Love is what we have...

Contemplation

See the hopes and dreams
They wash over me like the waves of the sea
I would stop when one came my way
But they constantly flow on one after one

Generations of unknown souls have crossed
These paths of life lost and forgotten
They are remembered in fact
In the inspiration of the heart of man.

No not one is lost even though
They came and went long long ago
Few words were written or known
They were not heroes or published in thier greatness

Living to the extent of exquisite dreams
Building on one anothers hopes and love
Love is what we have of them
It is eternal in its splendor and being

No one is forgotton you see
Love is what is left behind
When a soul passes from the earth
The extent they love is remembered
In each and every one of us.

"And in the end, the love you take
is equal to the love you make"
The Beatles



by Robert

It's time to welcome our special guest of this week

ROBERT TALMADGE !

Hi, I am Robert Talmadge. New to Adland Pro by a few months,
I am not new to the Internet. I was logging on what we called
"boards" before the internet came into being around 1993.

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life,
are those which he didn't commit when he had the oppportunity."
- Helen Rowland

I was born in Addison, Michigan on September 21, 1950 at 5:00 pm.
My birth was a difficult one, even though my mother told Doctor Robert
John (who I was named after) not to give her pain medicine, he did.
I was a blue baby and was not given much chance of survival. And
so my life continued this way, but I started school at age 4. By
age 17, I graduated with honors. My senior year testing put my
aptitude and knowledge at college graduate level.

My carreer actually started at age 12, when I read and memorized over 2,000 books and texts. I started my first business making lead sinkers for fishermen and the shops along the Sandusky River in Fremont, Ohio, where I grew up.

I started designing transistor radios in 1962, and also made solid rocket
fuel and launched my own solid rocket.The police were looking for the person who made the strange device they found 22 miles out of town and I saw the picture of my rocket in the newspaper, so I got frightened and stopped launching them.

My lifelong education continues and it encompasses many Universities, extensive
research on the internet and my personal library of hundreds of rare books written by many of the world's greatest people.

Trying to avoid the draft, I enlisted in US Army Special Services Airborne

After my Honorable Discharge I began as an Electronic Technician, first
repairing Televisions, and then moving to michigan. After 3 more jobs
I started a new career as a production line supervisor at Kysor International.

In a couple of years I became Director of Research and Development at Kysor International. I was struck by a truck in the driver's door. My neck vertabrae were crushed. My career was then over. Between the pain and the stress,
I could no longer work this position.

This made me begin an intensive investigation into Anatomy, BioTechnology, Biomechanics, Biophysics and ending with Naturopathy, when I obtained my Doctorate of Naturopathy. in N.C. When I was able to get out of my wheelchair and walk, I started to market on the Internet.

I have helped many people and still continues to this day.

To the business profile-


I work and live in Jacksonville FL with my wife Sue of 56 and my
daughter, Stacey who is 29, where we have lived since 1989.

I have been in MLM marketing a while, Starting with
Shaklee in 1978. On the Internet with my main website
since a year from last July. Here:

http://www.payyourbills.ws

I am currently working on Joint ventures and I sponsor a
different one about every month. last month's venture
is on this web page "My Free Giveaway"

I have two for next month and they are "Viral Reloaded" and
"viralmarketinggiveaway2"

Joint ventures or JV is the current trend and can build your
list, sell your product and if properly promotied, can make you money.
I also am promoting a List building program called Lead Prospector
that helps New to Pro marketers build thier main List.

I am looking forward to greater posibilities in the future and
I work nonstop from about 4:30 am to about 9:00 pm.
I was told once by a great marketer:

"There are 3 kinds of people in the world:

Those that MAKE THINGS HAPPEN...

Those that WATCH Things Happen...

and Those that SAY "What Happened?"

What I like to do:

I started writing poetry when I was 19 in the US Army and sent them
home to my Mother, and my girlfriends. A few of them were published
in the local newspaper in Fremont, Ohio.

I did not write again until 2001. This poem is posted as "The Guardian Angel"
http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/thread/413973.aspx

All of my poems that are on this forum are originals that I
wrote while I posted them. I have posted a few that were
from other people and I note that in the post.

