Thursday, May 7 we were going to leave CT on a jet plane to head down to Orlando at 8:00 at night. I had to get up at 5:30 for work to teach a training class at 8:00. As I did my introduction to my class I told them of the events I had coming out because I was so excited I had to share! Just before I started class I talked to my husband and he told me that our daughter asked him if we were tricking her about my trip to Disney. Out of both of my kids, I expected something like that to come from Kevin not Adrienne. So we had to make sure we created a diversion so that she wouldn’t catch on to anything. So we devised a plan that the kids would ask my mother if they can come over to her house while Kevin takes me to the airport. However, my husband told my mother that when she comes over to say goodbye to me, she would have to explain to the kids that they couldn’t come over to her house because she and my dad had to do something.
When it was 3:30 my class was over and I was able to rush home and do a few things to finish up my packing and then my mom stopped by and told the kids that they would have to go up to the airport with me because she had to do something with my dad. The plan was working. They had no idea. When we got to the parking place I asked them to unload the back of the truck, that’s when the magic happened!
The sunrise was a success. The kids thought that I was going away for the weekend for the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration and then I would be coming home for the week and then we would leave for our vacation on the following Friday evening. We completely fooled them! Operation surprise was a success!I know how much I love surprises, like when I received my email invitation that I was coming to the event. I love to surprise my children just as much.
Stay tuned for more updates on the event over the weekend and what other surprises we had in store for them.
Well, it’s the night before we reveal the trip to the kids. I have all of my things packed, the kids’ bags are packed and I have one more full day of work. I have to teach a class and will have a very early morning. Then after class I have to rush home, get the family in the car and drive up to the airport.
So after the stress of packing and over packing, I really think I have everything I need and much much more. I received a gift from the team earlier this week. And last Friday we were surprised with an Facebook post from Maria and her team about another treat they are providing to us. If that’s all happening BEFORE the celebration even begins I can’t imagine what is going to happen at the event!
I started to feel pretty nervous earlier this week. I had some big projects to get done for work and was waiting to hear how I made out with them. This afternoon I had a meeting about it and everything is on track and looking great! That was a huge relief for me.
Tonight Leanne O’Reagan posted a picture of the conference hall set up and it really struck me as being so real! I am actually going to attend this event! I was chosen out of thousands of people to attend with 150 other bloggers. Wow!!! I still can’t believe it is happening for me! I never thought that I had anything special to contribute or any influence; but apparently they think I am special! It makes me feel so honored to be chosen to be with this group and to know that my hard work pays off. I also want to use this as a lesson for my kids to know the rewards of your hard work. And to know that your Dreams Can Come True!
I’ll be sure to post updates as the weekend goes on and my travels towards this adventure go on.
I was excited when I went on Facebook today and saw that Leanne had posted an agenda for the weekend. While I had a rough idea of what we would be doing and when for the conference, this spelled out most of the days for us. Sadly since I will be working all day Thursday and flying down late Thursday night, I’ll miss out on the opening events on Thursday night. The family dinner at Epcot and Illuminations Dessert party sounds so much like what we did for our wedding reception! I am so disappointed that I can’t be there for it. We will still have all day Friday through Sunday to participate in the events and enjoy the magic of what will happen while at this awesome event!
But here are the list of events going on for us during the weekend:
Thursday, May 7
Check-in at the resort hotel
Then go to Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Convention Center to pick up your conference materials. Conf. Registration is open 8:00am – 4:30pm.
4:45pm – (Attendees only) Transportation from Yacht Club Convention Center to Epcot
5:00pm – (Attendees only) Welcome Reception at Epcot, World ShowPlace
5:45pm – (Families) Transportation from Yacht Club Conv. Center to Epcot
6:00pm – (Everyone) Family Dinner at Epcot, World ShowPlace
8:40pm – (Everyone) Illluminations Dessert Party (Guides will lead you to location)
9:30pm – Buses to take you back to Yacht Club Conv. Center or you can walk
Friday, May 8
7:00am – 10:00am Conf.Registration open to pick up packets if you missed it yesterday.
7:15am – (Attendees only) Breakfast, Yacht Club Conv. Ctr (Salon 1-4)
8:30am – 4:45pm (Attendees only) General Session begins (Please be on time!)
9:00am – Noon (Families) Special Meet/Greet Opportunity at Yacht/Beach Club Sand Castle Club
5:00pm – 7:00pm (Everyone) Special Meet/Greet Opportunity at Yacht Club Conv. Ctr.
