Meet N Greet Success!

I promised I would update yesterday. I am a day late but I have a good excuse! I was busy processing all those orders yesterday! I have to say that I am pleased with the outcome of my first Meet N Greet! Circumstances prevented some people from coming but all in all, we had a good time and learned a lot! I have at least 2 more Meet N Greets booked and have 2 new Preferred Customers who will be taking advantage of the perks that come along with that status. I am also so excited about all the people who will be be getting healthier with all of Saba's all natural supplements! That is really what it is all about!

So what did we do? We learned about all the wonderful Saba products.We taste tested juices and vitamin supplements. We made ToppFast shakes and shared and sampled a healthy recipe. We played games and gave away prizes! We had a great time. The best part is-- I figured it up! If it had not been my own Meet N Greet, the hostess would have earned $120.00 in free products. They would have also had an opportunity, if they chose to make $100.00 or more straight from the company because I had two people sign up as Preferred Customers and two to book Meet N Greets! I have to tell you, I work for the best company! Total awesomeness in this Meet N Greet process! I can't wait to have more

Donald and I talked about taking pictures prior to everyone arriving and then we just forgot. We got so involved in sharing all the wonderful products that it just slipped our minds until it was over. So this is the AFTER photo of our Meet N Greet.

I can't believe I haven't been doing Meet N Greets all along! Please, if you have ever wanted to know more about our products, thought it would be nice to get some for free, or maybe just wanted to sample some of the liquid products before you purchased, book your Meet N Greet today! I promise you will not regret it!

This is so shameful!

When I looked at the date of my blog post, I immediately hung my head in shame! I have not updated in 3 months. Sometimes I seem to be a little ADD! While I have never lost interest in my ACE business. I have been quite blessed since I started it, that it quite often runs itself. ACE and Saba products are so good that they sale themselves. I have gotten new customers and still offer all our products. Donald and I both still take them daily and are maintaing our health with a wealth of Saba products. Since this is the case, I have had the time to focus my attention on some of my other interests.

What I have found though, is that there are many people that could benefit from poducts that we offer but simply can not afford them. So, in response to the hard economic times we all face, I have decided to begin having ACE/Saba Meet N Greets. The first of which will be held at my home on Friday April 19th. The great thing about being an associate with Saba is that there is no hard set rules on how to run my business. You don't have to do "parties" to be successful. You can sit back and crochet scarves and hats (which is the interest I have been engrossed in lately) and let the orders come to you, you can go out and cold call, or you can gather a bunch of people together who wish to learn more about being healthy and have a good time. I will have now done all of these! I am so excited about my first Meet N Greet!

How Does a ACE/Saba Meet N Greet work?

What I will do:

Before your Meet N Greet, I will provide you with information and invitations to give your friends and family to introduce them to ACE and other Saba products.

I will also provide ACE trial packs for those that would like to try ACE before the Meet N Greet.

During your Meet N Greet, I will introduce our products and educate you and your guests on their health benefits.

I will provide samples of our juices and make ToppFast smoothies (if desired) for demonstration.

I will have games and or drawings to allow your guests to win free products.

After your Meet N Greet, I will process all orders and contact you for delivery when they arrive.

What the host or hostess will do:

They will invite their friends to their home or other available space on a date and time of their choice.

They will provide those interested in ACE with trial packs about a week before the Meet N Greet.

They will make one healthy snack recipe to have at the Meet N Greet. They will provide me with a copy of the recipe to post on my blog.

They will provide a blender, milk and frozen fruit to use in ToppFast smoothies (if desired).

The benefits of hosting a Meet N Greet:

Hostess' have the ability to purchase any ACE and Saba products at wholesale prices from the time of their Meet N Greet on.

Have Fun!

Learn ways for you and your family to live and be healthier.

Earn 10% of all retail sales in free products.

An additional $10.00 in products for each of the following:

• 5 advance orders
• 10 guests in attendance
• Each additional $300.00 in sales
• 4 Meet N Greets booked

Earn an additional $10.00 of products for each guest who signs up as a Preferred Customer.

