There’s so many exciting new things going on for our family that I almost don’t even know where to start. Well, that’s not entirely true, because obviously I’m going to start with Mr Enzo’s birthday! That said, we do have quite a few exciting things going on, so let’s get to it.
Today is Enzo’s birthday, but it’s a Friday and they had some fun activities planned for the 100th day of school, so Enzo and his sisters went to school just like any other day. Before that he was up early to open presents, but after that it’s been a pretty normal day. He’s really happy with all the various cars, magic sets, and toys he received, but there’s more to look forward to.
Tomorrow afternoon we will be holding Enzo’s birthday party at our house. Over the past couple months our family has gotten really into the TV show ‘Survivor’, so based on his request, that will be the theme for Enzo’s party. There’s going to be various challenges for the kids to take part in before getting into cake and treats. Jessica has been doing an awesome job preparing activities, decorations, and challenges for the party. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to doing lots of filming for the kids’ YouTube channel, and working on my best Jeff Probst impressions.
In addition to the party tomorrow, we’ve got one more related activity to look forward to. A week from tonight the 5 of us are going to see the Jabbawockeez show at MGM Grand. I’ve read it’s one of the most popular Vegas shows for families, plus I have some friends who went with their kids and said it was awesome. All of the kids are excited to go, but Jessica and I are as well, so it should be a fun night. If you’re not familiar with Jabbawockeez, they will be performing at halftime of the NFL Pro Bowl, which is happening here in Las Vegas just a couple days after we’ll be seeing them.
Speaking of Vegas shows, we all had an amazing time going to our first shows earlier this month. Jessica had the pleasure of taking Elise and Ava to see Katy Perry at the new Resorts World Theatre. As expected, the show was amazing and they had the best time ever. It’s the biggest stage in Las Vegas and the production was over the top. The girls were screaming, singing, and dancing the night away. They will always remember this as their first concert and I’m so glad it turned out the way it did.
Things didn’t quite go as planned for Enzo and I, but we still had a great night as well. The plan was for me to take him to see David Copperfield that same night that the girls were seeing Katy Perry, and I was really happy with the seats we got, but unfortunately the show was canceled at the last minute. I’m still not sure why it was canceled but these days you almost have to assume it’s Covid-related.
Enzo was really bummed but I promised him we would see David Copperfield another time. So, we ended up going to see The Mentalist instead, which is a mind reading show by Gerry McCambridge. It wasn’t a big production show like Copperfield but it was still very entertaining and exciting. We ended up making a full night of it by leaving the house early that day, walking around on the strip for a while, then having dinner at Nacho Daddy. After dinner we walked over to Bellagio to watch the fountain show, then we went inside and walked through their whole shopping and dining area. The show was across the street in the Miracle Mile shops at Planet Hollywood, so we walked all through there as well. We definitely got our steps in that night, and stopping for ice cream was a must. Leaving the house that day Enzo couldn’t help but express concern because he was sad about our show being canceled. However, by the time we were heading home he was calling it the best day of his life and couldn’t stop thanking me. If only he understood how happy it made me to see him living his best life.
Okay, more big news to share… Jessica just got a job working at a nearby school! She’s been wanting to find something since moving to Henderson, but it had to make sense and work with our family’s schedule. Also, for the first time since before Ava was born, Jessica and I will once again be working the same hours. Obviously this was never the case when she was working nights in a restaurant and I was working days at Microsoft / Amazon. I’ve definitely gotten used to being home with her everyday over the past couple years, so it’s going to be an adjustment for all of us having her gone more, but we’re really happy for her, and she’s so excited about the opportunity.
The way this all came together is really interesting; it basically traces back to Ava’s dyslexia diagnosis from a couple years ago. It was that diagnosis that set Jessica off onto a journey of learning and self exploration. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she also has dyslexia, although she was never tested or officially diagnosed. It’s been this journey to learn more about Ava and how we can teach her that has led to so much self discovery for Jessica over the past couple years.
Getting involved with teaching the Barton program to our kids to help with reading was a major step in this direction. Then taking on the huge task of homeschooling our girls for the entire school year last year was also very much related. Jessica is a natural teacher and great with kids, especially the young ones. She’s going to be working as an assistant in a special education classroom at Vanderberg Elementary School, which is less than 10 minutes from our school. It’s such a perfect fit; they even teach the same Barton reading program that Jessica has been using with our kids for the past couple years.
The plan is for all 3 of our kids to switch schools in the Fall and go to Vanderberg for the remainder of their elementary school years. This isn’t the easiest decision to make, mostly because we feel a lot of guilt for them switching schools so many times over the past few years. Some of it was out of our control, like when we got re-zoned by the Everett school district, or that whole pandemic thing which caused everyone to stay home for a year, but regardless the reality is that Ava hasn’t had (and won’t have) two consecutive years at the same elementary school since Kindergarten and first grade.
