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!