The possibility of recieving a $100.00 check from Saba when four of your guests either book a Meet N Greet or sign up as a Preferred Customer within 30 days of your Meet N Greet.

Now let's see an example of how this might look:

A hostess has total sales of $600.00 from his/her Meet N Greet.

10% of sales =                   60.00
5 were advance orders=    10.00
10 guests attend=              10.00
2x 300.00 in sales=           20.00
4 people book=                 10.00
2 new PCs=                       20.00
                       Total          130.00 in free products

Plus the possibility of recieving a $100.00 check from Saba! I can tell you more about this at your Meet N Greet.

So I guess that you can see why I am so excited about getting my Meet N  Greets started.

If you contact me to book your Meet N Greet, I will count yours as the first of your four to earn your bonus $10.00. You will still need 4 additional Meet N Greets or PCs to qualify for the $100.00 bonus from Saba.

If  you would like to attend mine on Friday, please contact me and I will give you directions. I will post results of my first Meet N Greet next Saturday.



I PROMISE!

Update Please?

I can not believe that tomorrow will be 4 four weeks since I had my surgery! I got a message from someone that said, "Don't leave us hanging! Update please?" I appreciate your concern and am very sorry that it has taken me so long to get this post out there.

Have you ever had so many things that need to be done that you just get overwhelmed and do none of them? Well, that is what has happened to me lately. I am absolutely thrilled that I decided to have this surgery but the fact is that there is really not a good time to do it. That being said, we had a wonderful Christmas! Donald, Justin and Brittney took really good care of me. My two mothers (mine and Donald's) took care of all the food and preparation for events and let me rest. I was even able to go see my nieces the weekend after and felt pretty good doing it. So all in all, Christmas was a success! Even so, I was still down after a pretty major surgery so I was a little helpless and am still playing catch up.

This picture was taken the weekend after Christmas!

Now to the part everyone wants to hear about... The surgery went well. I am told that between the surgery and recovery, it was about 7 hours from the time they took me back to the time that my family saw me again. I don't remember much about most of the hospital stay. I remember being VERY thirsty and not being able to quench it. The food they gave me that night felt like saw dust in my mouth and Donald kept having to wake me up and tell me to chew! Whatever they had me on was some really good stuff.

I spent one night in the hospital and came home pretty early on Tuesday. I came home with lots of stitches and 2 drains from my abdomen. I also had special "garments" on both areas. The breast part of the surgery was really not a big problem. The tummy tuck, however, was a different story. Between the drains, the incision, and the binder, it was uncomfortable to say the least. The incision is very low, which I appreciate. That made the drains very low also. The binder pulled tight across both for support and it velcroed shut. Because my upper body was weak, I had a hard time getting it on, so Donald helped me. We were a sight! I also had to be careful how I wore my pajama pants because of where all of this was situated.

The drains are another story. They had to be emptied twice a day and a record kept to see whether I would be able to get them removed on my two week visit. Donald helped me the first couple of times but once I got to feeling better and I realized how bad it grossed him out, I pretty much handled those myself.

My first night home, in a sleep induced stupor, I had to go to the bathroom and sat up by myself. When I did, I felt something snap in my upper abdomen. I thought I had ruptured some stitches. That spot hurt until I went back to the doctor for my two weeks visit. More about that in a minute.

I was really only down for the first couple of days. I had some really good medicine that I took for that time and was well taken care of by my family, so I did really well. I took my last pain pill on that Friday morning and that is just because I had one left and I am very anti-pain and did not WANT to hurt. Later I wished I had saved that last pain pill. You will see why.

So, I sat around most of Christmas, letting everyone else do all the work and continued to heal and pray that my drains would come out at the two week visit.

That very important doctor's appointment came. That place in my side was still hurting and I worried all the way down there that they would decide that I needed to keep the drains. These were my two big concerns.

1. As soon as the nurse saw my record of the fluid output, she put my fears to rest. The drains would come out!

2. You evidently have to do some pretty big damage to tear one of the sutures that he puts inside, so there was no way that was what the pain was.