This isn’t something that we take lightly, but as a parent you have to make decisions, and of course we’re going to do whatever we feel is best for our children. Initially we were really excited about them going to school at Glen Taylor Elementary, but unfortunately some things haven’t gone the way we hoped. I don’t want to get into all of the details on it, but again as parents we have to do our best to make the right decisions for our kids, and there’s no doubt in our mind that Vanderberg will be a better fit. We just feel bad about them having to leave their friends, but they all live nearby and most likely will be rejoining in middle school anyway.
For now the plan is for Jessica to start work in February, but the kids will be finishing the year at Glen Taylor, then transitioning to Vanderberg next school year. I’m sure we’ll have a lot more updates about this in the future, but for now we’re just really happy for Jessica. It’s been great watching this all unfold for her and she’s so excited for this new chapter in our lives. We keep joking about how much we always seem to have going on. It’s always something with us but we keep it interesting.
Another big thing for us this month was the installation of our solar energy system! There’s now over 40 solar panels on the roof of our house, and we’ve got the final inspection coming up next week. I had been thinking about going solar since buying the house, and after learning more about it, I felt like it was an easy decision. You can think of it like renting a house versus owning a house; when you get your electricity from the power company (like I have my entire life until now), you’re just renting energy from them, and you pay whatever they charge. On average the cost of electricity goes up 4% per year too.
On the other hand, by purchasing your own solar system you’re no longer renting your electricity. You’re the owner of a system that produces its own electricity, meaning you’re no longer subject to variable costs from month to month, and the overall annual cost increases. Based on the weather here, and the size of our house, the electric bill used to vary drastically, which was a little shocking in the Summer. Now, however, the only thing we pay to the power company is the $12.50 per month fee to connect to their grid. We bought a solar system big enough to produce 112% of the normal usage of this house, based on historical records. We went with a larger system so we have room to grow. Someday there will be an electric vehicle in the garage, and this larger system will be enough to charge that as well.
Based on the net metering laws in Nevada, we don’t need a big Tesla wall (or equivalent battery) on premises because NV Energy is required to store our unused energy for us. Basically for every kilowatt of unused energy we produce, we get 0.75 kilowatts in credit. 75% is the current rate based on the net metering laws in Nevada, and it’s going down over time. Had we bought this system a couple years ago, hypothetically speaking, we would have gotten somewhere in the 90% credit range. Whatever percent you get when you purchase the system is the amount that you’re grandfathered in at, so even though it’s going to continue dropping, our house will always get 75% credit.
Since we got the system installed in January, we have several months ahead of us where we can build up extra credits for unused energy. Once the Summer comes around and you’re consuming more energy than you’re producing, those extra credits will cover you and keep you from having a separate bill from NV Energy. From a cost perspective, if you’re staying put long-term it’s a no-brainer to go solar here. Although I don’t love taking on debt, the reality is that I’m going to be making a monthly payment either way, and at least now I know exactly how much it will be, plus the solar system is a huge investment in the house. Our neighborhood is 20 years old now and lots of people are making upgrades to their houses. Adding a nice solar system is the single biggest thing you can do in our area to modernize your house, and it’s one of the most impactful things you can do for the good of the planet, so we’re all for it!
In other family news, the kids have been taking swimming lessons through the city of Henderson and they’re loving it. Water safety is very important to our family for obvious reasons, but it looks like Elise and Enzo really want to stick with swimming and eventually get onto a swim team. They’re taking lessons on Saturday mornings and each month they move onto something new.
Unfortunately Ava has decided to take a break from hockey, but I really don’t blame her. I didn’t realize how early the season started here, so by the time I tried to register her the only option was to get on a tournament team. They combined the 10u’s and 12u’s for practice, and the coach was really intense. She played D1 hockey for the University of Minnesota, which is the hockey mecca of the United States, and it was all just too much for Ava. She simply doesn’t take it as seriously as some of the other kids do, and it got to a point where she was dreading it.
I definitely feel responsible for this, and I can’t help but wonder if she’d still be playing had we not left Washington. There’s no way of knowing for sure, and it’s quite possible that she will join a co-ed house team in the Fall, but we’ll have to wait and see. For now we’ve got her signed up to play Softball in the Spring and she’s really excited about that. Once hockey season comes back around we’ll have to make a decision, but we’ll support her regardless. Our only requirement is that each of the kids has some type of athletic activity to be involved in. We don’t care how good they are, or if they decide to try other things, they just have to do something.
Last but not least, I’ve been busier than ever lately because I decided to officially start my own business. I’m not quitting my job or anything like that, but I am working constantly between the two. The name of the business is Vegas Showbiz and earlier this month I filed Vegas Showbiz, LLC with the state of Nevada. The concept and strategy for the business has grown recently, and I’ll get to that shortly, but the original idea that sparked it came right after moving here.
After arriving in Las Vegas Jessica and I found ourselves in a position where we suddenly had so much help with the kids. My Mom wanted as much time with them as possible, and we were eager to explore Las Vegas together, so we started going out more. I’d be looking for things to do on my phone, but found it surprisingly difficult to get an accurate idea of what the options were. You could find various event calendars, but it required a lot of jumping around from site to site. Some of these sites are slow, or don’t work well on phones, and overall I found the experience to be surprisingly poor.
