Media Motion Online is a 3 person company. We are all family members - father, mother, son.
My name is Bill. I am the father. I do most of the Virtual Assistant work. I should qualify that by saying that I am the primary contact. If I need help with any of our Virtual Assistant projects, I call in assistance from my wife, Suzy, or our son, Andrew.
Andrew has a degree in Marketing from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He graduated in May 2014. At the time he graduated, he didn't have a job. His plan was to move back to the family home in Boynton Beach, Florida and live with us during his job search. At the time, Suzy and I had decided to sell our house in Boynton Beach and move to Texas. My father had passed away in 2008. After my father died, my mother continued to live alone in their house in Schertz, Texas. Schertz is a small community on the Northeast corner of San Antonio.
Suzy and I had noticed some changes in my mother. She refused to leave her house. As Mom said, the only way she was leaving the house was "feet first". Given few options, Suzy and I decided to move to Texas. Our business, Media Motion Online was an Internet-based business that provided web streaming, website maintenance, and consulting. Media Motion Online could easily continue to operate as it always had. It didn't matter whether we were based in Florida or Texas. The house in Texas was about 1/3 the size of the house in Florida. We needed to get rid of 2 out of 3 things that were in the house in Florida, pack everything that remained, move it all to Texas, and unpack.
The move worked exactly as we planned - sort of. We only managed to get rid of 1 out of 2 things - not 2 out of 3. The result was that the move consisted of 2 moving containers, the largest rental moving truck that Ryder had, a car trailer that held our minivan and was towed behind the moving truck. A company brought the 2 moving containers and dropped them off empty in our driveway in Florida. We loaded the 2 containers. Once the containers were loaded, we called the company. The plan was that the company would pick up the 2 containers, take them to Texas and store them in an air conditioned storage facility until we were ready to unload them. When the company came to pick up the containers, we were told that both of the moving containers were about 3 times the maximum suggested weight. They were both so heavy that the trucks could barely pick them up.
The Ryder moving truck was 26 feet long. I had it tightly packed from front to back, side to side, and top to bottom. We had to push stuff into the truck so that we could close the door at the back of the truck. I even had stuff packed on the footwell of the passenger side of the truck cab. No one was riding with me. I needed to use the space. We had the minivan also stuffed from front to back, side to side, and top to bottom. There was barely room for me to sit in the driver's seat so that I could load the minivan onto the car trailer.
We got everyone and everything to Universal City, Texas. Our house is 14 minutes from my mother's house.
Mom no longer drives. We have Home Healthcare people that go to her house for at least an hour every day. We have a different aide that spends 3 to 4 hours per day, twice a week with Mom. The aide help Mom take a both, washes the clothing, and does light cleaning. I pick up breakfast and take it to Mom's house every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I usually stay for at least an hour. I eat with Mom, tell her stories from when I was growing up, and do any housekeepi8ng and chores that I see that need to be done. I also make at least a weekly trip to the grocery so that we can keep food and drinks in Mom's refrigerator.
Suzy picks up lunch every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and does basically the same routine.
On Sunday, in the early afternoon, we pickup Mom and bring her to our house for a family meal. After the meal, we spend an hour or so playing some sort of game. We used to play Dominoes. But Mom reached a point where she could no longer remember the rules of the game. We switched to Parcheesi. Mom still cannot remember the rules, so all we do is take turns rolling the dice and moving our pieces around the board. Mom seems to enjoy it.
With our schedule with Mom, we cannot really do anything - like retire or travel. We have to be in Schertz with Mom basically 7 days a week. On the other hand, we are usually busy with Mom for only a couple of hours a day. So we have plenty of spare time that we need to fill. Mom is in remarkable health. She takes no medicine. Her memory isn't good. When you give her the facts, she makes good decisions. She just doesn't remember the decision 2 minutes later. But if you give her the same set of facts again, she will make the same decision she made the first time.
I have been working since I was 10 years old. I like to stay busy. I have a lot of real world, practical knowledge that I can share.