The start of this amazing journey started at 5 a.m. Friday morning when "TM" came to pick me up. We headed out only stopping once in Blanco to pick up some yummy chorizo & eggs breakfast burritos. It was a nice smooth drive. The adventure really started when we got to our hotel. Ya gotta love "TM", but really, her husband needs to take her out more because she had no clue what to do with the valet at our hotel. Once we got the car situation worked out (and she talked to her husband who informed her we only need to tip the valet, not try and take him home....awww, he was so cute though!!), we went to see if we could check in. We stayed at the Menger Hotel...which has amazing history! You know me and the "Rough Riders"...Teddy Roosevelt recruited some of them right here in this very bar (which was closed when I took the pic)
Anyway we check in and decide to find our room before heading to the convention center to make a potty break. Apparently we weren't really paying attention when the front desk clerk told us how to get to our room because we try to find directions to room 189. We get in the elevator and we press the button for floor 1 and we wait. We don't feel anything happening and I ask "TM", "did we move?" She replies, "this must be a really fancy hotel with one of them elevators that you can't feel when it moves." Sounds reasonable to me. But the doors don't open, so we just stand there for a few more moments. Finally I decide to push the -open doors- button and walaa, we are right where we started, the reason we hadn't felt the elevator move is because it hadn't...we were already on floor 1. So we think for a minute and in walks a gentlemen dressed in a nice suit that matches the front desk people's suits so "TM" says, "excuse me can you help us find our ro...oh sorry you don't work here." He was wearing a lanyard holding a big plastic ID holder that says speaker. He stops us and says, yes, yes I will help you. So we tell him we cannot find room 189 and he gives us a peculiar look. He says are you sure that is your room number? "TM" shows him on our room card pocket and he says, that's odd all the room numbers in this hotel are four numbers. Then he kind of winks and says, that's your room rate, your room number is 3140 (which was written above some little notes, lol). You can imagine how silly we felt. He insists on helping us find our room which he says is on the other side of the hotel. So we follow him, he was HILARIOUS, he acted as our tour guide through the hotel using different accents. We get to the elevator and go up and realize that our room is not on this side of the hotel, of course at this point, we are hysterical with laughter. We find out that this man is a retired Navy Seal (of course you know we couldn't have found anyone who isn't military, right?) Finally we walk right back to where we started where he informs us that if we go into that elevator press the #3 button, it should take us to our room! He was right, it did, lol. Amazingly enough, the elevator really wasn't that fancy, you could surely feel it when it moved.
All that excitement and it wasn't even 8 a.m. We quickly surveyed our room, (check out this wonderful bottle of water that said $8 will be charged to your room upon consumption, lol...we did not consume this bottle of water!).
We went potty and headed on over to the convention center. We had an amazing seminar with some amazing people! We talked about leadership, power, and a lot of other things I can't remember at the moment, lol. Sheri Dew was there, as was Virginia Hinckley Pierce, Wendy Watson Nelson, and Wayne Boss. There was a lot of great information given and I'm so glad we got a workbook to take notes in! I'll surely be looking back on some of the lessons taught.
That evening we attended a session that featured Michael McLean, Hilary Weeks and Cheiko Okazaki. I will tell you that this evening was the most emotional for me. I cried for a good majority of it. I had the chance to meet and speak with Hilary before the event started. We had run into a few other ladies we knew from down here "KC" , "JC" and I honestly cannot remember the other lady's name who was with them. "JC" had spoken to Hilary before I did and made mention that we were all Army wives and that my husband is in Iraq. Hilary gave us a very sweet message and when speaking to me said that she was grateful for him serving overseas and that she wanted us to know that her family prayed for them every single night, that there were people back here who loved them and were grateful for them. I did not anticipate crying before the event even started!!! So Kevin, Hilary Weeks wanted to to tell you, "thank you for your service and sacrificing so that she can do what she does, her family prays for you daily."
Finally the night started and we heard some great music from Hilary and an awesome talk from Cheiko Okazaki who looks FABULOUS for 82. She had us completely cracking up! "TM" became a bit overwhelmed with emotion as she came out, she has admired her for a very long time. It was a cool moment (I like it when someone else cries, lol).
During our break, I took a moment to go and meet Michael McLean. Kevin and I both love his music so I wanted to get a picture to send to Kevin (a bit of bragging is ok right?). When I got up there to him, I asked him if I could please get a pic to send to my husband. He asked me where I needed to send it and I said Iraq. He quickly told me to tell Kevin thank you and that he is praying for you. We chatted a couple more minutes and when we took our pic he pulled me in really tight and said "thank you, we pray for you too". Later as he was performing, he mentioned the Army wife he met who's husband was in Iraq and he said he knew there were others in the audience who were in the same situation. He wanted to let us know that we were "not alone" and he had the audience join in on the song and sing to us that we were not alone and that there were many people praying for our troops and their families. At this point, I was sobbing uncontrollably, poor people around me, lol. I was so touched at his thoughtfulness to remind me that I am not alone. And Kevin, you are not alone either.
Okay, this pic below is not one of us being all cute saying "look at us, we're at TOFW!". This photo is to show how close "TM" was sitting next to me because of the lap sitter on the other side of her, lol. I love ya "TM" but can you MOVE OVER!!!
After this amazing evening, we headed on back to our hotel, stopping for a yummy Haagen-Daas smoothie. We made it to our room just fine this time, changed into our mommy pj's, lol and called it a night.
1 comment:
You two crack me up!! I am SOOOO glad you got to go. Sounds like it was amazingly uplifting experience. Great pics!
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