Posts Tagged ‘Las Vegas’

Today I am thankful for our new house.  It is simply perfect for us.  The boys will have their own rooms, there’s a basement with plenty of room for a poker table.  I have a huge kitchen, with all new(er) appliances.  There’s a dog run, a laundry room, and a nice large pool.  The only thing that could make this place even better is to be near my mom & sister….. well, how’s next door?

Yes, they are going to be living right next door to us!  When I first started talking about moving in with Steve, my mom always said “Maybe we can find two houses next door to each other”.  It was always a nice thought, but never did we really believe we’d be able to find that.  Especially not two houses that fit our needs so perfectly, and more!  And yet that is exactly what the Universe did for us.

The house on the left is our house.  2 bedrooms in the basement, with a large room separating them that we’ll use as a “rec” or “theater” room.  We’ll have a wall mounted TV in there, with a couch (if it’ll fit down the stairway), the various game consoles we have, and a poker table.  Roger’s room will be in one of the rooms in the basement as well.  there are two separate rooms in there, but only one of them is really big enough for a bedroom.  The other one will be storage/library (YES!  I get a LIBRARY!!!).

Upstairs, on the “main” floor, is our extra large kitchen, that 3 or more cooks can be working in there comfortably without stepping on each other, our living room (with a fireplace), Jack’s room, and the master suite.  There’s also a “service porch” where the laundry and our freezer is.  Every bedroom has nice large closets with built in shelves.  The two bathrooms are upstairs as well.  Between the garage and the house is a fully enclosed porch, that is probably bigger than the livingroom.  It’s enclosed with lattice work for the ceiling, so not really usable on rainy days, but every other time will be great for party run off!  LOL!

Out back is our pool, patio, and RV parking area.  This is a beautiful pool that has shallow ends on both sides and a deep end in the middle.  There is also a fountain feature in the far back corner of the pool… makes it look very elegant for sure.  Plenty of room on the patio for a lot of people to sit and talk, eat burgers fresh from our grill and watch the kids play in the pool.  This will defintely be great for summer teen events!

And then right next door is where my mom and sister will be living.  They get a 2 bedroom one bath house, with all hardwood floors, a nice sized kitchen and a laundry room.  Their backyard is actually bigger than ours, but it’s all grass.  Although there is a swinset in their backyard as well.  They also have a workshop in their back yard that even has lots of storage and room for wood working, painting or any other type of arts and crafts that might come up.  They too have a nice patio in the back with a nice awning which will make the spring, summer & fall very nice.

I cannot tell you how amazingly happy I am that these houses were for rent.  It’s been a little bit tight and a big old stress bubble trying to get everything packed and ready to move.  We’re also moving our home office into a regular office about 3 miles from the new houses.  So for the next 3 weekends we’ll be moving something!  LOL!  This is going to be a crazy three weeks, but after it’s all done, we’re going to be so happy!  I just can’t wait for it to be all overwith!  LOL!

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Wanted: 1 Magic Wand (Used is fine as long as it still works), batteries not included ok.  Must pack entire household with a flip of the wrist, and move stuff from old house to new house and office with out the need for a rental truck.  Or at the very least will move all the heavy stuff from the house into the rental truck.. I’m not THAT picky!  Serious enqueries only.  Willing to pay a lot of money for wand, but still would like to pay no more than what it would cost to do the stuff myself .  Will also take magic wand that will make my teen sons stop whineing about needing to pack and move, and put a happy face on when I ask them to do things…. LOL!  Yea I know I’m dreaming about a wand that will make teenagers helpful!

So, just to let you all know, I’ll be writing as much as I can on my blog, but I will be more or less quiet for the next month.  We got the two houses that we were hoping to get.  We are signing the leases today and will officially get the keys to the new houses on March 1st.  AND at the same time we got our new office for our business!  Which we are currently moving slowly into that now instead of being exclusively at home.

Needless to say, this next month is going to be CRAZY!!!!  With a capital CRA and a Capital ZEEE!!  LOL!  We’re already packing and moving stuff that we can, and dealing with the move in costs.  Luckily we have enough money to cover both move in costs and our last months rent at this house.  All that without hurting for money for our business.  LOL!  It’s so great that our business was busy this winter, not sure we could have done this if we’d been slow!

Anyway, we’re going to be off to sign our lease soon!  Can’t wait till this whole move is OVER!!  LOL!  And then we’ll have a house warming party or something!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Christine Plaisted

Stressed, yes, that is the word of the day… maybe even the week… or month! But really it’s all good right?  Things are popping for us in so many different ways that I’m getting dizzy!  But most of it’s good change.  But change, no matter what kind it is, usually makes me a stress bunny!  So that’s exactly what’s kept me from posting lately.  I’m so stressed I can’t even think straight!  LOL!

So what exactly has me so stressed?  Well for one thing, our business is growing big enough that we’ve decided to actually rent an office.  Although I’m half excited about that, half not so excited about it.  I like working from home… even if I’m stuck to a desk for 12 hours a day, it’s still home.  I see my boys all day long and really if I absolutely HAD to do something, I could leave anytime (depending on how busy we are).  But getting an office means so many different things.

No more rolling out of bed and working in my P.J.’s all day long.  No more waiting till the first call comes in to sleep.  No more late nights.  No, with an office I actually have to get up, get dressed BEFORE someone calls.  BLECH!  But then the good things about it is, there is a real separation of home and office.  No more animal noises in the background when I’m on the phone.  No more getting mad at the boys for fighting or playing their music too loud.  No, the quiet office will be a nice change.