First, I have to say that I had no idea how long those drains were. The part that goes inside is a long, hard, flat plastic tub with holes in it to absorb the fluid. It is probably six inches long! When she pulled that first one out, it was instant relief! I think I had kinked it somehow when I sat up that first night. I felt so much better!

All the outside stitches came out. This is when I wished I had kept that last pain pill. It had been a week since I had had one so I didn't think I would need any more. After those stitches came out, I was very sore. Luckily that only lasted for that one day and I made it through.

Dr. O'Brien was very pleased with his work. The nurses kept telling me how well I was getting around. I guess I did really well. He said that because I had done so much work on my abs, he didn't have to do very much repair on the inside. This made for a much easier recovery.

I was able to go back to work when the kids came back instead of waiting until the next Monday. I have since been back for a four week check up and all is well. I am still very tired at the end of the day and have not gotten back in my routine. My house has suffered because of that but I will get it all back together.

I am very glad that I had it done! I still have swelling in both areas but I can tell that it is going to be well worth the effort. I am looking forward the final result. I am told that it could take up to 3 months for all the swelling to go down. I can start working out again in a couple of weeks. I am only wearing the binder during the day now. Life is getting back to normal! Well.... as normal as my life has ever been anyway!

I am still very thankful for my ACE business. Without it, I would not have been able to have these procedures done. If you would like information on ACE or are ready to take control of your weight, energy and life. Contact me today!

The Improvements Have Begun!

Before I begin this post, I need to post a disclaimer- I have gone over and over this post in my head for weeks. Just how much do I tell, how much do I keep to myself. Just as I have stated before, I believe that it is most important to be honest. Therefore, I am going to, yet again, put it all out there. I am about to share some very personal information. Some people might think this information embarrassing or "too much". Especially the  men that I know or even some of the teachers and parents of students that I teach. So I am letting you know now, if you are easily embarrassed, don't want to think about  me as a "woman" or just like the version of me you know now, you  might want to close this screen and not read on!

So here goes- If you have read my blog from the beginning, you know that in 2002, weighing 280 pounds, I had gastric bypass surgery. At that time, my eating had gotten completely out of control and I had tried diet after diet. I decided that this was the best option for me at the time. I am still glad that I had the procedure. In the next year, I lost down to 150 pounds. Of course you all know that with that kind of weight loss, things don't always return to the proportions and sizes that they were pre-weight gain. So, as I lost, I developed skin that was stretched to the point that it would not EVER return to its original shape. While I gained extra skin around the middle that I didn't want, I lost tissue above it that I would have preferred to keep. I pretty much knew that I was going to have some sort of corrective surgery in order to ever feel normal in these areas but I felt like I had messed up what God had created by gaining the weight and I should do everything I could to correct it before I would allow myself to pay anyone else to get it done. So I made a rule- I must create and maintain and healthy lifestyle and work out for a year before I could even think about having anything done. I felt that this would assure me that I had done all I could do.

Fast forward 9 years- I had started and quit working out and eating right at least a hundred times! At 9 years post op, I weighed 178 pounds, which is not bad but I did NOT like it! I was going to be 40 in 9 months and I was determined not to turn 40 fat, unhealthy and out of shape. So- I got serious! I joined Weight Watchers, I started getting up at 4:30 and working out and started getting in shape! This time I did not quit. I was determined. About March, I hit a slump and that is just the time that ACE came into our lives. Of course you have read the post on how ACE helped me surpass my plateau.

I finally hit my goal of 140! I always wanted to be 140 because I could say I had lost half of myself! lol The problem was that the more I lost, even though I was working hard, the more loose skin I developed and the less tissue I had in the other area that had become a problem. That is when Donald and I decided it was time to consult a professional. We researched and talked to people and found Dr Kevin O'Brien. I made an appointment. We went for a consultation.

