The kids were scheduled to take their standardized tests next week, but then we found out that we cannot take the tests due to a prior conflict. They are also scheduled to play in the piano festival. I decided to go ahead and reschedule the testing rather than the festival because there will be additional testing later in the year. That means the kids will only have to miss one of their swimming lessons next week, too. After today, there will only be seven weeks of school left for the year. Both Kelly and Christian have finished their Easy Grammar program. The next thing we will finish will be Spelling Power for Kelly. That will probably happen some time next week. Christian has quite a bit more spelling than Kelly, so he will not finish for another four or five weeks.
I left my cell phone at home today. We have to go over to Dean Sartain’s (our accountant) office to sign our tax forms today, so when Lorena comes over, she will bring my phone. I will be able to go and have lunch with the family. Then, Lorena is going to drop gifts off with Martha as Tony and Martha are flying Mexico this week and has room to take a few things to Lorena’s family for her. Today, Kelly is going to invite her friend Skyler from last year at government school to go to the home school play day. This will be the first time Kelly has gotten together with her home school buddies since the big party so it will be good to get a report on that.
I talked to our partner from Quality Corners, Ron Voorhees, last night on the way home from work last night. The rosettes we are selling to our biggest customer are selling through so well in the stores that they are going to have to start buying rosettes at a little less than double the current rate. We are doing pretty well now, but as we automate our production, our profit margins should continue on up. At this point, we have the machining almost completely automated. By the end of next week, that should be complete. After that, all we need is a way to get the rosettes into their side-painting troughs from the machining line and a fully automated paint line. When all that is in place, we can actually go out and try to get more customers.
Yesterday, we got a photograph of the part that another division of that same customer wants us to make for them on our new CNC router. Hopefully the router will get her next week or the week after so I can make samples we can send off to our customer. That machine could really help us grow our business. I really believe there are lots of parts we can make with it, but it is important that we be able to keep it running all the time and really have more than one machine so there is redundancy.