One of the reasons why we’ve decided to get an office is so the boys can have their own rooms.  Right now they share a room.  One of the rooms is our office.  Without having the office in the house, then they can have their own rooms.  We’re still looking for a bigger place, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to find the right place without having to worry about having enough rooms for everyone and an office.

We were trying to find a place where my mom & sister could live with us and the boys could have their own room, AND we could have an office.  But that would mean a 6 bedroom house.  Well, 6 bedroom houses are NOT cheap!  And they are few and far between.  For a while we thought that my sister might decide to move back to California and live with another family member.  5 bedroom houses are a little easier to find, and a little cheaper, but not much.

That’s when we decided that having an office out of the house would make things SOOO much easier!  So we found an office and we’re going forward with it.  Then we decided that we needed to find a 4 bedroom house that wasn’t too far from the office.  Well that’s when the Universe kicked in!  The stars all seemed to align together perfectly to find what may be the best fit for our family!!

Ok, no, that’s not the house.  Let me tell you how I found the place before I describe it.  I was looking online at rentals near our office and came across this nice 4 bedroom 2 bath house, with a pool, in our price range.  It looked really cute and all that.  Well Thursday we were out running errands and accidentally got onto the wrong freeway.  Well when we got off the freeway again I noticed that we just passed the street that the house was on.  So we turned around and found it.  Turns out the house next door to it is for rent as well.  We get out of the car, it’s at night, and are looking around it.  It’s a nice neighborhood.  We get back into the car and are about to drive away when an SUV pulls up beside us.  The guy in the car says he’s the owner of the two houses and asks if we’d like to see inside.

So there are two houses right next door to each other, about 3 miles from our new office.  The one house is a 4 bedroom (really only a 3 bedroom with another room that’s like a big closet), 2 bath, with a basement, tons of storage, huge kitchen and a pool.  Gardening & pool service are included in the rent, which is only a little more than what we’re paying for the house we’re in.  the house next door is a 2 bedroom 1 bath, with tons of storage, huge backyard, and is perfect for my mom and sister.

So we talked it over with Mom and Sis.  We all went to “officially” see the houses with the property manager on Sunday.  We all loved the houses!  They are each perfect for us!  And within our price range.  The move in is going to be a little difficult, but Steve and I have already been saving and have enough to cover our move in costs.  So covering mom & Cindy’s move in won’t be too hard.  So today we’ve put in the applications for the rental agreements!  Now comes the REALLY hard part…….

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I wanted to give a great big Thank you to my friend Julie.   She’s a CPA and Steve and I had some questions about our business, taxes, and turning our business into an LLC.  She met us this morning at a local Bagel shop and answered a bunch of our questions and pointed us in the right direction.   Now we know what we have to do first to get our business turned into an LLC.  She was a huge help and a great friend for doing this!  So thank you very much Julie!!!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Christine Plaisted

The boys are pretty independent now that they are both in High school.  I don’t talk much about homeschooling anymore because I’m not doing much with their schooling.  We use an online charter high school because I didn’t have the time to devote to their curriculum while running and growing my business.  It was the easiest and best solution.  That being said, I do supplement their education with projects and reports that I assign them to make sure that their education is going in the direction that I want it to.  Today I saw a video excerpt that made me VERY thankful that I am homeschooling in Nevada, though.  This could easily have been me and the boys.

I can’t imagine having to go through this. I feel so horrible for this mom and her daughter. I wonder what exactly were these judges thinking? Can’t they see that by trying to do this they are taking away her 1st amendment right to freedom of religion?? That means she can teach her daughter about any religion she wants, not just what the state approves of? There are so many people out there that just don’t under stand that homeschooling is a good option, but instead they think that we’re all just a bunch of religious fanatics, ignorant racists, or someone even tried to say we were bored and unintelligent housewives! (Be warned, the preceding link will make you laugh and want to strangle the woman at the same time).

This is why I’m so grateful to be homeschooling in Nevada.  Here not only is it totally one hundred percent legal, but the schools must allow homeschoolers to participate in classes and extra-curricular events and classes as well!  So if my son wanted to take band at the local high school, he could (if there was room).  Of course Nevada being the last on the list of good schools in the US (or maybe that’s the top worst public schools?) it doesn’t surprise me that so many parents are choosing to homeschool here.

I guess when we are trying to decide where we want to move to for business reasons, New Hampshire will NOT be one of those states!  Not that it was in the running, but it’s definitely not in the running now!

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My Business:

Have you ever seen those big oversized trucks come down the highway?  The ones with the big “Oversize” or “Wide Load” signs on the front and back of the truck?  Well, those trucks need permits from each state that they go through.  Permits that tell them what roads they can travel on and when they can drive down them.  What I do is get those permits from each of the states (and sometimes the cities or counties they go through) for the truckers.

All of the work is done over the internet, the phone and fax.  Which is why this is a perfect home based business.  Customers don’t come to the office, I don’t have to travel anywhere to get the permits, and there is no inventory to store.  The downside is that some of the permits are extremely expensive and some of them have to be paid for at time of purchase.  By expensive I mean upwards around $800.  We charge extra for permits that are over a certain amount though, so it is worth it. Read the rest of this entry »