I have written articles and a few blogs, but Internet Marketing
has taken most of my time recently. I work with a great handicap
with my neck injury and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, typ 2 Diabetes
Severe biological depression. The last three are all but cured now
by my knowledge in Herbal and Holistic Medicine, and so I set
about to help others. So far, I have not widely used this knowlege on
the Internet. My friends and family have been enjoying my services
and I had helped people who responded to ads in Health Magazines.

My wife Sue is 56 and never has had to go through Menapause, I cured
this condition with herbal treatment. My daughter has a learning disability
and her tested IQ was 45. After I treated her with supplements, it is
now 79. A guy who has Downs syndrome is renting a room from me
he had a tested IQ score of 57, and after treatment is now 95. He is
working full time and drives a car quite well.

Heart disease runs in my family and has been the main cause of
death on my father's side. My brother is now 60 and has no sign
of heart disease. I had my heart graphed and scanned in 2004
while I was in the hospital, and the Doctor told me that it looked
like the heart of a man at age 20. This is very curious because
A nurse told me I had all of the risk factors for heart disease.

I am planning a new series on the internet about Holistic Health
I spent the last year learning Marketing, and now one of my
friends who is a Psyciatrist has asked my help to sell his
Published books for his retirement.

Thank you for reading.

Robert

Congratulation Robert and Welcome to our Spotlight!
The Spotlight Gazette Team.

I feel lucky!

Friendship Garden

Friends, like flowers, come in all shapes and sizes,

They are quick to our side when the need arises.

They add variety and interest to our lives,

Without them we wonder if we could even survive.

They make a cloudy day seem sunny,

Sometimes they are serious, other times funny.

Our best interest they have at heart,

And always are sad when it is time to part!

And now... please

into this week's Spotlight

Ildiko Dalos!

Here is her interesting BIO!

... I was born and raised in Budapest, the Hungarian

capital in Europe. There are about ten million people who live in Hungary and over two million of them live in the capital city. I was born in a small family, had no brothers or sister, neither my parents have. We lived in a condominium on the third floor and the windows where looking to a real tourist attraction in Budapest, an old castle of a Hungarian king. My father was a manager for a Hungarian insurance company and my mother was an accountant for an export-import company. After 55 years of marriage, they are still together, retired and live in the country in Hungary today.

My role model was my grandmother who was a well-known illustrator in Hungary. Her name is Emy Rona. She lived 84 years and illustrated about 374 books for children. I was grown up on her books and in her fantasy world. She had many exhibitions in Hungary and other European countries. She was invited by the Walt Disney Company to work for them, starting at the New York World’s Fair in 1939-40, but my grandma said “no” because she couldn’t imagine to live without her loved family and country. She was always smiling and had a good word to everybody. People respected and loved her. I remember sitting on her side when we often went to the zoo in Budapest where she was illustrating pictures of animals for children’s books. My dear Grandma wanted if I follow her steps and become illustrator myself, but I had no patient as a child… She died almost 18 years ago and I still dreaming with her and missing her dearly.

After graduating from high school, I started working for the same insurance company where my father was working. I found it too stressful and after about half year I went to work for the export-import company where my mother worked. There I did the administrative side of export-import contracts. I worked there for 17 years and finished college. In 1987 I came to the United States. The company worked with oil products and it was an interesting job. I liked it because every buyer and seller, and every contract was different, so I always found something new and interesting when set up paperwork and had phone calls and correspondence with them. Also, I often traveled officially to the countries in Europe.

In 1986 I met my future husband. It was love for the first sight. He was a mechanic who made special tools for aircrafts. He is Hungarian American, lived in New Jersey for over 12 years in that time and was visiting his friend in Budapest. He came back to the United States, followed by long phone calls and letters between the two continents. A year later we decided to marry, so I moved to New Jersey from Hungary. There we lived about half year. I liked to live in New Jersey because I felt the little town looks like one in Hungary. In New Jersey I had my very first job in the United States. I worked part time for a small grocery store. The problem was when people asked me for a piece of cheese or meat in pounds. In that time I had no clue how big or small size I needed to cut with the machine because I was still thinking in metrics (and never worked in a grocery store). From New Jersey we often visited New York. I loved that beautiful city.

