Tina Fey on SNL as Gov. Sarah Palin

This is super funny!

Breezewood's 5K Run/Walk is a Big Success!

Photo by Halberg Photography

At Home Adult Care is proud to have sponsored the Breezewood Village 5K Run/Walk in La Mirada, California. Read the story by clicking here to go to Breezewood Village's website.

Picture by Geo Silva

A Happy Home for Dolly

One of the first clients my wife, "Jee", worked with when she started working as a caregiver was Juanita "Dolly" Keeler. At the time, Jee was working for another agency and At Home Adult Care had not yet been born. Jee became very close to Dolly, as she does with many of her clients.

After she stopped working for the other agency and we started our own company she kept in close contact with Dolly. Dolly wasn't able to become our client, because it would not be right for us to accept her as a client when my wife met her by working for another agency. But, Jee has continued to help her as a friend and at no cost.

Recently, Dolly had a fall and spent some time in the hospital and then in an assisted living center before returning to her home. At this time, her home is a senior's apartment where she lives independently. The ordeal was very hard on her. After returning home, Dolly asked my wife to search for a new home for her that would offer a bit more assistance, but still allow her to maintain her independence and offer her a good quality of life.

My wife and I have a good knowledge of the assisted living facilities in the areas we serve. This is because through our business we've been to visit and tour these facilities and know key persons on the staff. We recommended two facilities for Dolly to visit, both very good, but each with a slightly different flavor.

After taking a look at both, Dolly has decided that her new home will be The Posada at Whittier. Dolly visited the facility with her Sister-in-law and they both fell in love with it. We know she will be very happy at her new home in Uptown Whittier

We are so happy for her! The Posada at Whittier is such an amazing facility, with very caring, friendly and fun staff.

Congratulations Dolly! We'll look forward to every visit.

Weekend Respite: Sukanya's soccer tournament results

We ended up with 3rd place. If we'd played just a little better, we could've been in the championship. But, it was not to be for this tournament.

After the tournament we had almost all the girls and their families over to our house to swim and relax. It was a lot of fun and now that the weekend is over, we are back at work to promote At Home Adult Care.

The things we'll be working on today is to find a brochure delivery service to distribute flyers to the neighborhoods that we'll be focusing on in La Mirada and nearby cities, and to get an email service setup so we can tell all the people we know about our business.

This weekend: a break for our daughter's soccer tournament

This weekend, we took a much-needed break from business development for a soccer tournament with our daughter, Sukanya. Here's her team's picture (and she's the one in the front holding the gold/white soccer ball:


The tournament they are in is the Long Beach Pyramid Cup 2008 tournament. We played our games at Cal State Long Beach on the intramural fields. Our first game on Saturday, we won 5-1. The second game on Saturday, we lost 1-3. We have a game tomorrow (Sunday) at 11. If we win, and take the maximum points, we might have chance to play for the championship, but only if the strongest team in our bracket does poorly. So we'll see... The girls have had a good time anyway, even if we don't take 1st or 2nd so that is what's most important. I'll update tomorrow on how we've done.

A Fantastic Resource for Family Caregivers

Today we found a great resource for family caregivers. It's called the Caregiver Resource Center of Orange County. They help people provide care to their family members. Many of our clients are caregivers themselves to their parents or other family members. They hire us for a respite from time to time to supplement the care they provide so that they can take a break or take care of other things they need to do. This organization provides complete and free support to family caregivers including:

• Training
• Emotional support and advice
• Grants to pay for respite care
• Legal and financial advice

The Caregiver Resource Center of Orange County is a program of St. Jude Hospital.

Another step complete: The website is up!

Our website is nearly complete. You can see it at www.athomeadultcare.com. Even though I'm pretty good at building websites, it took longer than I thought. Oh well, I guess everything does.

The purpose of the website is to allow existing clients and potential clients to find answers to their questions about our in-home care servicse. Hopefully we did a good job at getting that information online and making it easy to find.

Yesterday, my wife and I visited some senior apartments and skilled nursing centers in Anaheim and Fullerton and left behind our brochures.

We also visited the Orange County Office on Aging to get advice on continuing education and training for our employees. I recommend this office as a great resource for seniors. The staff is very helpful. They understand what facilities are available to assist seniors, and what benefits are available through Medicare, Medi-Cal and other programs. They are also up-to-date with pending legislative items affecting seniors. (You can visit their website by clicking on their name in this paragraph.) While there we picked up an application to do be included in their referral database. Hopefully these referrals can help us build our client base.

When you are starting this kind of business, the up-front fixed monthly costs are difficult to manage and make it difficult to grow. Insurance is the biggest, then payroll service is next. We're doing our best to manage, but look forward to having enough clients to provide income to pay these fixed costs so we can operate in the black.