The Office--at home

Today I finally finished cleaning out my craft room so that Lance could move his office in with my scrapbooking, painting, sewing stuff and the toy library (more about that on a different day). Since Lance became self-employed on December 19th, he has been working off a card table in our bedroom. The plus side to him working in the bedroom was that the bed was made 100% of the time during the day. That way it was easier for him to spread his folders and files out all over it while he was working. Since that just doesn't sound like something a professional engineer should be doing daily, I really felt motivated to get things arranged in my craftroom so we can share it. We had kind of thought about just setting things up in the bonus room, but that would leave Lance out and exposed to all of our daytime life. So I knew he needed the room with the door that LOCKS! That is my room's best feature!!! So now we're sharing, just like friends should. :)

Lance officially filed and registered his company name January 2nd--Aspen Engineers, Chartered. He really couldn't do much engineering until the new year, so the past two weeks have been organizational. Since it has been Christmas break it hasn't been too strange having him home. Truly there are somethings that have been really nice, i.e. when a child sassed me back and was quite belligerent, Lance popped right out of the bedroom and corrected the naughty behavior. So using the threat of "do I need to call Dad about this?" might not get heard as much as it was before. I really only called a few times about behavior problems in the past 12 years, but just the question can straighten up the most ornery boy.


It has also been nice to just leave home in the middle of the day and not have to take everyone with me. We are also now a one vehicle family (had a company truck before) and it is not too bad because he doesn't take the one vehicle "to work" and leave me stuck at home. It wouldn't be too good to be stuck at home out where we live since we are not in walking distance to anything. Well, we could walk somewhere, but it would take all day (church is five miles away and town is six and the schools are about seven). Lance is great at planning ahead so we just have to communicate and be flexible about the van. Over the past two years with gas being ridiculous, I have gotten really good at not running around and having planned trips when I do. So it is like I've been groomed for this one car adventure. I'm curious to see how long we can do it. But, I hope Lance has plenty of work coming in so that we don't "have" to do it for too long. We're both looking forward to buying a cheap ride in cash--it will be the first time we do it that way!


Once I download pictures off my camera, I'll post a few of his office/her craftroom. It is the only room in the house with so much girlie stuff--on my side, of course. As I was emptying a few boxes yesterday (yes, ones I packed almost three years ago to put in storage to sell our old house which have only been cracked open once or twice since) I unpacked my first records--vinyl records. I thought, "Why do I move these around with me? I've never had a record player and I doubt I'd ever get one. I have even downloaded most of my favorite songs from those albums to my MP3 player anyway." Then I decided to hang them on wall as a decoration instead. It is kind of fun looking. Lance laughed when he saw them and then he went around most of the day singing Debbie Gibson songs under his breath, which isn't even one of the albums I have up! I'm still laughing at it--love 80's music!!!


Pictures:
Top--the room half way clean--it was much worse. I have been collecting toys that were not picked up and sorting them in the room and keeping them there (grounded). This lead to a huge D.I. and pile and a garbage bag. Plus the scrapping and sewing stuff was out of sorts.

2nd--sharing
3rd-Lance's side
4th-Melissa's side