Today, I’ve spent most of my family business work time digging through the details of the holiday weekend results for my retail companies. The news for the past few days was all wonderful hype about how great the biggest shopping weekend of the year was for business, but those sales and customer numbers often don’t tell even half the story.
Most of my companies did have strong sales, but the retailers with the best bottom line performance weren’t the ones with the top sales. Big discounts drew lots of customers, but it looks like those were nearly the only sales that were happening at some of my companies. We’ll have to see if that translates into repeat customers buying other products through until Christmas or not. Bottom line is that it’s way too early to know whether this will be a good Christmas shopping year or not yet – at least here at home.
One good thing that came from spending time digging into those report details was that I found a few charity opportunities that solved some inventory problems while making some clothes; winter coats; footwear; and even some toys available to be donated. Mom, Aunt Leanne, and Miranda are all looking for opportunities to help our charities now too; and it’s really amazing to watch the most important part of our family business really take off and make even more of a difference now than ever before!
I stopped working to have dinner; help with the cleanup; and then do a Magi lesson with Mom, Ethan, and Ehlana before joining Dad in the office and getting back to it. He took a break to help Mom with the bedtime feeding with the twins, and after tucking them into their cribs; the three of us worked until shortly after midnight. A little Jacuzzi time had been on my to-do list for tonight, but I skipped that; got changed; and climbed into bed with Mandy and my computer.
My email and entertainment checks were done already, but I studied in the archives for an hour or so, including catching up on Uncle Adam’s entries into our Magi project journal. I really need to start doing more with that, but there just never seems to be enough hours in the day. The good news is that what little bit of help Uncle Adam wants from me right now I can usually take care of with a few meet and greets at church on Sundays. Since adding more to my plate between now and Christmas isn’t going to work; I’ll have to settle for adding it to my New Year’s plans.
For right now, though, the only thing I want to do is have the slightly extended nap that I still have time for before it’ll be time to get started on another long work day. Cue the lullaby music – nighty night!