Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  It has been a great holiday year at our house this year, and I do know how wonderfully blessed and lucky we are!  It's very odd to have two kids so far about in ages.  It's almost like we have two only children.  We have a second grader and a one year old and sometimes I feel like we have one or the other.  It's been tricky to shift my gears from reading and writing and homework to can she feed herself with a sippy cup and a spoon.  Sometimes I think, "Hey!, I've already tackled and conquered that."  Only to remember of course, that while one child has, we still have another to go.  Oh me, on my, why do I mentally move on when reality is still coping with actuality?

This year was a budget Christmas, and it wasn't too difficult because I knew it would be and I planned ahead and started purchasing gifts in early November.  The only problem with pre-purchasing your gifts is that as new toy commercials hit the television, Laney would change her mind about what she wanted.  I found myself thinking, several times, "I hope she remembers she liked that last month!"  Alas, there was nothing to worry about as Laney is a very gracious and kind 7 year old, and Christmas Eve found her saying to herself, while rapidly throwing wrapping paper over her shoulder, "This is the best dream I ever had!"  I'm not sure why she said she was dreaming in the middle of opening the gifts, but I'm going to take that as her dreams were coming true and that toy she got was beyond her imagination.  Lindsay of course, had no clue what was going on, and she carried around her first present for 10 minutes before moving on to carrying around the second gift.

Now that we live far away from my family again, I found myself thinking of them several times and missing them a lot for our Christmas traditions.  Arlin and I don't really have any Christmas traditions because we have usually spent every holiday with either his family or mine.  The years when we haven't gone anywhere in particular, have been very few and so we now have the challenge of setting up our own traditions.  I think it will get better as time goes on, but we found our Christmas to be very quiet and full of baby naps and quiet playing of the DS by Laney.  We ate and ate and watch some movies to entertain the adults, but it doesn't feel the same without a large gathering of family.

While it has been a good year, I am so glad this year is almost over with it's ups and downs and challenges galore.  We are facing froward and moving on at my house, and I'm already planning to see all the good things 2011 has in store for me!  Merry Christmas everyone!

Open for Business

Some how I got to be in this boat ... this tub of business ownership.  I swore when I was small I would never own a business.  Working for "the man" was fine by me.  I knew it was fine by me because I watched my father, who ran his own busineess, deal with the stresses of business ownership, and I wanted no part of any other those stresses!  My husband, had other plans for his life and we've owned more than 4 business.  Each of which has been larger than the one before, more complicated, more financially stressful, and more meaningful if successful.  I thought I would do a list of pros and cons because sometimes I forget the good and the bad of this situation I'm in because I'm too busy just surviving the details. 

I am all about being an employee for the following reasons:

1. I know my paycheck comes right on time, every time, no matter how well I performed
2. I don't have to worry about how my coworkers are doing as far as bringing in money
3. I don't have to worry about how snow days are not equal to income
4. I don't have to worry about paying taxes on other people's income
5. I don't worry about how labor laws take even more of my profits away from me
6. No one assumes employees are "rich" just because they are called an "employee"
7. When I clock out, my work day is done and I can worry about the things that are important to my personal life
8. I don't have to worry about another entire set of bills or budgets, or anything really!

Why I'm not all happy skippy about being a business owner:

1. Snow days eat into profit.  If your shop doesn't open you can't sell anything
2. You have to pay taxes not only on your profit, but on your inventory, your employee earnings, your thought, your hopes and your dreams
3. Everyone assumes you are "rich" and then begin to "borrow" (read steal) things that do not belong to them because you're so "rich" you have enough money to buy more!
4. You have to worry about how the employees treat each other and if they make it a good or bad work envirnoment for each other, if they lie, steal, or cheat on each other, and if they lie, steal, or cheat you OR your customers
5. You have to out smart more than 10 people to out think them, provide before they realize they lack, and to know everything about everything.  You are considered a tax expert, a health care law expert, a city and state law expert, and/or an industry expert
6. You are personally invested in something you have almost no control over -- you depend on other people's actions so much so they have the chance to defeat you before you know it, if you don't stay on your a - game
7. Vacations cease to exist, you are forever tied to a payroll period, a holiday staffing nightmare, a broken phone, a broken computer, etc., etc., etc.
8. The business does not return any investment money to the owner for years! In fact, it often requires a steady influx of personal money.  Such money must be gathered by loan, by credit, or through hard work at a "second job", a full time job, which is acutally the job that pays for the bills and the buiness to keep going.

Why I am happy to be a business owner:

1. I am the boss and what I say goes ... at least until there is a law against it!