Lots of ways to have fun

Survival technique... my computer can play movies and McD's next door offers $.99 flicks.

Happy Birthday to Pappa and Monique! We celebrated Maama, too, and being up at Grandpa's with Dick and Sue and all the family was really great. For a party, it had serious overtones, tho, as two people (at least) considered what it meant to grow "old". Not sure what they concluded about that... only I couldn't make fun of 'em 'cause the very week before I discovered too many grey hairs to just pull out!

For a while Jeremy left for work before dark and returned after dark... but the days are getting longer already. It should be easier to catch the bus, but it's not. I finally started charging $1 for missing it and now I'm getting some speed out of these two!

Deep Creek takes over the Gresham Skate World one Sunday afternoon every year. It's a great chance to watch friends fall on their hineys. I got out there for a round and made both Shad and Aidan fall distracting them as I slowly scooched by... "uh, thanks Mom!"



I started writing notes on Facebook about the Maaco and lessons learned. Then there's the Maaco.com site where we post before and afters. We got excited about having our logo on a dirt track race car - Trinity wanted to pose by it for me. We all get excited when we paint an especially pretty color or an exceptionally cool car. I've gotten bogged down a bit in paperwork - '08 tax time, you know! But we'll get some more great car shots.... no doubt!! This last week we painted our 100th car! And we finally did 20 in one week... milestones!

January takes flight

I think we will always remember January 2009 as the fast-paced 1st month of business. Highlights would be the visitors, first. Jon and Angie came out. Dad came and so did Matt and Carol. Ted dropped by a lot as well as Lloyd and Daryle, who brought in the very first vehicles for us to work on.

Shad and Aidan learned how to play chess and took our Dollar Tree game board everywhere for a while. Aidan joined the after-school chess club while Shad had to settle for Extreme Games.

We saw our building at night, finally. Check out the cool logos on the window! Jeremy's wishing he hadn't sold the orange truck that's blown up big now, front and center. But we had to do what we had to do to get here, right?

Camten and Trinity and I joined the throngs on TV watching the new President get sworn in.

And we fell asleep as soon as we slowed down enough to realize how tired we were.

Countdown to Maaco cont...

5... Boss's office is ready...

4... Final clean-up complete...

3... we passed the Final Inspection ... BOOM! We are OPEN! Let the cars in! Turn on the "open" sign! WE ARE GOOD TO GO!!!!!!

Most Memorable Christmas EVER!

It was the SNOW! and the kids' excitement...

and the power-outages including the cold all-nighter!

We've never had a Christmas like '08 for piles of snow - my childhood dream come true! come to find out I like electricity a lot, too. We enjoy our memories now, tho, as long as they stay memories... of roasting marshmellos in the little fire trying to warm out the house and playing with the snow and ice like the igloo at uncle Jon's. All the basement treasures from Grandpa were memorable, too. I am thrilled with my '84 Tupperware set!! BEAT THAT for Christmas!!!!

Countdown to Opening the Maaco...

10... the office is set up, the blue files ready for Repair Orders, the computers in place...

9...we have the storage room ready for paint...
8... unloaded boxes cleaned up, garbage thrown out...
7... paint/bake booth works!!!

6... one last ride on the zip ladder...

Aidan

Our A-Bear is precious... creative, funny, opinionated, fearless and really, really smart. Sometimes I wonder how many times he's gotten his way and I didn't even see it happen! You've heard the story of when I told all four kids to pick out a book for Momma to buy them and Aidan talked Camten into getting one of the two he "needed" as his choice? He's always negotiating for his siblings all kinds of things on all kinds of levels, from an extra candy cane to the necessity of a second Webkins. None of our boys wanted a stuffed animal until Aidan's Porky had babies. I adopted one of the invisible little things and had to keep track of it for days.

Aidan was excited about his birthday, December 20th. He tells everyone he gets MORE presents because his birthday's so close to Christmas. He usually has more visitors, too, and the house is so decorated, it's really fun! This year a snowstorm came on the morning of the 20th and it snowed hard all day long like I've never seen in Oregon. We played in it a little, but it was so blustery and well below freezing, we were mostly stuck inside and had to eat his cake and ice cream all by ourselves! (Everyone made up for it later, which he was careful to make sure of without making a big deal about it.) Of course, that was the beginning of the "Arctic Blast" that brought even more snow adventures later.