Six months later we moved to Florida where my other grandmother lived in that time. I was babysitter here for a beautiful baby boy and didn’'t speak English yet. My grandmother is almost 98 years old today and a few years ago moved back to Hungary. West Palm Beach is a friendly town and we enjoyed swimming all year long in the warm and clear water of the Atlantic Ocean and liked the white sand and the palm trees on the beach. However, Christmas time was difficult for us because it was warm and both of us were used to cold and snowy holidays. We loved Florida, but didn'’t have that “special feeling” what comes at Christmas time when you live in a place where four seasons and icy cold weather are.

After about two years in Florida, we decided to move to California. We bought a trailer and moved across the United States in about 16 days. In our way we stopped at many beautiful places. The western hats and big plate of beefs in Texas, the beautiful red cliffs in New Mexico and the unforgettable Grand Canyon in Arizona are the most memorable experiences. After this beautiful travel, we arrived to the Californian capital, Sacramento. Here I experienced snow only once in this 17 and a half years and the summers are really hot. After the Hungarian weather conditions, I feel we have only two seasons here: spring and summer. Sacramento takes up a place in a valley. If you travel for about an hour and a half, you are in the Bay area, the beautiful San Francisco and the really cold Pacific Ocean. If you travel to opposite direction for about same time, you arrive to the Sierras. There are snow parks at winter, so if we really want to experience snow and build a snowman, we make a trip there. Two years ago we went last time and had lots of fun.

In April 1991 I gave birth to my only child, Vivian. She is smart and speaks very well Hungarian, even if she was born in California. She just started 10^th grade in high school. My daughter wants to be an attorney. She made this decision when she was only ten years old. The reason: she loves to talk back and having her very own opinion. The profession she chose is really suitable for her. Vivian has her great-grandmother’s talent. She learned to love art through her great-grandmother’s pictures. She likes to illustrate too.

In the main time, my marriage ended with my daughter’s father because he was an alcoholic and I didn'’t want to be part of it.

When Vivian was very young, I went to college and have an AA Degree. There I learned the English language too. From the very beginning, I raised my child alone. I went through many hard times here in the richest country of the world and learned to be strong. Today I am working in an office and living in my own house. The house looks like a museum because it is full with my grandmother’s pictures. Last year I was a loan officer, but didn’'t like to be on commission. I learned a lot and wanted to be a real estate agent. I reached my goal and today I hold my real estate license and shortly I want to start to sell houses because I was always interested about real estate.

I love nature and animals. I love to swim and enjoy every kind of art. I am an optimistic person who likes to laugh. This helped me through many hard situations in the past. I love modern technology. Probably this is the reason for I really like my main business, BizBuzz Marketing what I am doing only a short time. I love the idea, new mobile phone technology and company. Buzzirk Mobile will be big in short time and the fun part just starts because it will be introduced to the public on August 27, 2006 on the Emmy Awards. I feel I am a lucky person because I found Adland, this great community. It is really great to find helpful and nice people on the Internet when there are so many scams and need to be so careful…In about two and a half months I have made over 500 friends. I enjoy having friends all over the world. Thank you for being my friend and good luck to your business and personal life.

Thank you for reading this far,

Warmest Regards,

Ildiko Dalos

Congratulation, and Thank you for joining our

Gallery of Special Friends!

The Spotlight Gazette Team

It All Comes Naturally

Words to Live By

Accept that some days you're the pigeon,
and some days you're the statue.

Always keep your words soft and sweet,
just in case you have to eat them.

Always read stuff that will make you
look good if you die in the middle of it.

Drive carefully. It's not only cars
that can be recalled by their maker.

Eat a live toad in the morning and
nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.

If you can't be kind,
at least have the decency to be vague.

