The Michaels went down to Georgia

While Isabelle was visiting Oma and Opa (i.e. running them around like a puppy on a leash!..On second thought I'm not sure who was running who around) Conrad and I drove to Atlanta for a United First Financial Conference (the mortgage thing I wrote about last week).

It was a good conference. It was really good to connect with Chris, our friend from Colorado, and to gather some much needed wisdom and advice from him. As well as get a feel for the company. We were reassured to see how focused the company was on getting families out of debt. AND we were excited to see that UFF just won the 2008 Ernst and Young Entreprenuer of the Year Award in Financial Services. This is huge and means, even if you've never heard about this program...you will, it's only a matter of time before this becomes standard practice for the financial industry. And we feel pretty excited to be involved at this juncture!

We also got to have dinner with some friends while we were in Atlanta. It was soo good to connect with old Teen Mania friends, to introduce my husband to them, and to let him in on a little of my TM past. Not to mention, as I looked around the table, I was amazed to see how many movers and shakers were there. Brenda is a chaplain at Georgetown U, Chris is at Focus on the Family, Reggie is basically the CFO at Teen Mania, and Brad and Friends work at Orange (252 basics, if you are involved in Children's ministry or Northpoint Church) Definatley a group I am proud to call friends!

Going to Oma & Opas

I'm ready for them...but are they ready for me?

It'll be paid off in six years!

I recently ran into an old friend on Facebook. Some of you know Chris A, from our Teen Mania days. Chris and Kimmy now live in Colorado and Chris works for Focus on the Family. But, he also has another business, he helps families pay off their homes faster. When I found out about this, I immediately went into research mode.

After much questioning and googling, Conrad and I made an appointment with Chris and had him run an analaysis on our home. We were blown away to find that we could take our remaining 24 year mortgage down to 5.7 years! And, we did it without changing our monthly mortgage payments, our monthly budget, or refinancing. Needless to say, we jumped in and are so excited about what this has meant for our family! Imagine…we will own our home before Isabelle is even almost done with elementary school! Even if we decide to move, the amount of equity we will have in our home to cash out is drastic!

As I started thinking about it and praying about it, I got more and more excited about what this would mean for my friends and family and for the Body of Christ, in general. Imagine what we could really do if we weren’t bound by so much debt! The more we found out about the program, the more we started telling everyone we know about it. At this point, I decided I need to become an agent with the company. It’s certainly been a long time since I was THIS excited about anything that I called “work.”

If you want to find out more about the program, you can check out my website(www.u1stfinancial.net/daniellemichael) at and just click on “Money Merge Account Overview” in the middle of the page to view an 18 minute video that shows how the program works. Contact me if you want to find out if you qualify.

Rice

Yesterday I took the class on how to manage my gestational diabetes. My husband, who has been mocking me endlessly about how I can no longer, ever, in my whole existance, have dessert got a rude awakening. The dietician directed us that it was all about carb control. I can have the sweet, as long as I take into account the carb content and it's within my carb limits. This explains why Asians have such a high rate of diabetes...especially considering the average Asian rarely eats anything remotely sweet. One word: Rice.

If you've ever eaten in any Asian country or sat down to an Indian meal at my house, you know that 90% of any Indian Meal is rice. The dietician told us that a serving of rice is 1/4 cup! Yikes! That is not much rice! So Honey, I'll give up ALL dessert if you give up ALL rice, deal?

Speaking of sweet, here is our little Diva and her watering can last weekend.

The Ups and Downs

Well, we had a great weekend celebrating Father's Day with Conrad. Isabelle and I made him homemade cinnamon rolls and eggs and let him sleep in a bit. When we got into the bedroom for "breakfast in bed" he was already up and brushing his teeth. Isabelle went into the bathroom, took him by the hand, with a commanding, "Come, Dadda." and led him back to bed, where he (and mostly she) enjoyed his breakfast treats.

By Monday, mid morning at work, I had thrown up all over myself and rushed out of the office, thinking it was my normal morning sickness routine, I would run home and change and come back to work. By the time I got home I was shaking and had chills and STILL throwing up violently. So I went to bed.

Come to find out, Conrad has pretty much the same symptoms. We were both down for the count for two days with what we assume was either food poisoning or the stomach flu. While, Isabelle was amazingly calm in the face of our sickness. Usually, me being sick means she can get mighty needy.

Anyway, Monday afternoon, I also got a call from my doctor's nurse saying that my blood glucose test came back so high that there was no need for a second test, I was automatically put in the gestational diabetese category. Of course, this freaked me out, especially being as irrational as one can be while sick!

So tommorrow I have a class on how to eat and how to test my blood sugar levels. I have just been feeling SOO much better with this pregnancy than with the last, I couldn't believe this complication. On the other hand, this does explain the never ending fatigue.

We know God is still in control. But I am still a bit worried about the baby, and that's saying a lot, as I'm really not much of a worrier. So keep us..and our little one in your prayers if you think of it.

Sad Man, Coming Soon!

Lately, Isabelle's independance has been peaking. If she doesn't get something she wants, she'll scream, do the back arch, and then put her little finger in your face and say, "No!" My first reaction is to laugh...especially when she's doing it to her Daddy, and I'm just an innocent by stander.

But we both push the laugher down and proceed with responsible course of correction. I'm thinking of inviting the Miller's new family friend, Sad Man, to our house soon.

The Best Monday Ever

Monday at 5am I got a call saying that the air conditioner went out at our building and we were not "required to report to work today." unless you were scheduled to work at a different location. Fortunatley, I was scheduled at the said building and didn't have to go to work! And still got paid..whoo hoo!

Thank God for old buildings! (We won't go into the fact that I get severe headaches every day I'm in the office building or WHY that may be!)

So Isabelle and I spent the day running errands, napping...wonderful napping, and finished our day off with a couple of hours at the pool...so fun!

I also wanted to show a few pictures from Isabelle's trip to Cedar Point with my mom and dad a few weeks ago. She had a blast! But probably not as much fun as her grandparents had!



And then I have to throw in one of our little country girl, driving a tractor with Opa...

Summer. Finally!

We have been in perpetual winter in ohio for what seems like YEARS! Well...we finally hit summer...at a dead run...today is supposed to be 95 degrees here in Ohio! I can't complain, I have honestly felt like the White Witch left Narnia and came to Ohio.

And we made our maiden voyage to the pool last week.