Aidan is the proud owner of a cool, blue LED flashlight that Dad has tried repeatedly to trade for. He loves glow-in-the-dark stuff. When he gets some spending money, he is very careful to buy as many things as he can with it. (He's not too good a saver.) He takes great care of Porky, the Porkupine and his high-tech stuff. He doesn't care about clothes at all and I caught him out in the snow in shorts more than once.

His favorite food is peanut butter and jelly toast with the crusts cut off or a hot dog bun with peanut butter and ketchup. He eats tortillas, too, and chicken nuggets and picked chocolate for his cake flavor. His favorite ice cream is chocolate peanut butter, of course.

His favorite color is blue.

His favorite animal is a scorpian and he hopes to collect them in the future and maybe even decorate his room all scorpian (not!) He has designed a scorpian monster truck.

He reminds everyone to pray every night and asks God for NO dreams at all EVER. He is quick to hug, quick to jump to anyone's rescue even to the point of attacking little girls who are being mean. He's very sensitive to kids around him and their feelings and prefers a good sword fight over video games.

He can put together the most complicated Legos or K'nex project following the directions meticulously.

Family Business, by The Kids

We have talked a lot about what each of our jobs is at the Maaco. Dad, we realize, is in charge of... everything. He'll have to open the shop and close it and make sure everyone does what they're supposed to. We're used to getting involved in his business, though, so we have put a lot of thought into exactly how we plan on "helping"!

We let the professional Maaco people and contractors assemble everything so far. I mean, they're good at it. We did great finishing off the pizza.

Dad put together the desks and a bunch of other stuff, which we watched carefully. We tested out the reception desk for him, of course. Whatever we can do, you know?

Shad and Aidan have decided to train as "pin-stripers" who will begin in the "detailing" department. Of course, Dad will have to hire someone to fill in for them while they're in school. Camten has graciously accepted the offer to be Dad's right-hand man and help supervise stuff. He'll be busy, but he's ready for it. Trinity likes to work with people and is super friendly, so she'll be helpful in the office, most likely. She hasn't said either way, yet.

Looks like everyone will leave the paperwork to Mom, who likes sitting around pretending like she's being important. We all know she's just playing around, but as long as she stays away from the Xbox, we're ok with it.

N-o-v-e-m-b-e-r

Camten and Trinity playing in Dad's office on the delivered floor tiles.

Shad releasing salmon in the Clackamas river with Camten.

Camten and Mom's birthdays. Family, friends and cake and some more family, friends and cake!

Back in November...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND WELCOME HOME!!!

November was a great month. Jeremy was back from Philly and he had a big birthday party! Then we had Camten's 5th birthday and mine and Thanksgiving!!! Not to mention the Maaco was getting built faster than fast, finally, and all kinds of fun things happened spontaneously like this tea party.

Unfortunately, my camera busted!! I took it in to get fixed, since I had a warrenty, and it took 6 weeks to get it back. 6 weeks of prime-time photo ops and an old camera to capture it! Well, then my new replacement busted (not funny!) So we're going to zip along right thru December, too, with lots of fuzz and red-eye. Right now I'm ready to smack anyone who even LOOKS at my camera!!!!

Jeremy went to the Maaco Training

Most of his time was some pretty intense business instruction in the classroom. There were five new franchisees in October getting taught how to run their business and manage their employees. One of the new franchisees had a build-to-suit just like us and it's taken just as long as ours!! He's based near Chicago. Jeremy made good friends with the team from Florida and the franchisee from California, too.

They had to learn all the steps from estimating to painting for the work to be done in our shop, too. This is one of the cars they did in class.

On the weekends, they all headed out on the town together! They visited New Jersey and then New York, where they saw the Statue of Liberty and visited Ellis Island. Times Square was the favorite stop, from what I hear. Jeremy got "schooled" by a ticket salesman on the street on the differences between New Yorkers and us West Coateners (he saw a Western and knew how it was out here.) To prove his point, he proposed to a passerby who didn't give him the time of day. You'll have to ask Jeremy the story... it's pretty funny. And what's up with thinking we drive covered wagons out here?!

Right before elections, Jeremy got to visit some of the first political icons of our country including the location of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell. He was ready to come home by then.

Well, almost.

He attended a couple days of the yearly Maaco conference at a 5-star resort in Miami, where he was too busy sipping sodas by the pool and chatting with owners of million dollar centers to snap pictures.

THEN we got our man back. That was a long 4 weeks!