I went into the consultation thinking that I needed some skin removed from my abdomen and a breast lift. Dr. O'Brien informed me that I would need a full tummy tuck and in order to have any size at all, I would need implants. This was quite a shock to me. I did not want implants! I just wanted what I had put back where they were supposed to be! He said that if I did just the lift, I would probably end up being an A cup size! What! I had lost that much tissue! As far as the tummy tuck goes, it seems that even though I had been working my butt off, I still had fatty tissue on my abdomen that would have to be removed before I would have any semblance of a flat tummy. He did say that the more muscle I had underneath there, the less repair he would have to do on my muscles which would make for an easier recovery. So I left with a lot to think about about the alterations that he was suggesting I have on my body.

The we went to the financial secretaries office and I got another shock! I knew that most gastric bypass surgery had had at least part of their corrective surgery covered by insurance. Well, it seems that by making my little rule, I had proven to myself that I had done all I could do to improve my body but it had prevented my insurance from covering ANYTHING! I had worked out just enough that while I still needed the procedures, I did not have "droopage" for my insurance to find surgery necessary. So I would have to be responsible for the entire procedure. Guess what- It AINT cheap! So we left with more to think about, pray about, ponder and decide.

First of all, Donald knew that this was something that I really wanted and he said that we would find a way to do it. The fact is, I did not feel comfortable taking money from the household account to do something that I felt was not necessary but simply desired. So I prayed about it, searched my heart and really struggled with this decision. I knew I would not be able to do it in the summer like I had planned because there was no way that I could come up with the money even if I decided to do it.

Then, after Donald had much success with ACE, my ACE business began to take off. I began putting it all in what we now know as the "improvement account". I made an appointment for 6 months away and we decided that if the Lord was willing and we were able to put the money back using only money that was made as "extra" money I would do it. Then----- in November, we reached the number. I can not say that all of it was ACE money but MOST of it was. Donald worked some extra at times and we put that in there but I can truly say that the opportunity that I have had with my ACE business has helped make my dreams and goals come true.

I gotta tell ya that I have struggled with this decision. Am I being selfish? Carnal? There are so many other "good" things that could be done with that money. I don't want to be known as "the teacher who had the boob job". I have a lot of wonderfully supportive people in my life who have helped me reconcile myself with this decision. I am doing this for my peace of mind and my comfort. I will be having my procedures December 17th. I asked that you pray for me and my family during my time of recovery. I pray that I might be an inspiration to someone who has struggled with many of the same issues. I hope that with my business with Saba and ACE, I can help many others get to the place where they might have to make the same decision.

The thing I hate the most (besides the knowledge that I am going to have a painful recovery that I have put on myself) is that I ended up having to take off 9 days from school. When I first scheduled this surgery, we had a different calendar and I would have only missed 3 days but this is the way it worked out. I know that they will be well taken care of but I hate to leave my babies that long.

I know that you have noticed that there are no pictures in this post. I did decide to share it all with you but have decided against before and after pictures on this blog. Mostly for modesty sake. I am a child of God, a mother, wife, daughter and kindergarten teacher. I can't imagine that even after everything is done that I will wear a bikini and I hope to still honor God with my clothing choices. So I am choosing not to post pictures because, I would have to be immodest in order for you to see the extent of the damage. I will, however, have them. I will document the progress for myself and if you believe that seeing them would help you with some sort of similar struggle, I would not mind sharing those with you. Just ask. I just don't feel comfortable putting them out there for all to see.

If you read all the way through this long post, thank you! I know it was long but it was an important one for me. If you have something to share, please feel free to leave a comment. If I can do anything for you, please let me know. I would love to hear from you!

ACE's Christmas in the Smokies!

Donald, Daddy, Mom and I spent a wonderful weekend in the Smoky Mountains! We met some wonderful people who work with Saba and ACE. We met people from all walks of life but they all had one thing in common- They believe in Saba, the products, the business and the life and health that they provide. We were inspired by the stories, the successes and the hearts of all of these people. I have known for some time, that this opportunity came into my life at just the right time. This weekend just proved to reinforce that belief.

