Mitch Landrieu: “we do have some important work to finish tomorrow. That is why I thought I would spend a few minutes tonight reminding…”

“we do have some important work to finish tomorrow. That is why I thought I would spend a few minutes tonight reminding my colleagues of a very significant part of that work. Before I came to work this morning, I spent a little time with our two children, our 8-year-old precious little angel girl, Mary Shannon, and our 12-year-old little boy. We spent some time at breakfast, and then we started doing what a lot of families do around this holiday, and that is listen to some Christmas music and some holiday music and wrap a few gifts that they had actually, amazingly picked out themselves for their Kris Kringles. We talked about how important it was going to be to see family over the holidays. As they struggled to wrap the gifts, with their tape and their scissors, we tried to spend a little family time together before I came to work today. It reminded me of how simple but wonderfully special those moments are with families at this time of year, as moms and dads make their regular cookies and traditional dinners and recipes and wrap packages the same way and decorate the trees the same way and put out the nativity scenes. And all over the country that is happening. There is one place that that is not happening the way it usually does and that is along the gulf coast of this country, and particularly in Louisiana. About 3 months ago, two fierce storms hit our coast.…”