The Next Stage in Life

Nicole and I have bee married for almost 11 months now. Life has been great, and incredibly busy. The print shop is doing well, and keeping me very busy. Nicole is kind enough to help out weekly after working at her regular job. Self employment has been great, and the hours have been long. We have stayed busy with our church service, and don't seem to have a lot of down time, which is good. With summer finally here (I think...) I have spent quite a bit of time trying to get our yard looking respectable, which has been quite the chore, specially since I usually get home shortly before it gets dark.
For more interesting news, Nicole and I are expecting our first baby. On Monday June 14 we had an ultrasound and found out that it is going to be a little girl. Nicole and both grandmas thought it would be a boy. In fact they were so convinced of it that grandma Redd even made a little baby blanket with a blue trim (in her defense she made a cute little girl blanket as well just in case). The ultra sound was quite an amazing experience. And our little baby is quite the boxer. She was punching and moving her arms the entire time. I can only imagine what that bundle of energy will be like when she is finally out !!
We are very excited for the opportunity to become parents. I am convinced we have no idea what awaits us, but I am sure it will be great. Here are a couple of pictures from the ultrasound.

Back to reality

When Nicole and I got married I was gainfully employed at AlphaGraphics. For those of you who have known me for a long time, I have been working in the Printing industry for about 15 years. My job at AlphaGraphics required me to travel upwards of 40 weeks a year, and the travel was very taxing. My previous job was the same way. So after a few years of waking up in strange hotel rooms, racking up crazy amounts of air miles, and eating out 5 days a week (3 meals a day) we decided that we were ready for a change. Traveling that much was not a good start to our marriage.

In October 2009 we bought a little print shop in Sandy, UT called "Help U Copy". Yeah, the name resonated well with us too. So we quickly changed it to "Mountainside Printing". The shop is a little neighborhood printer with low sales volumes and a fair share of walk in customers.

We did some remodeling and updating when we took over the shop. We re-arranged the layout, and changed the wall paint color from an awful pink/cream to a more soothing light gray. The layout is still a work in progress, but the shop already looks remarkably better.

Buying a business has been a good change for us, but it has not come without its challenges. Days are long, and weekends are short, and there is never enough time in the day to get everything done. It was interesting to go from a corporate job, and a steady paycheck to owning and running a small business. Nicole continues to work her regular job as a paralegal at a law firm downtown and helps at the shop one afternoon a week and on Saturdays. I run the shop from open to close 6 days a week. We hired our first employee right before the busy holiday season, and haven't looked back since. I have really enjoyed the challenges of trying to build our business. I think Nicole has enjoyed having me at home more. We cannot wait to see what we can do with this business.

Here are a couple of pictures of Mountainside Printing: (you can also visit us at www.mountainsideprinting.com)