If you lend someone $20,
and never see that person again,
it was probably worth it.

It may be that your sole purpose in life
is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Never buy a car you can't push.

Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time,
because then you don't have a leg to stand on.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Just get up and dance.

The early worm gets eaten by the bird,
so sleep late.

When everything's coming your way,
you're in the wrong lane.

Birthdays are good for you;
the more you have, the longer you live.

Ever notice that the people who are late
are often much jollier than the people
who have to wait for them?

If ignorance is bliss,
why aren't more people happy?

You may be only one person in the world,
but you may also be the world to one person.

Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

Don't cry because it's over;
smile because it happened.

We could learn a lot from crayons:
some are sharp, some are pretty,
some are dull, some have weird names,
and all are different colors;
but they all have to learn to live in the same box.

A truly happy person is one
who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Happiness comes through doors
you didn't even know you left open.

Have an awesome day, and know
that someone has thought about you today....

"Hello Thomass, I thank Jesus for sending you to earth, and I thank Him that you are my friend!!!! You are a good business gentleman and you are Amazing!! On Adlandpro you deserve a 10!!!!!! Keep in touch, "
Faith

... what more can we say, beside giving

THOMASS

a WARM WELCOME to
The Spotlight Galery of Friends!

Here is Thomass's interesting Bio!

My name is Thomass Jaymess Erskine which most of you know is my pen name. the name I was given at birth was Carl Jeffrey Wylie. I have chosen to use the former because Thomas is my great great grandfathers name and James was his fathers name. Although I have chosen my own unique spelling of it. Erskine of course is from my mothers side of the family which I have a closer kinship to since I never knew my father at all. But Erskine as well as Wylie are very much Scottish, so I have plenty of Scottish blood flowing through my veins although I was born in Canada. Of course there is some Irish thrown in as well from my grandmother whos name was McMullen.

I am an artist of many talents as well as a poet/writer. I am also a business person, Professer at the Infinite Increase Institute which is in Kansas. I teach via email. I am the Owner/Directer of Masters Pebble-The Humanitarian People. We promote Peace and Awarness throughout the world. As well as assisting people live a much more fulfilling life and we assist in the protection and conservation of our natural resources including our wildlife. For further information feel free to contact me at: masterspebble@yahoo.ca or by phone at: 1,519-670-5724. I have just began a small web site which you can view at: http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/MAPE9783/ which is sponsered by Adland.

I also help promote Pay Pal which is your number one online bank for Better Business and quicker Payments to You. You can take a look at: https://www.paypal.com/row/mrb/pal=E8YKS7GPCUDT4

I do not know how mant people here are familiar or have seen the movie 'The Secret' but it is truly amazing. It shows you how to open the door to unlimited abundance and prosperity. There is a Secret Pays web site (http://whatisthesecret.tv/) that will truly amaze you. The maskers of the movie have a web site that enables you to use all of the tools from the movie to enhance your life financially and in many other ways as well. You can see it at: http://thesecretpays.com?233 . There is also a Secret Pays Financial Group where like mined people like you gather at: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/secretpays/join? which I am a member.

I love to read, non-fiction of course. and i love the outdoors and nature and anything that is natural. i have never had any formal training as an artist or poet/writer, it comes natually to me. It has run down through the family for most of them were either artists, writers or spokes people. Alot of my ancesters on the Erskine side were advocates, teachers and even politicians. So I do come from a very strong line. In fact I had done some extensive geneology and found out that my 3 times great grandfather;'s brother was a life long friend of Sir Walter Scott and his wife was Lady in Waiting to Sir Walter's wife. We have in our family some gifts that were given to our Erskine side of the family from Abbotsford Estate. I could take you further back in our family history but that would leave you with much to read. If you would like to know more send me an email at: artjwca@yahoo.ca .

I also have poetry folders that you can purchase of some of my poetry works. The folder comes personally signed and dated by me and it has a gold Masters Pebble seal on the front cover. the price is 17.00 dollars which includes the shipping. If you wolud like to own one you can pay through Pay Pal useing masterspebble@yahoo.ca email address. The supply is limited so don't hesitate if the spirit moves you. When you purchase one contact me direct at: artjwca@yahoo.ca with your mailing information.

