Wal-Mart

Laurel adores her dad - for good reason. He's a terrific dad who loves to spend time with her. They really are two peas in a pod. Whenever I look at Laurel I see her dad. Among their many similarities, they both share an intense love of sugar and ketchup! I cannot keep enough ketchup stocked in the house, even with the Costco 3 pack. It's gone in no time with these two.

Well, knowing how much Laurel loves her dad, I was not surprised by her comments last night and this morning. First of all, we stopped at Wal-Mart last night to pick up some milk and other things we were low on. As we're walking in the store, Laurel says, "Mom, I really wish that dad worked at this Wal-Mart!" Trying not to smile, I asked, "Why?" "Well," she said, "if dad worked here we could see him more often and he wouldn't work as much as he does." Ouch. Well, Dale does work a lot, but it is the nature of his job. I think she was feeling this way even more than usual because he was out-of-town on a business trip. I tried to comfort and tell her that we are so grateful that dad has a job and that as hard as it is that he works so much, we need to do our best to support him. I assured her that her dad would much rather be spending time with her, but unfortunately daddy's need to provide for their families and sometimes that means that they aren't home as much as we'd like.

Laurel went on with the evening and didn't mention it again until this morning. On our way to a friend's home, she says again, "Mom, I really do wish that dad worked at Wal-Mart because then I could see him everyday - I would be so happy!" Ouch again. I'm sure most everyone struggles to balance work with family time - what are some of the things you do to make family time more meaningful. Let's face it, we no longer live in a corporate world where the hours are 9 - 5. Granted, consulting tends to be an outlier in this statistical model, but even then, what do you do to make it easier?