Week 21 - By the hairs of our chiny chin chin!

This was a HUGE week for work.  We didn't share with most of you that there was a pretty good chance we were coming home early with our tails between our legs.  One of the reasons we came over and took the risk on this startup was the partnership and investment of a key company in the fund industry called Kneip.

http://www.kneip.com

They were supposed to invest in January which would have allowed us to hire additional engineers and speed up our progress here.  It took much longer than expected to secure their partnership and investment in the company.  Pretty much since January we've been thinking the investment would be right around the corner.  This has caused a lot of stress because we knew that in a few months we would be out of money.

Well, it came right down to the wire.  Next week we wouldn't have been able to make payroll and would have had just enough money in the bank to fly all of the families home back to the U.S.  In true startup fashion things happen at the last possible moment.  I don't know why it is that way, but it is.  I don't know if you remember a few months ago my blog about thinking I had a heart attack.  That was at the time our negotiations with Kneip stalled out and it looked like we were in big trouble.    We celebrated with some sushi and then worked until midnight!

Sam signing the contract.  It literally took 1 hour to sign all of the contracts.

We are all super relieved and excited to be focused on building the company instead of worrying about money.  I should say, everyone but Spencer.  He would have been just as good with us losing a bunch of money and coming home!  In fact, he was pretty disappointed and moped around the house for a few days.   He's better now and happy that school is ending,  we will be visiting home and doing some more travel.  We're not quite 1/2 way done with this adventure and are now looking forward to some additional and friends/family visiting.

I continued to work super long hours at work this week.  The product is coming together, but we still have tons to do.  I'll continue the crunch mode up until the 20th of June.  At that point, we should be live on the Internet and able to sell our service.  In the next few weeks in addition to the product, we'll be working on marketing and operational tasks to get the product ready to sell.  These are the times in the life of a start-up where we create a ton of value.  Nothing exists today and we get to create it out of thin air.  It is a lot of work, but very satisfying.  Our next big milestone will be our first sales to real customers!

The kids had a good week this week.  They are wrapping up some classes at school early and all looking forward to summer in a couple of weeks.  They went to the teen hangout again this week in Kehlen.  They played pool, basketball and met a couple new kids.

On Friday we left at 5:30 with the ward on a temple trip to do baptisms for the dead in the Frankfurt temple.  We stayed in the Temple hostel that is right on the temple grounds.  It is a beautiful temple about 27 kilometers outside of Frankfurt.  We had about 4 cars of adults and kids.  When we arrived we played some games and swung on this weird circular playground equipment.  The kids favorite was an impromptu game of capture the flag.

The Frankfurt temple is in a cute little German city.  It has one main road and a small catholic church.  The temple gets a lot more traffic than I expected.  I bet the local city gets a pretty good boost from all of the church members.  The kids were pretty excited to explore the town because Grandma and Grandpa Saunders will be living there for 2 years on their mission.  They will be arriving in July and work as church auditors.  It was super fun to see where they will be living and working.  We scoped out the local market, restaurants, pharmacies and stores.  Pretty crazy that they'll be there for two years and that we'll get to see them there.    It is only 3 hours away and a lot of autobahn driving, so I'm sure we'll visit a few times.

Speaking of the autobahn, I'm a FAN!  We drove most of the way there at about 160 kilometers per hour, which is about 100 mph.  The only thing you have to be really careful about is staying out of the left lane.  You can be going 100 mph and a porsche, audi or mercedes will come roaring by you at 150 mph.  

The young men and young women went to bed about 10:30 that night.  Unfortunately we didn't get to sleep then because the boys watched a movie and Emilee was teaching a friend sign language.  A cable on Emilee's cochlear implant broke this week so she's deaf this week until the cable comes from the U.S.  We forget that Emilee is deaf most of the time, so when she can't hear us it is surprising.  I interpreted for her a lot during the trip and Kim did the same thing today during church.  She doesn't like not being able to hear and is looking forward to the cable coming in the mail.  It won't be here for about a week, so she'll get a lot of quiet time this week!  Good thing she goes to online school and that she is almost done!

We met Elder Ellis who is from our neighborhood back home.  Spencer recognized him.  We sent this picture back to their family!

Sabrina, Julie, Luis, Margo, Guillame, Spencer, Emilee, Jacob at Burger King!

After baptisms for the dead we loaded up the kids and went to a Burger King.  It was fun to have an american style meal again.  While waiting for the food we entertained the kids with riddles and games from scout camp.  They could not figure out who was the wombat and why the man running home turned around and ran back when he saw the man in the mask!  If you don't know those riddles, we'll tell them to you some time when we get home!

We got home about 7:00 last night and watched a movie with the kids.  We basically don't watch any TV except for movies on the weekends.  We've used our Apple TV a ton here.  What a great invention.  Not sure what we'd do without our iPads, iPhones, Macs and Apple TV here.  They are schooling, work, play,  and communication devices!  We used to be heavy Windows users, but have loved the switch to Apple.

At church today, it was Spencer's first time to bless the sacrament as a Priest.  Spencer and I blessed the sacrament.  Unfortunately we did it in English.  Spencer was a little too nervous to try it in French.  We'll have to practice a little more before he'll be able to do it in French.

We also attended the baptism of Estelle Bankhead.  She is the daughter of a good friend in the ward.  She just turned 8, so it was fun to head out to the cool stainless steel swimming pool to see her get baptized and receive the holy ghost.  The swimming pool out in Schifflange is the nicest one I've ever seen.  Totally made of stainless steel.  One of the members said it isn't the nicest one in Luxembourg.  He said there is another one where they can actually change the level of the pool's floor.  I guess the highest GDP country in the world can afford some crazy nice swimming pools!

Ashton has been catching aphids this week for his lady bug larva.  He's also been scootering around the park!