Travelin' Fools

Traveling can be fun and it can be a beating, fun while you are there, beating while you get home or get there. I just got back from a 3 day stay in the Chicago area for a business trip. By the way, I haven't been able to get into downtown in my 2 trips there and I hear its cool and would love to see Wrigley soon, but man the parts I have been in are rough and dirty and the people are rough and cuss like sailors. A little different than good Ol' Texas.

I actually stayed in Rockford which is about 60 miles west of Chicago. I did some training and got to visit 4 of our plants. The first plant I toured is called a cultured dairy plant and they make sour cream, dips, and cottage cheese there. I watched a batch of cottage cheese being made. Let me tell you, it's wild to see how it's done. There is a vat that separates the curd and the whey and the curds are cut up to cottage cheese size and then washed off from the whey and the skim and a few other things are added back in to make the cottage cheese. Very interesting.

My next stop was to visit one of our ice cream plants. We make so many different brands of things across the country and across products. I saw some baskin robbins ice cream being made, very cool how automated the process is. The 3 gallon drums are then sent to a freezer that gets down to -50 degrees...the faster it freezes the better. So that was wild.

The next stop was a vist to one of our fluid milk plants, where I saw gallon milk, McDonald's Shrek milk chugs, and school milk to name a few...very impressive. The last plant was also a fluid milk plant and they produce 1 gallon and half gallon milk only and man they crank it out. They blow their own milk jugs with a machine and it is never touched from labeling to filling to casing to palletizing. The last thing is for a fork lift to come and get it to store it for a little while before the truck leaves. Very impressive. For those of you who wish to know more, I'll be more than happy to describe in more detail. Believe it or not, the Dairy industry is fascinating and very complicated, you wouldn't believe the brand loyalty and different products and types of milk across the county and how many different things you can make out of raw milk. Did you know that the company I work for, Dean Foods, is the largest Dairy company in the US by almost 5 times the 2nd biggest and no one knows about us...kind of crazy. We own Borden and Oak Farms and Shepps and Gandy's and many many others across the country. Milk is very much a regional thing, if you have lived in Texas forever, you probably think Borden is the biggest brand going, not so much, they have barely heard of it up north. Their big brands that people swear by, we have never heard of....interesting for sure.

Anyway, after my drives through rural Northern Illinois (very cool) I made it back to the airport at 2:30 hoping for an earlier flight, didn't get on one, and my flight got bumped back 30 minutes. We take off and when we get to Kansas, pilot puts us in a holding pattern because of storms in DFW..so we run circles around Topeka I think and then head south only to run circles around Lake Texhoma for more storms to pass. So my nice little 1:51 flight took 4 hours. Needless to say Ryan and Misty weren't all that thrilled.

So Mother's Day will be a little weird this year, we planned for Misty and Ryan to go to Amarillo not knowing it was Mother's Day, so when I realized this, I tried to get a flight too, but couldn't afford it. So she's heading north and I'm heading south..weird. This weekend is the first of 8 consecutive weekends where one or both of us are going out of town. Whether it be a baseball game or wedding or vacation or playing, we are all over Texas. July will be here before we can even realize it.

After my business trip and this weekend I will be way behind in Ryan time, which kills me. Good thing school is out and we can play hard every night.

Many of you may have met Blue Fish, but if you haven't its a Dr. Suess character and my mom bought Ryan a stuffed one for Christmas and he loved it. The first time he got it, he started sucking his thumb and laying on it. And from then on that's his weak spot, give him bluefish when he's somewhat tired, its over...quite funny. Well we looked and looked for a backup one and finally found one on ebay. So we got them in and he didn't know what to do with three, so he just took a nap on all three....funny.

Here is another example of his nice energetic ways and a great pic for everyone to put a Friday smile on. (Sorry about the Tech stuff Uncle Matt and Aunt Kristin, gotta spread the love, Uncle Brandon needs some too..ha)

Isn't he awesome?! Love this little man.