Last weekend Olivia and I were vendors at a local bridal show. It was fun to meet so many brides and their family and friends. I also had a great time making connections with other vendors.

For this show we represented the place Olivia is chef at (while she works towards her dream). They contract me out for their cakes and out-of-house catering. This allows me an industrial kitchen when I need it (most cakes I can do from home) and the catering licence.

On Saturday Cherish, Peach and I went to set up our booth. Ya know… it IS a lot of work, but I love that I can do this WITH my kids and I can do it from home. My kids are learning about many aspects of business from product creation, to customer relations, to the sale.

I’m not just dragging them around with me, they are part of the family business. Cherish is developing a good eye for what looks good and becoming much more hands on with me. She is a detail and numbers girl, which are areas I am weak in. I see us making even a better team as she gets older.

We always included our older kids in all of our many ventures while they were growing up, and now… they are far exceeding what we have done. I love when Olivia and I can work events like this, or work a wedding together. We know each other and have different strengths and weaknesses that work good together.

Yes, it’s hard and about 95% of it is NOT glamorous. It’s long hours. It’s constant cleaning up messes and hauling heavy loads.

Yes, there are always issues that have to be resolved, personal conflicts, etc… but don’t we deal with that in any “job”? I’d rather be fleshing it out with my family as we build a future together.

Maybe if more families worked together while the children are growing up they would be closer? Stronger? Happier? Maybe… maybe not. But I do believe that their marketable skill level would be greater and that kids would understand the value of a dollar and hard work.

Think about it… kids that grow up on a farm know how to work and work hard. Sad we’ve lost most of our family operated farms.

Kids that grow up with their families owning and running a business know the blood, sweat and tears that go into it… usually. That is unless they are shuffled away to a classroom all day, shielded from real life, from real work. Unless they only reap the rewards of mom and pop’s hard work with vacations, cars, clothes, iphones, all paid college life, etc… with no real time or labor invested.

Why are we as a culture lacking character, work ethic, honesty? Perhaps it’s our own doing because we have created this insane, self-centered bubble for kids to grow up in, forcing them to really believe’ it is about them’, their wants and their comfort as we keep them far from reality, the reality of lasting relationships and the responsibility of hard work? The reality that there is no free ride in life.