanting to take karate)
2nd grader---well she just gets to be cute at this point!

Add in taking care of Jon, thinking of dinners, shopping for dinners, making dinners, running kids here, there and everywhere, seminary, school drop offs, pick ups, attending practices, games, tournaments, church callings, helping Jon with his High Priest church calling (did you know I am his home teaching COMPANION!?-does this get me out of visiting teaching--cuz that would be super helpful), my work with Nuriche (although helping family/friends lose weight is SOOO FUN to watch-I truly do love it!), family home evening, family scripture study, family prayers, paying the bills, keeping the house clean, staying on top of girls homework and school projects, helping girls pass of faith in God and Personal Progress goals (no drivers license until they are DONE with Personal Progress -rachel is half way done.), keeping up with my pool, breaking up fights (usually between Sarah and Anna, or Sarah & Becca, or Sarah & Rachel--you get the picture), figuring out what to do with my washer that decided to billow out smoke, figuring out how to fix the girls potty that keeps running, replacing burnt out lights (i swear i replace 8 lights and 15 more burn out in this house!!), managing everything financially for our family, and lastly putting on a smile, positive attitude and sense of humor to make it through each day!

So...yeah...no time to blog---and I'm done feeling guilty about it.

PS: Oh great--I just saw our family photo on the top of my blog--which is like 3 years OLD---lovely--add to my list "find photographer for updated family photo"!

Highs & Lows:

Lows:

Jons grandma that lived in Corona Del Mar on the beach passed away. It's Sandra's mom. All the family flew in and we attended her funeral, followed by the grave site service. We saw the program and Jon saw his name as grave site dedication/prayer-he's never done that before. It was a good experience for him. After the ward put on a lunch for the family and were so nice to all of us. After the service all of sandra's kids and grandkids headed to the beach just for an hour. Grandma would have wanted it that way!

At the end of our WEEK LONG beach vacation with all of Jons family-all four girls barfed. I cant complain much though. They are all old enough to hit the toilet, stayed in the rooms & kept to themselves. I hardly saw them much! It was kind of nice to be alone after a long weekend of craziness. I got ALL the laundry done, totally unpacked, rented a TON of chick flicks and ate gobs of candy--all by myself-glorious. I guess part of this could have gone in the HIGHS section.

BOREDOM seems to be the theme at our house over here. We havent had cable in 1.5 years. I dont get why the older girls dont call a friend to come over?! When I was in summer I was always AT someone's house or HAD someone over. What is it with teens these days?! It honestly drives me crazy.

HIGHS:

A WEEK LONG beach vacation with Jons entire family!


SERIOUSLY SO FUN--he REALLY has SUCH great siblings-each and everyone are so genuine and so great. I really am so very lucky to be part of the Hales family. It's still strange to me after 15 years that I am ACTUALLY a HALES!


Chad/Kelly bought these longboard chips & salsa for each of us-GRUBTASTIC!

Girls learned how to surf from Uncle Chad and Uncle Todd. How nice are they to teach my girls! They got up on the boards too--so so so very fun. They even managed to get Jon out there-


Im not sure why Jon looks so trashed in this photo-I do know it was a hard day for him that day--poor guy-only one hard day out of the whole week though so that's good!
me & my girls were kind of a mess watching Jons brothers all take him out there and put him on a board-but Jon loved it (mostly because he was with all 4 of his brothers & 2 sisters in the water) and he enjoyed being a little crazy/reckless.


Todd/Taylor made this HUGE screen set up--so cool to watch it indoors!


watching cash cab with most of the kids-we made a great team and they thought I was kinda smart cuz I got some answers right!

Rachel made the HS volleyball team--and the ONLY girl that was NOT on a club team prior (to the tune of 300 bucks a month-sigh). We are so proud she made it and she has a LOT of work to do to catch up to all these girls-but this will be a great experience for her. Im definitely READY for her to be REALLY busy during the school year and super tired when she gets home!!!

Highs & Lows

LOWS:
Last Sunday I was SO DONE with my messy house. I am CRAZY busy with Nuriche and ALL four of my L.A.Z.Y. children are home full time. Instead of yelling at them-I put all my frustration into their "chore list."--Each girl had a list of things to get done. IT WAS MAJOR. I also wrote "I will be gone for a LONG TIME so do NOT call me until this house is CLEANED UP and DONE WELL!" Then I went grocery shopping and got a ton of errands done in peace while my free child labor was getting stuff done.
It worked like a charm and the house was FABULOUS. This will be repeated EVERY Monday morning. They clean, I shop for groceries and get errands done (or maybe just go see a movie...SHHHH!)