Well I certainly hope that this will allow you to know me much better.

I thank you for your time in reading all of this and I wish you much success and prosperity. and I shall leave you with my personal motto and a saying written by me.

Motto: Power With Not Power Over

Saying: 'May Peace and Love Be the Weight of Your Steps'

Namaste

CONGRATULATION THOMASS for your Spotlighting!
It is a great pleasure for us!
The Weekly Spotlight Gazette Team

Web Addiction!

Now you know what to do

with your out-dated computers!

12 Step Recovery Program

For Web Addicts

1. I will have a cup of coffee in the morning and read my PAPER newspaper like I used to, before the Web.

2. I will eat breakfast with a knife and fork and not with one hand typing.

3. I will get dressed before noon.

4. I will make an attempt to clean the house, wash clothes, and plan dinner before even thinking of the Web.

5. I will sit down and write a letter to those unfortunate few friends and family that are Web-deprived.

6. I will call someone on the phone who I cannot contact via the Web.

7. I will read a book... if I still remember how.

8. I will listen to those around me about their needs and stop telling them to turn the TV down so I can hear the music on the Web.

9. I will not be tempted during TV commercials to check for email.

10. 1I will try and get out of the house at least once a week, if it is necessary or not.

11. I will remember that my bank is not forgiving if I forget to balance my checkbook because I was too busy on the Web.

12. Last, but not least, I will remember that I must go to bed sometime... and the Web will always be there tomorrow!

Let's welcome our special guest of this week, passionate writer and publisher of

"The Left Handed Times" ezine

and great nerworker:

Lisa Reddell!


Here is Lisa's

Bio

Hello Lee and the Spotlight Team!

Wow! I am so humbled by being chosen for the spotlight!

Sit back, grab your fav beverage and get comfy

My favorite claim to my birth, is I was my mother's 32nd birthday
present. I was born on June 13th, 1963 - Three days before mom's
32nd. We celebrate our birthdays together every year. It's
always a great time for all of us to get together. My birth place
was Tulsa, Oklahoma.

LOL - after reading the last line above, I have to laugh. I made
it sound like I come from a huge family. Not true. There are my
parents, that's sorta obvious, huh. But the sibling count in my
family total up to one sister and no brothers. My sister and I
are best friends and I treasure the time we get to spend together.
I always yearned for a brother and bugged my parents about it,
but it never came to pass. (smile)

I graduated from High School, 25 years ago. EEK! I find it
difficult to believe it has been that long. When I was in HS,
computers were not offered to the students. Oh, but the year
after I graduated, computers were installed in every department
of the school... go figure:) After graduating, I accepted a
position with a company, and learned how program tele-marketing
computers. Yep, the ones with the automated voice, that
interrupt your suppertime activities.

I actually purchased my first computer about 15 years ago, and
loved it. I have a creative streak in my personality, and a
deep, passion driven desire to learn, as well as teach. So, I
taught myself how to use the computer. I've also taught myself
HTML, and although I've got a lot more to learn, I do okay.

I drive my husband (Jerry) of 17 years (in October), crazy
because I am so "into" computers. I am the designated
"computer geek" of the family. I have passed on my love
of computers to all three of my sons (LJ - 25 on Sunday 8/13;
Elliott - 16, and Austin - 12).

I have published my own ezine in the past, but experienced
a number of personal setbacks, and am currently not
publishing. I hope to do so again. I really miss it.

I found AdlandPro in 2001, and started utilizing the
classified ads for promotion. Then in 2004, I joined the
wonderful Adland community. Gosh, I love this community.
I have met so many outstanding people here.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I love to help people.
I suppose my favorite way of helping is to educate folks
about the thousands of Scams that have invaded our lives.
I even offer a Scam Alert forum that reports email scams
I receive. I'd like to personally invite you to peruse
the forum, and you can do that at:

http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/3259/ShowForum.aspx

In addition to the Scam forum, I also have two other
forums I'd like to share. The first one is
http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/5909/ShowForum.aspx

And the second:
http://community.adlandpro.com/forums/17140/ShowForum.aspx


Okay, I'll stop typing now. Thank you for reading, and
thank you Lee for allowing me this awesome honor.


