This little girl is 7! She’s not so little anymore… She is so much help at home, she loves her baby brother. She loves to read, she’s been devouring the books she gets at the library and is excited to read some new books she got for her birthday.
Blowing out birthday pancakes the morning of her birthday:
Blowing out a giant chocolate chip cookie cake that night:
Blowing out a pumpkin chocolate chip mini muffin at her birthday party with her friends today:
We do friend birthday parties every other year and usually keep them pretty low key. But I just finished a business program (more about that below) and one of the ladies in my class owns a blow dry bar called Pro Do. They style hair – no cuts or color, just hair styling. She has a storefront but she’s also gutted a 40-foot tour bus and put a beautiful salon inside. She drives her bus to weddings, events, AND birthday parties.
These girls each had their hair styled, nails painted, and lips glossed (and they got to keep their lip gloss).
Last night was the graduation ceremony for the business program I finished. It’s the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program and here is my class:
It was a fabulous experience although rather intense. It was 16 weeks of classes, one full day a week and sometimes more. The classes were very useful – all taught by people who were successful business owners. The best part of the class, though, was my classmates. 27 successful entrepreneurs, all with experience, wisdom, and ideas to share. We became really close over those 16 weeks and it was fun to see them again last night at the graduation ceremony.
The end product of the class was that we each wrote a 5-year business growth plan for our own business. They will survey us after 6 months, 18 months, and 30 months to see how much we’ve grown (revenue) and how many jobs we’ve added to the economy. It’s an amazing program and I encourage any one with a business to check it out. It’s completely free.
Goldman Sachs has invested millions of dollars into this program with the belief that teaching business owners how to be more successful is the best way to create more jobs. The program was developed by Babson College. They’ve partnered with colleges around the country to offer this program, and they even have an online national version for those that don’t live in one of the cities served by the program.
The class involved a lot of soul searching and discussions about work-life balance and goals…. One of the surprising things that came out of it is Bill and I decided to drop our daycare this summer and have me stay home with the kids. The hope was to hire an administrative assistant and that hasn’t worked out (anyone know someone looking for a job in SLC?) but so far we’ve made it work.
We’ve had a fun summer. We have a schedule. I’ve been getting up and going to the gym then swinging by the office to enter any checks and create a deposit. I get home by 7 a.m., just as the kids are waking up and we have breakfast. The girls are good at getting their morning chores done: they have to do 20 minutes of online school, make their bed, and do 10 minutes of cleaning.
Then we try to leave the house by 9:30 every morning. We have done some really fun things. Here’s a picture of Abby walking on stilts at This is the Place Park:
We’ve also been catching the summer kids movie on Wednesdays at the gateway, going to the library, parks, hiking, and more.
We try to get home for lunch and to put Liam down for a nap. The girls have to stay downstairs with me while Liam naps and if they read for 20 minutes and clean their room and the family room they get to watch some TV. If they watch TV, I can reconcile business accounts and get some work done.
It’s worked pretty well for us. I think the girls are really getting sick of each other. I could use some ideas for separating them. They have a love-hate relationship so I put them in separate rooms and they don’t stay very well. They want to play together – and sometimes they play beautifully together. But they fight a lot.
It’s been 7 months since I’ve updated this blog. I’ll try to go put a short post with some pictures for each month. But in December my dad was diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer that has metastasized to his liver. The kids all have shirts that say “I wear Periwinkle for my grandpa.” I guess I don’t have a picture of Abby in her shirt, but here are the other two.