My dumb pool is giving me issues. Why must it taunt me so?! I THINK I finally have it taken care of--but good grief--I'm getting tired of spending cash on it!

My two older girls fighting over who wears who's jeans, who sits in what seat of my truck etc etc etc--when does school start again?!?!?

HIGHS:

GRADUATION GALORE! Rachels graduation:

Apparently her 8th grade class was the TOP class in all of Riverside county-so they got to have their graduation at the HS-kind of a big deal.

Her drawing also made the cover of the graduation programs:


The Hales still have the STANG they all drove in HS--Rachel has her eye on it BIG TIME!

We have a friend who is ready to restore it back to good shape. Grandma said if Rachel earns money for it-she can have it-so start saving those pennies!

She made it on the HS Volleyball team. Out of ALL the girls that made it-Rachel was the ONLY ONE who WASNT currently playing on a club team (to the tune of 300 a MONTH!) that made the HS team. I swear-why must everything be SO competitive-and why do parents think their children will all be sports super stars?! WHATEVAS.

Sarahs graduation:


Having fun in Las Vegas with my Nuriche company. Giving our 40 minute presentation on stage. It was NOT what I was expecting-HUGE stage, HUGE lights, HUGE screens-I was mic'd LOUD music--it was like a concert-way way WAY FUN!

This is David Parker giving his presentation.

I was able to receive my Gold pin for my efforts in the company so far-WAY FUN!


Getting Rachel ready to send off to BYU EFY. Her & her cousin Kaylee will be going together--SO EXCITED for them! Jons cousin Kim is married to John Bytheway-so they will be staying with them over night then they will help take the girls get checked into EFY.

Lastly-it's Sunday night which means tomorrow my house will be looking FABULOUS!

Girls Weekend, New Garden, Teenagers...

Last weekend was my annual Girls Weekend--i LOVE it! Sadly we only took like FOUR photos the entire time!?

Probably because we were too busy sleeping, eating or shopping-just as it should be I say! I LOADED UP at Nordstroms Rack--I've been wearing the SAME black skirt with different shirts for two years now-it was time to find something else. I got LOTS of pencil skirts ($16.97) & LOTS of cardigans ($14.57) & LOTS of cute ruffly tanks ($12.95) to go under the cardigans & a pair of SUPER expensive jeans that were cheap and WAY cute summer denim shorts.

While on Girls Weekend-Jons mom Sandra came to stay with him & the four girls. Each year I go, she comes & plants my garden for me. The girls worked to clear it all out-and then mainly Anna/Becca helped her plant the new crop. The girls (Sarah/Anna) have been watering the garden & watching it-so cute.

Over the weekend I invited some of the youth Rachel's age to play in the pool & have pizookies-surprisingly they all ended up playing the Wii's Just Dance 2-


it was like a stake dance in our livingroom--so fun.

This week is our LAST week of school--We have Sarah's 6th grade promotion on Thursday at 9am, then Rachel's 8th grade graduation on Friday at 9am. They already had the awards for Rachel's grade--she ended up getting the Bronze Award for Honors both years, Excellence in Mathematics & the Presidents Award for Outstanding Academics. Seriously-this girl is going places! It will be fun to see what awards the other girls get this week. I REALLY do NOT know how we got such smart girls--every single one of them get amazing grades and are all in the Gate Program. With the huge trial we already have going on-it TRULY is a blessing to me that my girls can get their homework done & somehow manage to get good grades. Now if I could just get them to keep their rooms cleaned..........

Doing my THANG!

I have been BUSY!!!! I'm loving life & I'm really really REALLY happy--thank you for your continued support for our family-I have awesome friends!

This is a fun video I put together--click on the link below:
Talk Fusion Studio UTC

Gardens, Babies, Easter-oh my!

Every year I go away for MUCH NEEDED girls weekend. These are the group girls that rallied around me like no other girls and were there for me day & night when Jon broke his neck. The things they did for my family (and Im sure MUCH MORE I dont even know about) just brings me to instant tears. I am soooooooooo lucky to have friends that care and love me.

