Decisions:

So eventually I will get my birth story up, but right now I just wanted to talk about decisions. I am the type of person that believes that everything in life happens to teach you something, and with the things you learn, it all comes to a big moment that will change your life.

About a year ago my husband and I decided we needed to find some type of employment that could work with our busy school schedules. While I was at work one day a guy came in talking about Prepaid Legal. Being polite, I took his DVD and watched it. My husband and I went to a PPL meeting and signed up. We did nothing with it. Jeff wanted me to do it, and I didn't want to do it alone.... So nothing happened. From this I learned that I have to not only believe in the product, but have passion for it as well.

I have been using Arbonne Internationals skin care products for years now. After years previous to that I had tried may different lotions and things to help my severely dry skin. I finally realized if I was going to get the results I wanted, I had to use a pricier lotion. I tried a few different ones, and some that even gave me rashes with their 30$ price tags. That's when I found Arbonne, a friend of mine started selling it as an independent consultant and I went to a party she was hosting. I fell in love. Finally, I found a lotion that continued worked for longer than a week. Four years later, I am still using it, and my belief in it is revitalized all the time. I have a fun story about being pregnant and using Arbonne, but that just may be for a different post. :-P

Well the amazing woman that I go through to buy my Arbonne products kept telling me that I would be great at selling Arbonne. I just shrugged it off, figuring there was no way that I could be successful "selling lipstick." She kept bugging me about it for a few years, and when I say bugging, she really just kept telling me how much she would love me on her team but that she understood that now maybe wasn't the right time for me. She would send me training calls, and all this material about Arbonne and I kept trying more product. I really love everything I have tried, their products really are amazing.

So here is where I get in to the honest truth. I was afraid to sell Arbonne because I really liked it and I didn't want to fail at something i believed so much in. So, for about a year i kept pushing her aside.

In my fear, I decided to try something I thought would be easier for some reason, probably because it's so big around here, and I knew my trainer would be in town (Julie lives in AZ). So one night my friend signed me up for Maleleuca. Its a company that's big thing is that they are kid-safe and eco-friendly and healthier alternatives to store brands. Well their skin care didn't work for me, but I liked their detergent and cleaning products, so I said I would try. For  a few months (actually until really recently) I fought inside myself because I honestly knew I didn't like their skin care line. I had looked on a cosmetic safety website and they had scored higher (higher is bad/dangerous) than Johnson and Johnson, and anyone who is even the slightest bit hippie, knows their products have a lot of dangerous chemicals and irritants. For example, instead of taking out the harmful chemicals that burned babies eyes, they put a numbing chemical into the shampoo and body wash so that they wouldn't feel the chemicals burning their eyes instead. Anyways, pretty crazy huh? Well Maleleuca scored worse than THAT money hungry/poor quality product. So, being glad I wasn't a naive consumer, I really didn't like their skin care line and didn't know what to do. How do I sell just cleaning supplies from a company that does more? I really felt like I have a responsibility for these people, and if they used the skin care products I would have felt like scum. SO, I didn't do Maleleuca, and my husband kept bugging me about it, and I just kept telling him I couldn't sell products I don't like for a company I don't respect. SO I learned that I had to do something that I will always believe in and trust as well as have passion for!

SO here we come to the last few months at my house. I was 8/9 months pregnant and my husband and I start looking for a house. Good thing too, because our landlord announces his engagement and lets us know he wants us out by October (this was June/Julyish). So thinking we had a few months, we looked at houses bid on a few and finally found one we really liked, so we moved forward. I was planning a home-birth and my landlord knew this. The first week in August when we were talking one day, he mentions he will need to move forward the date to the end of the month around the 25th of August instead of October. I was due August 9th. August 11th I ran into him and he tells me he is leaving TOMORROW to get his fiance's things and they would be back Monday the 15th. I am not a naive girl, it's his soon to be wife, she and he will want her to move in to the HOUSE, not just the back bedroom until we can get our things out. So overdue, I spend all weekend packing, Monday we wake up early and take 5 trips to a storage unit at my husbands work. Our truck breaks down after hauling the trailer. We come home after the last load for the day to hey, they are here! Not even completely packed up, they start moving boxes in. Jeff and I decide to go stay at my moms for the night, because it is too crazy around the house so we grab some things and leave. This is where we really begin to realize that we will not get our home birth.

