Hello and welcome to my new blog. I will be giving updates on all the new and exciting things happening with Creative Childcare Solutions, Inc. I want to begin by thanking all our customers for their continued support of our services! We love caring for the children in your groups and particularly enjoy the opportunity of giving back to our military families during their pre-deployment, post-deployment, and marriage retreats. We are forever thankful for the sacrifices your families make to ensure our safety and freedom to continue living the American dream. I intend to highlight special things from our events and humor you with little “kid” comments that are priceless to us. As we expand, I will take you along on the journey of our new endeavors both locally and nationally. Hang on to your seats as we break new ground in other states and with additional military groups and new clients. Our newest expansion into offering on-site group events at our new location in Oregon City, Oregon will take place early this summer. Thank you again for all your support and for appreciating our attention to detail in caring for each of your children. It is an honor and a privilege to care for other people’s children!
I know that buying a house can entail many details and responsibilities. However, buying 9.5 acres with 7 buildings on it requires many steps. We are very fortunate to be working on this with an incredible realtor and a very giving seller, but in order to set things up correctly for, we have gone the extra mile to ensure the land is safe and environmentally friendly for all. I have so many dreams for this property that will allow us to invite groups of military families to come for the day to hang out on a farm, have good food, and relax while we serve them. In order for this to happen, we have to put in a commercial kitchen and landscape certain areas of the grounds. We are motivated and want to run with our ideas, but we first have to get into our house, get settled, get MONEY, and then we can proceed. This entire move has been inspired by and led by God. There is no other way to explain its development. I woke up one morning announcing to my husband that we needed to move. Within 2 weeks, we were putting the offer in on the house and land. I drove by it at least five times daily claiming it to be ours. This was not a selfish, greedy act, but more of an enthusiasm for the possibilities of giving back to our community through our projects on this property. The ideas are endless, so I must create different phases in order to meet our final plans.
I plan to live out the remainder of my life at this place. I expect to have grandchildren running around in the years to come. I plan to teach my 3 boys the meaning of real, true, hard work and the grit it takes to accomplish the tasks of running a farm. The lessons they will learn will help continue developing them into good citizens of this planet and men of character. Our home will be a place of peace; a thread of positive energy will run through every inch of those acres. All who come there will feel welcome and know that we are there to serve them. Our stewardship of this land will bring new experiences, people, and opportunities to help others. We remain open to where we will be led and faithfully open our doors to anyone who comes across our path. We are truly blessed and intend to bless others for the rest of our lives. Come along for the ride!
Our weekends are beginning to fill up as we enter February. Funding requirements are not finalized until January 28th which means our phone should be ringing off the hook on February 1st. Bring it on! We are ready. We have created a new handbook for our contractors and started developing a training program they can do in order to best understand how to work with our groups of children. We have already booked jobs in La Grande, Pendleton, Salem, Redmond, Seattle, Welches, Warrenton, Wilsonville, and Timberline.
Esther and her brilliance, accompanied by Maura and her full character, stood for 8 hours each day last weekend inside an 8 x 10 booth (dressed in black tie attire) at the Portland Bridal Show. I brought lunch one day and touched base with some of our venues and connections. Esther is so good at the girlie girl stuff that she thrives on being around brides and weddings. She really knows how to work with these excited women to help them eliminate any childcare issues. As we all know, some family members think the “No kids allowed” rule doesn’t apply to them — after all, they are family! Being able to convey all the options we have for keeping the wedding day flowing smoothly and without children, really calms these brides and mothers-of-the brides’ minds. Esther has already booked her first event from the show, in only 3 days! You go girl!
At the beginning of each new year, I do my best to make any necessary changes in the business to work with the new trends and markets. This also includes my seeking the best methods for getting bids awarded to us over our competitors. Our phenomenal reputation has allowed us some exclusive contracts, but I will never settle or become complacent with that gift. I have changed the pay scale for many of my peeps and modified the traveling costs so we aren’t losing as much on each out of town trip. I am always willing to risk a loss when trying to break into a new market, but I can’t set a precedent that we will always be willing to lose money on jobs just to have jobs. The mommy in me begins getting concerned about the kind of care these children are getting in other areas because I am often on the receiving end of the horror stories of other companies and their incompetence when caring for children. There is no reason to put money ahead of these children and too often it happens.
So as we move further into the new year, I will continue doing my best to be fair in my compensation to the contractors and employees who work with me while maintaining the integrity of the business and bidding a fair amount for payment of our services. The people with whom I work are the absolute best around. Having NEVER advertised for caregivers, I am able to gain insight into who these people are from those who refer them to work with me. What a great group of men and women I have! I couldn’t do any of this without them and I do my best to convey that message to them all the time.
