Pumpkin Walk

In Logan every October, they set up this cute pumpkin walk for several days. It draws huge crowds! We went during the day when Myra was out of school and it wasn't too crowded. Basically, they have a theme every year and people will enter a "booth", with a scene they decorate out of pumpkins. They had some great ones this year - Angry Birds, Kung Fu Panda, Calvin & Hobbes, The Wizard of Oz and many more. Myra's favorite was Angry Birds, while Lexi loved Despicable Me. Some of the scenes were done so well. It was a lot of fun. Then the kids got to meet the local witch and have a cookie. They probably enjoyed posing in the stand-ups the most. The first one Noah did, he was very upset about me making him stand behind this cut-out and stick his head through the hole, but after watching his sisters for a minute, he seemed to enjoy it much more. Fun day! We'll miss this tradition when we leave Logan.

Makai's Baby Blessing

Towards the beginning of the month, my sister and her husband blessed their new baby boy, Makai. We got to go be a part of their special day. It was fun to be together with family. We got some cute pictures of our family and all the kids.


Whole family together.
Grandma and Grandpa with all the Grandkids.
Cousins
Noah enjoying the day.
Noah and McKenzie. "Can we stop hugging yet?"

The Entrepreneur

Note to reader: Chad wrote this.

For the few people who knew me as a child, they also might know that I always wanted to grow up to be an Entrepreneur. I did not really know what I wanted to do as an Entrepreneur or how to become one, I just thought I should start some business and make lots of money. As a kid I didn’t do much more then dream (although, I did make a decent profit buying firecrackers in Wyoming and selling them illegally to the neighbor kids in Colorado). As I have gotten older I have half-heartedly tried my hand a few business ventures (e.g., window washing, tub and cabinet repair, etc.), but for the most part this dream has tapered somewhat (petty much the only thing I do is listen to AudioBooks about business and bore my wife with “how I would organize restaurants or grocery stores differently to make them more efficient”).

It might be surprising to some to know that there is an Entrepreneur in our family, but it’s not me, it’s my wife. She hasn’t read any of the business books I’ve recommended (Napoleon Hill should have at least mentioned that “influencing people” did not include wives), nor has she attended any business seminars or three day start-your-own-business workshops. She just decided one day four years ago to start selling baby blankets online and has been going ever since.

When she first told me that she wanted to try to sell the simple receiving blankets that she had made for our daughter online I was outwardly supportive, but inwardly skeptical. Would anybody really pay money for a blanket ordered online that they could probably make themselves? Well, she set up a shop on Etsy, made some blankets, posted pictures, and waited… and waited. At first only a few people even visited her shop, but after a week someone actually bought one…wow, I was surprised (and nervous it was scam or something). Than 10 days later she sold another and then 7 days after that she sold 2 more, things where really moving, sort of. I remember every time she would sell one she would get really excited, which was fun; we would talk hypothetically about where the business would go; things like “wouldn’t be crazy if we sold something every day, and on days that we didn’t we would be frustrated” (yeah, like that’s ever going to happen). It is important to note that at this point I am surprised that she has done so well, but still being outwardly supportive, and inwardly skeptical.

Well as things progressed, she worked hard, added more and more items to her shop, figured out how to take better pictures to make items look more professional, and continued to have sales. After 6 months things were still growing, and I was more and more impressed and less and less skeptical (none of my business had last this long). The following summer she decided to sell at the gardener’s market in Logan. I was more onboard by this point, although I wasn’t so sure about spend every Saturday of the summer at the market (I think I made her miss a few weeks so that we could go camping). I remember at first we just wanted to double our booth fee ($10), after a few weeks we were setting goals to make $100. Again, my wife impressed me with her business skills and perseverance. While she wasn’t making enough for me to quit my job, to a young college family with two kids, a few extra hundred dollars a month is nothing to turn your nose at.

At this point things are kind of a blur in my memory, but she her business continued to grow and she kept finding new things items to add to her shop. Also, other venders started copying her product descriptions and trying to make there shope look the same as hers, which I kind of see as a compliment to her success. If I remember right it took less than 6 month of her second year in business to surpass her entire first year’s earnings and less than 6 months of the third year to exceed the second.

So, after three year when she told me that she felt like the online-baby-blanket market was getting too saturated and that fabric was getting too expensive to compete and she wanted to try something new, I was 100% supportive. She decided she wanted to make scrabble tile pendants (I had no idea what that was, or again, why anyone would want to buy them), I tried to be more helpful this time. We bought a bunch of supplies, and started trying to figure out how to make them. It was not as easy as you think (or at least not as easy as everyone at the market that walks by our table as says “oh, I’ve made those in young womens” thinks); figuring things out was the part of the process that I enjoyed the most, the scientist in me liked identifying a problem, brainstorming solutions and setting up experiments to test our ideas (I like to think that at least some of the solutions I contributed really helped). Once we got things figured out, Shannon opened her second shop on Etsy, and because of her past experience it took off much faster than the first.

Her second shop has been going strong for a year now, it seems like every month is better than the last (we reached that hypothetical “rare to have a day without a sale” a long time ago). She has gotten so busy lately that she has had to employ me to help keep up with demand, and I am more than happy to spend my evenings working with her rather than watching TV (or reading business books I’ll probably never use). In fact, it is primarily through Shannon’s efforts that we are able to even finance moving our entire family across the world to Denmark (which is no small feat). And on top of of that; even with all the success that she has had, all the sweat, time and work that she has put in to her business, and all the joy I know she gets from helping to provide for our family in a way that allows her to work and mother; she has not complained once about having to close her shops, and leave it all behind to follow her crazy husband to Denmark. In fact she has already started scheming other businesses she could start and manage while there (and I have no doubt that she will be successful when she does). I don’t blog much, and I don’t really know if many people even read blogs anymore if they are more than 120 characters, but I felt it was important to give everyone the chance to know how awesome I think my wife is and how proud of her I am. I might not ever achieve my childhood dream of being an Entrepreneur, but I am more than happy to be married to one.

Moving to Denmark

Yes, it's true, we are moving to Copenhagen Denmark! Chad was offered a research position at the University of Copenhagen where he will be able to get his PhD. They had many applicants for this scholarship and we feel very blessed that he was the one chosen! Chad will start work there on February 1st, so we will probably move over around the middle of January. We have started a new blog to record all of our experiences with this big move.
http://underthedanishsun.blogspot.com

You can go there to read more about how this opportunity came about and our feelings involved with such a big change in our lives.