Wednesday we come back to a decorated house and our things in a room in the basement. Classy. So we spend the day moving out, and get the things we need to go to my moms for the week in hopes to have the baby. That week I proceeded to try everything to have the baby, Castor oil, black/blue cohosh, walks, sex, you name it, we tried it. No baby, so finally Saturday I go into labor, Sunday I continue to have contractions and they get more and more painful. By Sunday night I was in so much pain, Monday morning we arrive at the hospital and after 48.5 hrs of labor, Nathan has made us a family. I hemmorhaged really badly and was in the hospital for a few days with Nathan. Jeff in the mean time has started school that Monday that I gave birth and was going to classes and working while trying to find somewhere for us to stay while we tried to finish paperwork for the house. His boss lets us stay in a 5th-wheel out back of his work. (jeff worked at a OK Trailers, a camper trailer dealer as a technician). So we check out of the hospital and I hang out at a friends while family comes and cleans and readies the trailer for a newborn baby.
Nathan is 3 days old, and we move in to a 5th wheel. I am on vitamins and things and can't do almost anything for myself as I was still very weak. I saw Jeff when he left for class at 7 am and he came home at 10:30 pm from classes. So we were living the life! Well ahng-ups in the paperwork and a month later we still hadn't closed on the house. I gave jeff 1 week to get me out of the 5th wheel. we were freezing out butts off! and then they tell us in 2 weeks we should be closed, so we decide to stick it out.

That next Monday, OK Trailers burns to the ground and Jeff's work guarantees him a job still. We have to move out of the trailer.

We spend a week in the basement of a ward members we met that day.

By the end of the week they lay Jeff off and we lose the house. I still can't carry Nathan in his car seat, I am still too weak.


So we get an apartment and apply for unemployment and pray he gets a job.

I pick up knitting and crochet with hopes to learn to make those cute flower headbands everyone wears in the winter to sell to have some income from me. (I did learn, and they are adorable!) The only thing I learn from this is that lots of people do this!

Again, Julie mentions Arbonne, and I am still in a delimma because of Maleleuca. I find out some of their products contain Sucrolose/Splenda.

Can I just say easiest decision in my life? I no longer want to sell it at all, not even the cleaning products, and personally, now I don't even want to buy from them. I am allergic to Splenda, not to mention that it is a neurotoxin. No wonder it made me so darn sick! I am offended and ashamed of their company and a little horrified that they consider themselves a "health and wellness" company.

So what I learned there, is NEVER be a blind consumer, ALWAYS read the label and RESEARCH what you don't know and that I could never sell something I don't 100 approve of.

So, Since a company that said they were good and were so darn evil, I turned to Arbonne and began again to research their products and now I am selling them! I think enough said there. I love Arbonne, and I finally got the courage to jump in to selling it too and the more I read about it, the happier I am. from all of this I learned that I not only had to have passion and believe in the product, but I also had to have need, and here was my life, falling apart, and providing me with need.

As I was telling my husband the other day, you may think they are expensive to begin with, but once you've used their products, you are willing to spend more. The more products that I try the more that I believe it!

I Love ARBONNE International, and I love working with a company I know I can trust, a company that has integrity. Pure, Safe, Beneficial.

So decisions, decisions. As soon as I made this decision, I have been having so much fun! The phone calls, talking with people, researching the products, setting goals, ordering business cards(I feel pretty cool just from that!) And all from my home where I can take care of my son, and see my husband the random times he is home during the day.

I decided to do this because I don't want another few months like these last. If my husband loses his job, I want income to still be coming in, and for the money to not be the governments! I want to look toward a debt-free future instead of expecting to walk away from school over 100,000 dollars in debt. I want a job that I will never get fired from unless I quit! I want to have fun with what I do, and I want to Love it!! How rockin is that!?!