While I am gone on this Girls Weekend trip-Sandra comes to stay with Jon & the girls. While she is here the girls along with her help like to plant a garden. So before she does her green thumb thing I had the girls weed out last years garden.

No men on the corner were hired for this job--100% free child labor!



Not bad huh - This makes one HAPPY MOM & DAD!


I've been wanting to SHED those "last 20 lbs" after having my four girls. I realized I didnt have a "before" photo of me-but found this one. I've COMPLETELY changed the way I eat, the way I eat out, the way I work out-I've never been healthier and happier! I'm vigorously pushing Nuriche along to help as many people as I can-it's so fun! I cant WAIT to post the photo of my friend who's lost over 80 lbs with Nuriche & exercise next.



This is my friend Erin. She has struggled to have a baby of her own. Breaks my heart. If Jon didnt break his neck-I would be a surrogate for her in a HEART BEAT! I am sad that I can't do that for her. Oh how I WISH that I could! Being adopted myself I was one of her first calls to learn more information. I will FOREVER be grateful to parents that wanted children so bad-they flew CLEAR to Brazil for a little brown eyed, brown haired 2 year old.

Easter was good-Sat we hit Irvine park with Scott & Kellie's side of the family. Then Sunday we ate with Jons family (small-just us, Mom & Dad, Scott & Kellie).
Earlier in the week-the girls saw that I had just purchased 99 cent cheapo plastic eggs and candy-they asked if they could all put candy in the eggs. SURE WHY NOT! (Is that like having them wrap their own xmas presents?! -cool I didnt think so either!)Then Easter Eve Rachel & Sarah hid all the eggs. Rachel asked me "Mom are you going to do clues for our baskets like you always do?" I being kind of tired from the long day said "Well I hadnt planned on it" Rachel sighed a small "ahhhh" I asked her "Oh do you like that?" Her eyes got REAL big--"Yeah I love it!" So I managed to come up with 5 clues for each of them. The older two girls I made harder clues. The LAST clue for their basket was "When you want to look hip -you come here!" They couldn't figure it out--DUH it's MY CLOSET since they BOTH wear ALL MY CLOTHES!!!

Today I took the older two girls to find cute dresses for their 6th & 8th grade graduations-DUDE WHY DIDNT I HAVE BOYS?! I can just give them a tie and be done with it all. We searched EVERYWHERE for a DECENT MODEST dress. I SWEAR everything is strapless and no joke just under the butt.

Drives me batty. It's sad to think pretty much all the girls will be sporting these trendy looks on the graduation runway--except for mine. Oh well. So if anyone knows where I can get two decent dresses that dont look like they are 12 sizes too small LET ME KNOW!!!!

I cant even be clever with my title!

I am too busy too even think of a clever title. Oh well!

Our cruise was FABUUUUUUUUUULOUS! You found yourself sitting on each island that looked like a postcard and taking a few minutes to take it all in. It was truly beautiful!

Grenada-My FAVORITE Island



Nuriche Team Members



Laziest Day---sooooooooo nice! I even went in the water. I DO NOT LIKE snorkeling or being around fishes--creeps me out.

Formal Dinner Photo--I was lazy and just wore a church outfit-nothing fancy. Can you tell the theme of my trip--LAZY!

Some Plantation--see even Jon got out and about!

BIG thanks to our friends that stayed with our girls so we could go. BIGGER thanks to Sandra who took all four girls to Yosemite for their school competition thingy. Sadly they didnt win (yeah for us cuz that means not having to travel the family to Tenessee in May for four days!). Fun experience for them though.

I cant believe school is over June 2nd here. I will have Sarah graduating from 6th, and Rachel graduating from 8th. CRAZY!

Life is good--just really, really, REALLY busy right now for the next few months. I am working Nuriche full time, Jon is working full time doing websites & a project for his dad all while helping me with Nuriche too.

Ive been without my laptop for a MONTH-my Dad fixed it for me-I finally feel whole and complete. I have SO MANY fun shows to catch up on now, greys anatomy, Modern Family, Parenthood, Bethany, and all the Housewives-HA

Laptopless...

I've been laptopless for like three weeks....can you say brutal!!!

Life is great other then that! Jon and I are off next Friday for a southern carribean cruise thanks to nuriche! We will visit islands like Barbados, Aruba etc... Fun stuff!

