Take Our Children to Work 2016.

Today's post is brought to you by our favorite guest blogger, Griffin Anderson, founder and CEO of Anderson + Co. Griff lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with his wife, two children, and the family's geriatric cat. He enjoys catching Pokemons in his spare time.

A few weeks ago I received an email about upcoming Take Our Children to Work events at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise offices in Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. When I worked at Blazent in Cherry Creek, Mollie brought the kids by the office a few times. To be fair though, all that did was make them think I played foosball and ate candy all day which was only half true. With HPE, they know that I either travel or work from my home office in the basement. Madelyn was within the recommended age for the event so I thought it would be good to expose her to the greater HPE. Plus, the agenda looked really fun!

On Wednesday morning Madelyn and I drove to Colorado Springs. I don't go into that office too often, but as we walked in I told Madelyn that sometimes when I leave the office there are deer lying in the grass outside. We agreed it would be cool if they decided to show up while we were at the office. I checked Madelyn in with the security team and we headed to the conference room I had reserved for the day. Madelyn and I spent the morning working together since the formal agenda didn't start until after lunch.

Madelyn designed her own website with a Shopkins theme.

She and Sawyer have been really into Shopkins this summer. She seemed to really enjoy building her website and later demonstrated it for Mollie and Sawyer. She says she wants to be a police officer and fashion designer when she grows up, but she definitely has some great technical skills!

After a kid friendly lunch in the HPE Café, it was time for the official event to begin. HPE and DreamWorks Animation have a very strong partnership, so the theme of the event was centered around the release of Kung Fu Panda 3. We got Madelyn all checked in. She was part of the yellow team. I headed back to my office for the day while she took part in different events including "The Panda Express (an obstacle course), "Folding Crane, Inking Mantis" (origami), "Kung Fu Demo" and "Photo Booth".

When I picked Madelyn up four hours later she reported she had a great day and "was glad I worked for HPE". In addition to the fun activities they also got to learn a little bit more about HPE and see things like the data center, at least I think that is where they went. Madelyn reported they had been in a very cold computer room. They also saw a 3D printer in action. The HPE volunteers did an amazing job with the event and I can't wait to take Sawyer in another year or two.

I really enjoyed the time with Madelyn and giving her a glimpse into what I do at work. As we left the office at about 5:30P there was a beautiful doe laying in the grass just outside the office door. It was a nice ending to a wonderful day.

"I am Po. And, I'm gonna need a hat."