Daily Tender Mercies

I have been slacking on the journal entries lately. I have been working hard to try to build my business and also putting in 9 hour days at work. I have been getting up at 4 AM again to get it all done. It has me pretty tired. Last week I had a 3 day weekend due to my new work schedule. We painted the family room and hallway in the basement, installed a new cabinet in the laundry room. Set up our new washer and dryer (we stacked front-loads for more room) installed a 32″ TV in our bedroom and attached it to the wall, fixed the toilet (I had to take it off completely to pull two toy turtles out… yuck!). It definitely was a busy weekend.

Today I presented the things I have been working on the past couple of months to the owner and top distributers in the company. I think the owner was pretty nervous about the change but the distributors were more excited than apprehensive. Unfortunately it seems the more I complete, the more I realize there is to do.

While I was at work today Rachel painted the laundry/bathroom. When I got home I got the washing machine and dryer out and put them in the garage. I then installed a new light fixture. We should be getting a new washing machine and dryer delivered tomorrow. We are excited to get these new front load models. They seem to wash much better while using less water.

It was a long day at work today. There was a problem with a certain system in place and work and Mike was involved with it all day. I was still at the office at 7:30 when Mike Allen was ready to leave. It was so supposed to be Mike Allen’s day off, but he came in to help with the small crisis. He offered to take me home. He lives in Riverton so Alpine was well out of his way. I wanted to get home and see my kids before they were in bed so I took him up on his offer. Mike is such a nice guy. It was very kind of him to go that far out of his way to get me home.

I have a new home teaching companion – Brother Gillette. We visited the Hausers and Whites after church today. It was fun. I love Brother Gillette. He’s a great guy. I love the families we visit as well. I could get really comfortable with this situation.

These evening we watched a movie together at home. We watched Escape From Witch Mountain on Netflix. It was a fun show. Gehrig was a littel confused with the title:

Gehrig: “Which mountain?”
Me: “Witch mountain.”
Gehrig: “Yeah, which mountain?”
Me: “Witch mountain.”
… rinse & repeat …

I think Nolan was a little nervous with all the action. He fell asleep clinging to my arm.

I had a church basketball game tonight. I told Rachel I wanted to take Gehrig with me. I used to enjoy watching my dad play softball when I was young. OK, maybe I didn’t watch very much, but I just enjoyed being there. Rachel was worried that he would run around the church and cause havoc. I think he needed to get out of the house anyway. When I told him he was coming with me, he was very excited. He wanted to go sit in the car before I even got dressed. He was very good. He just sat on the stage in the same spot the whole time. I don’t know how much he watched the game, but I think he like the experience and the bit of 1 on 1 time before & after the game.

It’s been a few days since I have written. I’ve been a busy boy. Around 1:30 AM I rolled over, right on top of Nolan. He seems to be getting good at sneeking into our bed each night. Generally I’m too tired to do anything about it. This morning I was so frustrated I just decided to get up and start working. I’m working on building my business. It seems there is so much to do, it is hard to know WHAT part to work on first.

I have hired a guy in the Philippines to help me. Basically I want to train him to write articles and do other activities to help promote Inzolo and get more traffic. I’m paying him $2.22 per hour. Sure that’s pocket change her, but from what I understand, in the Philippines it is a decent living for this type of work. My biggest problem is figuring out what exactly to have him work on and make the most of his time. I’m also looking into hiring some developers to help me program the site. They are obviously a bit more expensive. I found a good one that helped me with a previous project and charged $17 per hour, while I billed the client $75 per hour. Yeah, that was a sweet deal!

I am really hoping all this works in helping me build the business. It has been difficult to put much time towards it since I started working at SOC and commuting 1.5 hours every day.

For whatever reason, Nolan was extra clingy in nursery today. So I ended up staying the whole time. It was just Nolan and one other boy. The Nursery leaders are a married couple and they have a nursery age boy. He was pretty tired and ready for a nap, so the wife took him home and it was just us four guys. It was pretty fun actually.

Today was a fun day. I snowed last night and this morning. After we did a few chores and shoveled the driveway I took the kids sledding. After we got back we drove to Sandy to a dollar theater and watched “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”. It was much better than I expected. It was the first time we attempted to take Nolan to the movies. He did well. At one point we looked over and he had one hand covering his eyes. He seems to get scared of “mean men” – even at home on our TV. I had to pry his hand from his face and assure it was going to be OK.

I had my first “day off” today since I started working nine hour days. It was nice. I got to sleep in a bit. I helped cleaned the house and got some things done like getting the oil changed in my car and getting a haircut. I also took Gehrig to school and picked him up, which he really enjoys. It was a relaxing and productive day.