Take Your Kid to Work Day

One thing my work does extremely well is Take Your Kid to Work Day.  Gavin has come the past two years and has absolutely loved it.  This year, however, we also got to bring Gage into the fold.  He was psyched!  One of the central parts of the day is a whole lesson around Capitalism that involves the kids breaking into teams and buying, making, creating, and marketing edible goods the corporate headquarters.  They open a marketplace for an hour and try to sell all of their stuff.  After the hour is complete, they calculate how much profit they made (Gross Profit), less the cost of the goods sold (COGS), and then one of the teams win for having the largest Net Profit.  The kids absolutely love it and actually get to divide up the money they make and bring it home!  Here is Gavin in front of his cupcake table.

Gage is working a fruit pizza table which is some sort of sugary cracker with some light cream cheese and fruit on it.  I'm thinking out of the gate that the cupcakes have a leg up on this idea.

Later, we all meet in the board room for some pizza, some minions movies, and apparently an enormous amount of candy that seems to have been sprinkled all along the tables.

While I was gone they do some exercise stuff outside and some sports drink taste testing, as part of our business involves the Whey markets of the world which is one of the key ingredients in most sports drinks.  Lastly, they suit up for a tour of the pilot plant that I was able to join them on.  Here they are all gowned up and ready to go see where we make some of the cheese and nutrition development batches.  You can also see directly behind them our pizza kitchen where we have all the different pizza chains' specific ovens to their chain so we can see how our cheese cooks in their exact equipment.  All in all, these guys loved it and had a great time.  Gavin is soon going to age out of the adventure, but I think Gage will have a few more years to enjoy the activities.  What a great experience!

Grandma Koel Celebration of Life

My grandma (Great Grandma Koel as known to the boys) passed away this past year.  The timing was difficult to make it back to Kansas for the funeral and there were some challenges with figuring out when and where it was going to be held at the time, so we opted to have a Celebration of Life party a bit later when most of our side of the family could come out and spend some time together and celebrate her life.  This is my dad with our family friend Lou who came to celebrate with us.  Tara was able to find us a perfect room at the Boulderado (a hotel in downtown Boulder) that would also be able to serve a brunch and have enough room for our group.

Uncle Adam came out from California, which is always a hit with our boys.  They keep saying that he and I look soo much alike from a muscular standpoint.  I don't see it, but I will trust their judgement.

It's hard to get everyone out without having some sort of card game pop up.  I think we are playing a game of "Nertz" here.  One thing that better be noted is that if you sign up for a game of Nertz with Grandma Emily, you better bring your A game because she will smoke you in no time flat and is a fierce competitor.

Easter Dinner

With my parents (Pam and Bob) moving to Sequim, Washington this coming fall, we were the lucky recipients of some very nice new furniture.  This table that you can see is one of the several pieces we inherited and with it we can now comfortably host some larger meals at our house without sending numerous people to the couches or the kids' art table.  We had some beautiful flowers and if you can make it out in the background, the best ham in the world: Honey Baked Ham.  We join in fellowship with our family to celebrate Jesus' resurrection.  It was great to have everyone over for the celebration.  He has risen indeed!