Toodles,

Lisa Reddell :`)
1090 Members/7709 Pre-Enrollees in 24 hours - Holy Cow!

Thank you Lisa for sharing some more about your life and

CONGRATS

for joining our Spotlight of Friends!

The Spotlight Gazette Team!

What Lies Within Us!

What lies behind us &
What lies before us
are tiny matters compared to
What lies within us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

To know that you do not know is the best.
Ton pretend to know when you do not know is a desease.

He who knows others is wise.
He who knows himself is enlightened.

- Lao Tzu -

Luck is the dividend of sweat.
The more you sweat, the
luckier you get.

Let's give a warm

to our beloved friend: Cheri Merz !!!!

Here is Cheri's Bio!

Thanks, Spotlight Team, for this recognition! It's so very flattering to be nominated for something like this, and a real boost to the old ego, lol.

I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on November 20, 1948, the first of three children born to my parents. I was four when my brother was born; and I still remember getting to hold him as soon as he and my mother were home from the hospital. When I was eight, my sister joined us. We had a typical 1950's upbringing, which looking back seems idyllic compared to today's dangers for children.

My dad was entrepreneurial, so I got a taste of what self-employment was like from an early age. I was eight when he left full-time employment to start his own business. My allowance, a dime weekly, disappeared, lol. Of course, that was when a bottle of Coke (no cans) was only a nickel.

We moved to Moab, Utah when I was thirteen so that my dad and uncle could work together in my uncle's business. We moved into the walkout basement of the home my uncle owned. I remember the two families had great barbecues every Friday. I only found out years later that it was because my mother and my aunt would both be out of grocery money by Friday, and they had to pool their resources to put a meal on the table! Seems like I grew up learning what I needed to know to get by on very little money.

Even so, between my parents' good planning, the scholarships that I was awarded and the GI Bill (which at that time was available to the children of veterans), I managed to return to Texas for college. My grandparents lived in Austin and believe it or not, my grandfather had just graduated from the University of Texas the year before I arrived there. A few weeks before I was to arrive, he was shopping at the University bookstore the day Charles Whitman opened fire on his victims. Granddad was pinned-down behind the bookshelves with the other patrons for over an hour as the bullets flew.

The Vietnam War was in full swing at that time. I didn't get much studying done between being boy crazy, discovering folk music and trying to make sense of the war, Watergate, the King assassination and the rest of the crazy world of the late sixties. In a music appreciation class, I was selected to take part in someone's master's thesis study because of my pitch recognition. The man who would become my first husband was also selected from a different section of the class and we met during the study. When he left school to join the Navy, I wanted to get married right away, but my parents insisted I finish school first. So while my beau was flying off aircraft carriers, I was taking heavy loads of classes in order to graduate early. After three calendar years, a few months before my twenty-first birthday and only a couple of days after he returned to the States, we were married.

That marriage was to last just nine years. After he got out of the Navy we returned to Austin so that he could finish school. While there, his son from a previous marriage joined us. I was pregnant with our first child, but didn't yet know it, when we left Austin for my hometown right after his graduation. Both of our boys were born in Moab.

Our lives were relatively uneventful until my second son was just beginning to walk. I wasn't particularly happy, but able to tolerate my life. To this day, I don't know what precipitated the series of events that led to my divorce, and I don't particularly want to revisit them. Later we became good friends, but that was after time and distance had softened the hurts that we visited on each other.

Meanwhile, I met my Budd. We are complete opposites in many ways, but it's been obvious from the beginning that God intended us for each other. We married in 1979 and two years later almost to the day we brought twin girls into the world. Shortly after that, Budd adopted my two boys, and we were a whole family. We lived in Moab until the girls were three, and then the main industry in town died and everyone who had a marketable skill left town.

