Hello!
We are so excited to have you come to Kalamazoo (and our lake home in Three Rivers) to be part of our family as our live-in nanny (and also hopefully help around our home)!
Because of COVID and travel issues, we are looking for, and hoping to welcome a nanny that is already in the US or Canada if possible.
Here is a little bit about our family and where we live:
We are a caring & friendly, busy, fun&social, clean and tidy, healthy food-eating, family of 4 (plus our fur kiddo – our very kind 7-year old female German Shepherd)!
Our Portage home is just outside the city of Kalamazoo (Michigan), and our lake home is on a lake in Three Rivers (just a 35 minute drive from our Kzoo home). We are blessed to have a change of scenery when we feel like going to either home!
Dad (Eriks) works every day, and is on call for work a few times during the week, and also some weekends. I am a stay-at-home mom (with a background in Child and Youth Care, Child Development and Psychology, and paramedics), raising our kiddos, and taking care of the households! I do need some time to go out to do errands, go to appointments, and clean/tidy the house (and maybe get some sleep?!)!
Eriks and I are both of Latvian heritage. Our parents and grandparents immigrated to Canada and USA from Latvia (eastern Europe) after World War II.
We speak Latvian at home as much as possible, so that our girls grow up speaking and understanding our 'mother-tongue', and we also still hold on to Latvian culture and traditions, and religion.
We hope that you may also like to learn some Latvian!
We will also of course speak english so that we can all communicate.
We are Christians (Lutherans), and have a very welcoming Latvian congregation and center not far from home.
Kalamazoo (and Grand Rapids an hour away) have a decent Latvian population, and we try to be involved with the local fellow Latvians!
Our eldest daughter is now 7, is very active, energetic, imaginative and outgoing! She loves playing in her play-kitchen, playing outside (and with other children), and colouring/painting/crafting. She likes listening and dancing to music. She has started to develop a little bit of an ‘attitude’ and I refer to her as a “seven-nager” (not teenager, but seven-nager!) – I will help you understand the best ways how to manage her ‘tude’! She is otherwise a loving, sweet and very fun little girl!
Our youngest daughter is 4, sweet and silly, loves to play inside and outside, read and draw, and be around everyone (and likes to bug her big sister!)!
Our shepherd is the most amazing ‘wolf-mama’ to the girls. She lets them treat her like a small horse, and loves playing with them! She barks very loud when someone is at the door, or if she senses that someone or something is coming to the door. She is a great guard dog and also a lovable family pet! We would encourage you to take her and the girls for walks together – they would all love that!
We will try to travel to Ontario (in Canada) several times while you were here, as I am Canadian, and my - large and loving - family and friends all live there. We would live with my parents while we are there, and we visit with my cousins and their children, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends (several of them have small children).
We are a skiing family, so in the winter time, we have been going on ski trips close to home, as well as Crystal Mountain in northern Michigan! The girls have also been on skates, and are excited to get on them again in the winter - I was a figure skater when i was younger.
We are avid swimmers and enjoy time by the water, so we are also blessed to live on a lake, and spend most days down by the lake and on our boat in the summer.
We have an interesting schedule (based on our needs), and, it can be flexible and changed based on daily/weekly activities.
We are very excited to have you come and work and live with us, and be part of our family!
We are very social and openminded, and I am always happy to communicate about anything and everything!
Hope to be in touch soon!

We are still a pretty Covid-cautious family, as we are also a medical family.
Our schedule basically revolves around our 7 yr olds school year, which is all day Monday to Friday.
Our 4 yr old is in pre-school every day from 9am until noon (12pm).
I am a stay-at-home mom, so I will be around making meals, cleaning up, washing laundry and doing many household chores and errands. We hope that our nanny/au pair would help mom around the house.
We would ask our nanny to feed the children pre-arranged snacks and some meals. Also, to please help our girls learn how to clean and tidy up after themselves. We hope that you will also help with children's laundry. Our girls have a bath every evening before dinner time, while mom makes dinner. We have dinner together, and then mom and dad get girls ready for and to bed for the night.
We spend our days playing inside and outside, crafting, playing and doing school projects, going on afternoon and day trips!
Dad works all day every day, and is also 'on-call' throughout the week. On-call nights mom will need help with kiddos.
Our nanny/housekeeper will have time off throughout the week when our youngest is at preschool, and on weekends. This is to be discussed in detail week to week.
This schedule can change/vary, and we can discuss change week to week (based on my husband's on-call schedule, and weekend plans, and your plans of course).