Girls are growing up fast. I can't believe I just registered one for high school. Crazy! She's taking honors English, honors biology, geometry, an art class and theatre or creative writing class. She will also be trying out for the volleyball team and track team. Add early morning seminary, she will be tired.

I would write more but using this iPad is not my favorite.

Highs & Lows

Lows:
Feeling STRESSED. Some days my plate seems heavy. I am doing paperwork to get a loan modification for our house (I'm on my FOURTH ROUND-good grief). I'm doing a mod thru the "front door" thru Chase and through the "back door" with Fannie Mae both at the same time. We've been working on a loan mod for TWO YEARS just with Chase "thru the front door" but just this week I started the process direct with Fannie Mae-dude something needs to happen.

We are VERY concerned about how little youth are in our ward/stake. When we first moved here there were 140 primary kids, 120 youth. Today we have maybe 30 primary kids and 15-20 youth. Rachel has been by herself since age 11-she will be 14 in about 3 months. We are considering other options for our girls as we feel having good STRONG friends plays a major part in ones life. We shall see what plays out.

I am still working very hard to have Nuriche going to help support our family. I am so grateful it has kept both Jon & myself healthy. It's such a tremendous product and I am glad it's part of our daily lives. I am also grateful we can share it with others-see the changes it's made in their lives (personal friends losing 70, 80 and 100 pounds in 6 months!) and that it helps us financially as well. We are so grateful to David Parker for asking us to join him in this venture.

Jon is creating a new business (which I cannot say until it goes live) so I am busy trying to help him get that going as well. (I guess this could be in the Highs too.)

Taking on a HUGE project with Sarah. Her and Anna are in a program called Destination Imagination. They are on different "teams" and meet with their "team" at a parents house once a week for about 1.5 hours. This Saturday is the HUGE challenge. They had to come up with an 8 minute skit that THEY came up with, wrote a script for, created props, costumes-EVERYTHING. The parents are not allowed to help them in anyway other then prompt them like "what are ways to show an explosion of a car" then the kids have to give the ideas and pick one to use as part of their skit etc. Well it was going fine until I get a text that Sarah's group (two weeks away from the BIG challenge) decided to QUIT. WHAT?! They were so close! So I decided to take it upon myself to "see this through." I contacted the parents and said we're moving forward which meant four girls at my house EVERYDAY for TWO weeks for two hours and on saturdays for 8 hours. Kill.Me.Now. Really it was just me trying to teach Sarah that "even if things get hard-and you are THIS close-you dont quit." So the big challenge is this Saturday and to be honest I am kind of hoping they dont win and move on--because that means 6 more weeks of DI for another challenge! (Last year the team from our school made it ALL the way to World Regionals (it was like the Olympics-teams from every COUNTRY!) and our team from our school ended up placing FOURTH in the world-HELLO!) I am REALLY hoping we are done with DI this Saturday FOR REALS.

So as you can see MY PLATE IS FULL! Not to mention caring for Jon, being a wife, being a mother, trying to keep family dinners going, family home evening, scripture studying, family prayer, homework etc etc etc--the past two weeks I have just felt my plate a little too heavy with meat and not enough dessert on it!

Highs:
Jon was ordained a High Priest today. We are both still in shock--he's so young (38)! I feel like I need to get him some geriatric scriptures (you know the BIG FONT ones!). Thank goodness for technology now-the scriptures are on his phone and if he needs them geriatric style he can push the plus button.

Both sets of parents came to our ward (the 3rd hour). Jon's dad (along with my dad in the circle) ordained him a High Priest and gave him THEE MOST BEAUTIFUL BLESSING any of us had ever heard. We were all in tears. We are all trying to remember what he said so Jon can write it down and have it. My dad told us later "I've heard A LOT of blessing-but never heard a more beautiful blessing-especially one from a Father to his Son." So touching.

After church they all came for pot roast (in the crock pot) and had my famous Cowboy Cookies for dessert. It was great to have both sets and for the focus to be on Jon.

Jon feels INCREDIBLY humbled. It has been touching to his watch his reaction, his emotions, his thoughts, his actions, his sincerity. I am a very lucky girl and our girls are extremely blessed to have Jon as their Father.

Today-Sunday-has just been a really really great day!