We wound up in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, in Newport News just north of Norfolk. We were in Newport News for just under a year, then moved across the Chesapeake Bay to Gloucester. By this time, it was getting difficult to put shoes on the feet of four kids on only one income, even though I cooked everything from scratch, baked our own bread and sewed all our clothes. Some years later, I would observe that I wished I had never gone to work outside the home, because the kids suffered for it. But at the time it seemed to be the only reasonable choice.

I secured a job with the Historical Research department of Colonial Williamsburg. It was there that I first became enamoured of personal computers. Because most of the employees who were in similar positions were graduate students at William and Mary, we had several hours per week that were set aside to attend classes. I chose to get all the computer training I could, learning spreadsheet, word processing and database applications.

After a couple more years we moved again, this time to a suburb of Baltimore called Severna Park, in Maryland. Using my new computer applications expertise, I got a job with an engineering firm and then later with the IT department of a hospital in Washington DC. We thought we were settled there, until my dad had his first stroke and I realized there was no way to get from Maryland to Moab, Utah in a hurry. Fortunately he pulled through that time, but it made us realize that we were way too far from our families. We moved back to Utah when the opportunity presented itself—the company my husband worked for went under in a very dramatic way. They still owe us quite a bit of back pay that they took back out of our bank account after direct depositing it. Then, instead of declaring bankruptcy, they just disappeared.

It took us less than a couple of hours after learning of the bank fiasco to decide we had had it with the East Coast and were going home. A week later, my husband pulled out of the driveway in a moving van with the three youngest kids and our furniture. I farmed our oldest out with a friend and moved in with my aunt and uncle near Silver Springs. This way I could keep some money coming in to pay the bills while Budd looked for work in Grand Junction where his sisters lived at the time, or Pocatello where his brother lived. Where he found it was in Salt Lake City. I collected my oldest boy and drove out a month later. We've been here ever since. In fact, he's been in the same job ever since—sixteen years this month.

Our kids are all grown now. Three have families of their own, and the last one, one of our twin daughters, is engaged. In addition to all my other projects, I have a wedding for next July to help plan! We have four wonderful grandsons, ranging from three to eleven. We don't get to see them often enough and if I have any regrets about still being ambitious at this time of my life it would be that we can't just take off and go see the grandkids. But soon!

Over the years, we learned many hard financial lessons, but we did learn them. A couple of years ago we finally got the hardest one through our heads. That is that we are ultimately responsible for our own financial well-being. Not the government, not the boss, US! Budd has had two companies fold out from under him and the one he works for now nearly went under in the wake of 9-11. His income has shrunk by nearly 50% in terms of real buying power over the last eight years or so, starting even before that fateful September. When it was actually cut, in January of 2004, we finally decided to do something for ourselves. By that time I had my real estate broker's license and we had some tools to help eliminate our remaining consumer debt from a company that I still promote now (see my forum My Offers if you are interested in that).

Our dreams of real estate investing were rekindled. Over the past couple of years, we've put ourselves on the right track. The debt is gone, the real estate investing is in process, and I recently closed our home-based real estate company and opened a new one with some partners whose business will help me expand considerably. It means more time away from home, but it promises to afford us a nice retirement if I ever get to the point that I want to retire. Right now, that seems very remote, as I can't imagine what I'd do all day if I retired!

Meanwhile, I've made some friends on ALP who helped me greatly improve a web site that my grandfather's story inspired me to create. It's called

http://www.Never2Late4Success.com . There I promote my financial and self-improvement tools and write about my experiences. I hope to help people learn from my mistakes and also from my winning strategies. I have a couple of ebooks in my head, and as soon as I've supervised getting new real estate web sites up and running, I'll get busy finishing the books. Lucky for me it's never too late, because I have several years' worth of projects to keep me busy!

Cheri

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--
"Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, whatever misfortune
you may have suffered, the music of your life has not gone. It's inside you -- if
you listen to it, you can play it." -- Nido Qubein
http://www.never2late4success.com

Cheri
and thank you for joining The Spotlight!
The Spotlight Gazette Team