Since I tend to think in terms of websites and databases, the wheels started turning on how I could create my own site and database dedicated to the entire Las Vegas entertainment and nightlife scene. I had designs on becoming that 3rd party source of truth that seemed to be missing. I was aware of sites live vegas.com and visitlasvegas.com, but those felt so much broader to me. They’re trying to sell you on everything from renting a hotel to getting married, and everything in between. That’s all fine and good, but I’m not trying to be that. I want to make a site that a local would want to use. One that doesn’t feel so marketing-heavy; it just gets you the information you want without having to jump around. It’s fast, super clean looking, and works well on any device. That was my goal.
I started coding the week before Thanksgiving and I’ve probably only had 2 or 3 days since then where I wasn’t working on the computer, either for my day job or VegasShow.biz (usually both). It’s been fun, exciting, and fast-paced. What started back in November as just an idea is now live to the world, as of last weekend, at https://vegasshow.biz
The work is nowhere near done, I just felt like the site had reached a level where it made sense to expose it to the world. It’s barely getting any traffic at the moment, but it’s more than ready when the time comes. I’ve never built something so heavy duty for a personal project before, but the exercise of doing so entirely on my own has been an incredible learning opportunity.
Every day there’s something new and exciting going on. Earlier this week my company was accepted into the StubHub affiliate program. This allowed me to start posting links to buy tickets to different events on StubHub. If someone clicks through my link and makes a purchase, my company earns a commission. This is standard affiliate marketing practice and just one example of the things I’ll be doing on the site. The plan is to get hooked up with a couple more ticket companies and put links for all of them on my event pages. This would allow my users to price shop all from one location, and I get credit regardless of which one they choose.
I recently had a logo design competition going on via a website called DesignHill.com. Designers from around the world read my briefing and submitted logo design ideas for Vegas Showbiz. I chose my top 10, then conducted a poll on the site, asking friends and family to vote on their favorite designs. 30 people ended up voting, which I appreciate so much, and it was a very tight race between two logos. The one I ultimately chose was the winner of the poll, but it was in 2nd place all the way until the last vote of the poll, which pushed it into first. I didn’t select it because it won the poll, but it was funny the way that worked out in the end.
This week I made what appears to be an important connection earlier this week with a VIP host at the Hakkasan Group, which is the largest nightclub group in Las Vegas. They run all the big clubs like Zouk, Omnia, Hakkasan, and more. I found him on Twitter, introduced my company/website, and asked if I could help him promote his events on my site. A lot of conversation followed and by the time I went to bed that night I had added all of his events to the site and started featuring one of them on the home page. Now I’m taking it a step further by building a guest list form on the site. When someone comes to the event page for one of our events (of which there are many), they can fill out a form to get on the club’s guest list for that night. This means I’m going to start collecting a database of users, which will be valuable, and I can’t believe that in less than a week since going live, I’m already working with a group like this. It’s really exciting.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to start getting a lot of support from my sister Dana regarding company vision and strategy. As I said before, I tend to think a little more on the technical side of things, mainly because I’m 100% responsible for keeping the site running, so having Dana onboard has really helped me expand the vision for the human side of the business. Jessica and my Mom have also been very vocal in this area. I need more than just a Las Vegas search engine. That alone will certainly draw people to the site, but adding fresh relevant content via blog posts and videos is a great way to build up your search engine optimization and get people on your site. It also keeps people on the site for longer, which is an important metric. Since I’m already hooked up with various affiliate relationships, these blog posts and videos can become a great place to drop some ads. Don’t be surprised if you start seeing them here on PellegriniPage too. I’ve always been happy to pay the hosting costs to keep this site running, but if I could recoup those costs simply by adding a couple advertisements to the site, it almost seems silly not to. I’ve just never really been clued into that world because it wasn’t something we ever did at work.
I’m thinking the Jabbawockeez show next week will be the first thing I review for VegasShowbiz. I’m hoping to start doing them regularly so that will be the first one. It’s going to take a lot of marketing to get this business off the ground, and I have to be willing to put myself out there much more than ever before. Honestly that’s a little bit daunting, but I feel like I have a lot of inspiration, a vision of what it can be, and a unique combination of skills to be able to run it as a sole proprietor. If you haven’t yet checked it out, please have a look at https://vegasshow.biz and help me spread the word. It’s constantly growing and I look forward to adding the blog and vlog sections soon. As is, I’m hooked up with the Ticketmaster API and am pulling 95% of my event data from them. On any given day my custom Las Vegas events database contains over 10,000 records, yet you can search/filter them in milliseconds. There is not another site in this market that can truthfully say that. I’m extremely proud of what’s been done so far, and how quickly it’s gone from idea to reality, but the hard work has only just begun. I expect this to be a fun journey, but we’ll see how it turns out. I’m certainly not going to make any rash major changes in my life, but I’m putting everything I have into this. It’s already been a learning experience and it’s barely even begun.
That’s it for now. Once again, wishing my favorite little boy in the whole world a very happy 7th birthday! I love you beyond words and could not be more proud to be your Dad. Here’s some recent pics.
