Travel

Matt's job requires him to travel occasionally for cases.  Most of the time he doesn't travel much, but when the cases are getting closer to trial, the  more travel he has to do.

People will often ask me when Matt is returning from one of his trips.  They usually laugh when I tell them that I think it is (date), but I won't know until he is at the airport.  They think I am joking--I'm not.

To illustrate how true this is I will tell about Matt's travel for the last 2 weeks.

Last Monday, Matt told me that he was going to leave the next day and be gone for 3 nights (he found out over the weekend and forgot to mention it).  Tuesday he packs and leaves for work--he will catch his flight after work.  He calls me Tuesday about 5 and says that he isn't going to have to fly out after all.  Wednesday, he is still packed, leaves for work with a new plane reservation for Wed, returning Friday.  Wednesday evening he calls and lets me know the trip is canceled.  Thursday he leaves again, packed for a trip just in case.  I check my messages at 5pm.  At 4:15 he left a message and said his trip was canceled and he was heading home.  At 4:45 he left another message saying that his trip is back on and he will not be home.  Friday he emails me to say that if his meeting run long he will have to catch a flight the next morning, but he will let me know.  I get a call at 6 that he is at the airport and will be home later that night.

This week rolls around and he tells me he is going to leave Tuesday and be back Thursday.  I didn't hear from him Tuesday so I assumed he had left.  I get a call at 8:30--he was on his way home.  Wednesday, he did actually fly to Dallas.  He is supposed to come home tonight--but I haven't heard from him all day, so I don't really know if he is or not.  He could be in a late meeting and can't call to let me know he is coming home tomorrow, or he could have arrived late to the airport and just made the plane and didn't have time to call.

This is fairly typical when he travels.  When Alex was a baby (during the time when he was under 4 months old and had constant ear infections that wouldn't go away with antibiotics--yeah, I still remember it vividly), Matt went on a 2 week trip to Finland--and came home 5 weeks later.  Several times week long trips have been extended to 2+ weeks, and overnight trips to 3-4 days.  His trials are always out of town and he is gone for 3-5 weeks for each one of those.

To share some fun stories about the kids--when Carter and Caroline were little (5 & 3) and Matt was gone so much, they used to think he worked on an airplane--any time they saw an airplane they would ask me if that was the one daddy worked on.

This last trip to Finland, Matt brought home some gummy bears as part of the present to the kids.  They were Haribo brand and the package was, of course, in Finnish.  Matt made a big deal of how good those gummy bears were and how they were the best kind in Finland.  We went to Target a week later and Caroline saw the same brand of gummy bears and said "Look--those are the gummy bears Dad bought in Finland."  Alex said "What??? Target is Finland????"  I could just see him imagining Matt spending weeks at at time working at Target :)