Gary Hail is the CEO of AMS Health Sciences, which is the parent company of Saba. Mr. Hail began our meeting by sharing a story of an associate that brought tears to everyone's eyes, including his. He then proceeded to recognize achievement after achievement of the ACE associates.

There were people there who had hit new levels of success in their ACE business and those who have been successful with weight loss and health issues. The best part is that these were regular people. People just like you and me achieving their dreams. I have mentioned before that I had a goal and when I started selling ACE, I needed to come up with a significant amount of  money in a relatively short period of time. We affectionately called this goal the "improvement fund". As of November 16th, the improvement fund was completely funded and the check for those improvements was written and sent off. My next post will reveal what these improvements are and the extent ACE has helped me prepare for them. You don't want to miss that post!

We also got to meet Clark Bartram, the World's Most Trusted Fitness Professional. Clark endorses ACE and all of Saba's products. He is an awesome person and very inspirational. He truly believes in this company and what it stands for. He also has a new book, which is not out yet, but we were able to get an advance copy. It is awesome! I will let you know when you can get it.

There are a few things that stick out to me. The whole event was focused on providing for the betterment of the associates. There were prizes, encouragement, and awards. There was also a mention of God and prayer. Yep that is right, there are Christians in charge of our company! The weekend was not completely taken up with ACE stuff but we were able to enjoy Gatlinburg too!

It was reported that the company has grown 10 fold since just last year. It makes me feel good that I was able to get in before that surge of growth happened. I promise there is still room on the tree. If  you have ever considered opening your own business, this is certainly a worthy one. Let me know and I can help you with all the details.

So, if you have read through this whole post, you deserve a chance to win a prize! You are truly a loyal ACE fan and I appreciate you! This is the deal, all you have to do is leave me a comment and tell my your ACE experience. Even if you have only tried samples, tell me what you thought. Next Saturday, right before I write my improvement reveal post, I will randomly choose a winner from those who leave comments. The winner will win a 30 pack of ACE! So comment away!

As always, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns. 256-338-9687 or acestome@hotmail.com

The Market Winner!

Sunday, we spent a lovely day at The Cabin at the Lodge. The owners were such gracious hosts. If you have never visited their site, you should definitely do so. They have created a little piece of Southern heaven that is hidden in the woods of Indian Hills subdivision in Hayden, Alabama. The bed and breakfast is set up in a cabin extension on the log cabin on the property. There is a large patio and a pavillion that are perfect for a family gathering or party. Both the patio and pavilion, as well as a dock on the small lake and a secluded spot in the woods have been used for beautiful weddings. It is a secret that is well worth checking out, regardless of the event you might be hosting.

There were many vendors gathered Sunday for the first ever Market at the Lodge. It was a pleasure meeting each of them and the customers that came to spend the day with us! If you did not get to attend this event, stay tuned. We are already in the process of planning another one in the Spring.

Now to the moment everyone has been waiting on! The winner of the 30 pack of ACE!

Karla Shelton!

Thank you to everyone who registered and bought ACE from us on Sunday. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Be sure to watch your email for my BLACK FRIDAY specials! Need a refill or other Saba products? You won't want to miss this special!

Christmas times a-coming!

I am in the process of doing a blog post update on all of the happenings in the ACE and Saba family. There are some new products that I am absolutely amazed with! There are some absolutely fabulous opportunities! There are also some events taking place in my life that definitely would not have been possible without the addition of my business with ACE/Saba! I hope to have that post ready soon.

In the mean time, I would like for all of you to plan on coming to visit a new event that is happening next Sunday in my own neighborhood! It is the Market at the Lodge. Please plan to join us and meet all the great vendors that live right here in our own community! Be sure to RSVP to be entered into a drawing to win a wonderful prize that consists of products from all the vendors!

For those of you that are just hearing about ACE and would like to check out information on it and our other wonderful Saba products please visit this post: Help I Need Information!

I will be offering several specials for this event. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions that you might have! I look forward to seeing you there.