Mixing Business with Pleasure

Last week my boss returned from an extended trip to Europe. He called me from Chicago O'hare and asked me what I was doing next week. I knew this was not an invitation to play a round of golf. This was the let's send our engineer somewhere next week conversation.

Of course as any good employee would do I replied that I was doing nothing. Boss man said he wanted me to go to Louisiana and supervise the loading of our equipment into a container for shipment overseas. This basically means I watch and make sure everything goes into the container. My only other job is to make sure the crane operator doesn't kill me with any wildly swinging steel members.

The surprise was that I was offered the option to either fly or drive and take my family. It took me all of a milisecond to make that decision. Here are several reasons why I chose to take the family with me.

1. I am going away for some time this summer already, so I don't want to be away from Arica and Braden any more than necessary.
2. The plant is just outside New Orleans so it would be an opportunity to let Arica see the Big Easy.
3. I always believed that you should expose your children to Bourbon Street before they reached one year of age. Any later is just bad parenting.
4. I finally had the opportunity to mix business with pleasure.

So we are off to New Orleans in a couple of hours. We are throwing caution to the wind. Nightmares about a 7 hour car ride with a baby are nowhere in our thoughts. Plans of stopping 20 times to feed, entertain, and change our little boy are no worry to us. This trip will be as simple as putting on your pants.

I probably won't be posting until later this week. All my free time will be spent enjoying a mini vacation with my family. We are taking advantage of the opportunity to take a break. I hope this opportunity doesn't in turn break us.