As of Lately

Now that Christmas break is over we are back to resuming our regular schedule. Cora now has therapy Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:30-1pm and Kimball has speech on Wednesdays at 11. Cora's in an older preschool therapy group at the Guild School so there's about 10 kids in the class and she LOVES that there's more socializing and kids her age that talk. She's doing really well!

Kimball is doing great with speech, within a month of therapy he quit stuttering so they're still watching for any dis-fluency but are continuing with other aspects of speech. Right now they're working on the S sound and he loves it.

With the new year we've had a chance to reflect, run reports, crunch numbers, and analyze how we've done with Lance's business, Inland Mortuary Services. He's been on his own for nine months now and I'm amazed at how well he's done. Our main goal was to still be able to make ends meet and keep the electricity on. He's surpassed that and continues to gain the business of other funeral homes and expands his services. In November he started offering an answering service for SCI's four locations. So after hours (5pm-9am), on weekends, and any holidays all of SCI's phones are forwarded to Lance. He takes messages, dispatches calls, emails, faxes, etc. with the phone calls that come in. The downside is that we always have the phone whether it's 2am, during sacrament meeting, on a date, at the doctor's office, running errands, etc. we always have to have that phone on us. I say "we" because while Lance is busy doing removals, "I'm" the one who answers the phone. I guess you could say I work part time for Lance although I'm just happy to support him. It isn't fun, neither of us enjoy answering the phone but it's easy work and easy income. The upside is that it's the only service he offers that is a fixed income, everything else greatly fluctuates so it's nice to know that we'll at least get the minimum for the answering service each month.

Lance's old boss here at SCI, Caryn, just sent in her resignation. Several of Lance's old coworkers have called asking him to apply for her position which was flattering. This could mean one of two things: #1 the new Spokane manager decides to use their own employees for removals and we lose a big majority of our business, or #2 the new Spokane manager decides to exclusively use Lance for removals which means a big increase of work. We're hoping for scenario #2 or at the very least that things stay the same as they are now. We're really praying that scenario #1 never happens, if it did it would be detrimental.

I'm so proud of how hard Lance is working for our little family and he's got incredible business intuition! Every position that he's worked from being the errand boy and yard clean up at White's, removals for Daniel in Charleston, his internship and subsequent job as funeral director at White's, managing the embalming center for Spokane, and continual management of funeral homes in Spokane; they've all given him significant experience and insight. Both good and bad insight on how a business in the funeral industry should be run. There were things he learned from Daniel that he's implemented in his own business and things from SCI that he was forced to do because of "policies and procedures" that he would never do on his own. I'm grateful for his intellect and discernment. I'm grateful for his hard work ethic. I'm grateful for his honesty, integrity, and loyalty. I'm grateful for his concentrated efforts and resolve and determining attitude through school. I'm also grateful for his humor - I don't think you could be a funeral director or mortician without a sense of humor.

I've been cleaning out every room and closet in the house getting rid of stuff we no longer use or need. A bit of spring cleaning I suppose. I moved Kimball's bed into Cora's section of the room so we could have a play area in the other part of the room and preparing for transitioning Cora to a regular bed. Other than that I just shuttle kids to and from therapy and answer the phones for Lance. I'm certainly anxious for spring as I'm not a big fan of snow or winter in general. I'm anxious to work outside in the yard, resume walking, enjoy the sunshine, go to parks, play in puddles and mud, admire the flowers, and fly kites. Overall, life is good and we're certainly blessed!  :)