Highs & Lows

Lows:

Catching more mice on sticky traps (up to 4 on ONE TRAP) then I care to know about. Seriously I'm freaked. Last night at 2am I walked down the upstairs hall to find some cough drops for becca-I flipped on the hallway light and BAM a greyish matter squeezed its fat self into this TINY pencil sized hole and up away it went through the hall cupboards and into the attic-why why WHY!??!?!? We had a professional come and set traps and other things--I swear just something I dont care to deal with.

Everyone but Jon coming down with allergies. I think the constant weather change is making it hard on everyone. Everyone I know seems to have allergies or a cold right now. Its been 80 this week and next week will be 60 and raining. Pick a season and stick with it already Mrs. Mother Earth! Last night I got to hear Becca cough (the dry hack kind) a.l.l. night l.o.n.g. How did that girl stay up half the night with her drippy nose and cough yet wake up at 7am bright and cherry and be her totally happy self all day today?! Meanwhile I've been a total witch.


Highs:
Getting the pool cleaned out AGAIN. I'm sure my neighbors (specifically on the right side of us) hate us. I really need a pool boy. A cute one. A young one. A cheap one. Okay what was I talking about again? Oh yeah my pool. It's been green for a while & I finally found some energy to get it taken care of. I swear it will stay blue for like 2 months then something else will go wrong with it. It taunts me.

Jons Bday-we did Sushi & had brownies with mint ice cream. Sadly he didn't get any gifts (too many sick kiddos). I feel like he needs a birthday redo and that this should be in my lows section. Jon is not easy to buy for. All the things he wants are SUPER technological and cost a lot-and by a lot I mean like 3k on up. And let's be real if we had an extra 3k laying around I would be buying the 3500 food storage package from Costco that I've been coveting-and call it "his gift.

Finding my secret chocolate chips at Winco of all places!! They have bins of product-I loaded up 11lbs of my favorite milk chocolate chips--HEAVEN.

Getting a new chocolate chip cookie recipe which I will be trying tonight. I will probably half the recipe though-otherwise I will be sick to my stomach snarfing on all the cookies myself! I'll even be nice and share it with you-these are from Jennifer Davis in my ward with my secrets to a good cookie at the end.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
1.5 sugar
1.5 brown sugar
1 lb butter (real stuff no fakies!)
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon soda
2 packages of milk (cant stand semi-sweet we are a Hales milk chocolate ONLY family!)

cook 7-9 minutes at 375 degrees

The secret to a REALLY good cookie is to under cook the cookie-because it still cooks when its out of the oven. My cookies are ALWAYS super soft! Also I only use Guittard chocolate chips in my recipes. I also only use real butter-I heard that margarine is one molecule away from plastic--yeah no thanks.

Happy baking!

Highs & Lows:

Lows:
Facebook has new photo feature so now I cant take my photos off my FB to put them on my blog--BUGGED!

Feeling heavily overwhelmed with my "plate."

Struggling that I dont have four Nephi's but instead 2 Laman's and 2 Lemuels! Well actually Anna might be my Nephi. Why is it that when I ask them to "load the dishwashwer" instead of saying "oh sure no problem" I get "what? why? it's not even my day? how come so and so isnt doing them? blah blah BLAH"--seriously it's driving me batty. Why can't they just do it-do it nicely and be done?!?!?!?!

Apparently we are the new owners of mice---they have been scurrying around in our attic. This past week the girls found TWO in our downstairs tub. Jon asked me to get them out-I FREAKED on him and said "Oh HECK NO!" I will plunge a gross toilet (which I seem to do EVERY darn Xmas Eve), or stick a snake down the sewer pipe (which yes I have done that too), but dealing with mice--NO THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wont even go in that bathroom. We were able to have a friend "deal with the two mice" only to find two MORE mice in the bathtub. I'm freaked.

HIGHS:
Getting rid of two of who knows how many mice from our attic. Still freaked.

Watching the Steelers WIN their game and anticipating the Super Bowl! I grew up with Chris Hoke in HS & we work together in Nuriche. Troy Polamula is also a customer of mine in Nuriche for the past year. He called on Thur before the game needing product
overnighted to him before Sunday's game. Always fun! I can HARDLY wait till this Sunday to watch the Super Bowl-we will be at Jons parents stuffing our faces with glorious food-love it.

Helping Rachel pass of her 4th value for Personal Progress-YES this means we are half way there! My goal is to have her complete Personal Progress before she's 16 and crazy busy with life.

Setting a goal for myself-and completing 1/3 of it TODAY! Yeah me!