7:30 – 9:00pm (Everyone) Family Dinner on the Beach at Yacht Club Resort
Saturday, May 9
6:30am – 8:30am (Video Participants) Buses depart Yacht Club Conv. Center. Buses will depart in waves, based on what you signed up for. Individual itineraries will be given at registration. If you miss the bus, you miss the opportunity. BE ON TIME.
8:30am (Everyone) Transportation to Downtown Disney (from Yacht Club Conv. Center)
9:00am – 11:15am (Everyone) Special Event at Downtown Disney
11:30am – Rest of day free to enjoy on your own
Sunday, May 10 (Happy Mother’s Day!)
6:00am – 7:00am funRun (Meet at the outdoor patio of Yacht Club)
8:00am – 9:30am (Everyone) Mother’s Day Breakfast
I’m looking forward to seeing some of my runDisney friends Patty and Mindy while there and meeting others at this incredible event. Just one week from now we will be immersed in the magic!
I also got word today that I will be a contributor to the Disney Driven Life Blog! It’s been a good day!
When I first started learning about the whole gluten free approach it sounded like it could be pretty easy. There are lots of great foods out there like Kind bars. They are gluten free and delicious granola bars that you can purchase at Target without needing a home equity loan! My mother also said that Walmart has a section with a lot of good gluten free foods. I haven’t ventured to Walmart yet. I try to avoid that place at all costs.
The first thing I thought of for how I would approach my day is that I could probably get away with going gluten free without even knowing it! I could have an oatmeal for breakfast, my tea, a kind bar for a snack. Then I could have an apple for lunch, macaroni salad (made with quinoa pasta) and for dinner I can have fish and rice and veggies. That doesn’t sound so hard. Another option for lunch could be a large salad with hard boiled eggs or tuna. Dinner could include a sweet potato instead of rice or include a salad as a side as well.
I think lunch would be the challenge for me after a while. I could eat a macaroni salad with apples in it and peas for a few days; but then I’d need to come up with some other ideas. I never mind scrambled eggs with fresh veggies baked into a baking dish like a quiche without a crust. That’s a good choice for a good protein-rich lunch.
When thinking of what you can’t eat with gluten in it, it’s easy to focus on what you can’t have. But there are a lot of foods that you can have. I can make my own soup, that’s always a good choice and a good source of veggies as carbs to add to my diet with less carbohydrates.
Some easy snacks to munch on are almonds and sliced up apple. A cheese stick with grapes. A kind granola bar, yogurt with Kind granola. There’s a lot of choices! I’m just getting started researching what you should and shouldn’t eat and trying to focus on what I can eat. But I still have more to learn.
Do you have any advice for some lunch and dinner ideas?
About mid way through the week last week there was some chatter in the Disney Social Media Moms Facebook page that a package was being delivered to all of us. I hadn’t received notification from UPS yet but knew that if people said it was coming then mine would be too. I finally received notification on Wednesday that a package was coming on Friday. I think I was most excited that the package had a social media moms celebration sticker on it!
I had to work from home on Friday so I was home when the package arrived just after the kids got off the bus. So they had the opportunity to unpack the box! We have a new carry on to bring to our trip so we can get all the goodies we collect back home! Thank you to Maria Bailey and her team for sending us this gift! I now have a good collection of American Tourister suitcases to use for my trips to Disney.
I have to get my butt in gear and start getting my things together to start packing for this event. Since I haven’t been to it before does anyone have suggestions of what I should pack?
Those are my stats…. The one at the top is my finishing time for this year’s Cheshire Half Marathon. I thought I was going to beat my last Cheshire finish time my best half PR; but I missed it by 28 seconds!!! But I’m not disappointed with that. Of course anyone wants to do better than their previous year or previous races; but I am happy that I was just about the same last time I ran that course. So far the 2013 finish time is my best half marathon finish time.
I left my house at 7:30 and was stopped in Wallingford for a train! I arrived in Cheshire at 8:00 and had to park in a large field. I walked over to the track and met Diana and Kim D at the porta potties. I made sure to use with 2 minutes to spare before the race started.
Kimberlee and Diana
They did start it a little later because the crowds were still filtering in from the parking lot. We took off at 8:40. The weather was perfect. It was chilly, around 57 and when we were running I had to take off my shrug and wrap it around my waist around mile 2. The sun was out until around noon; but it wasn’t too hot. It was the perfect conditions for this race.
Representing the Mickey Milers and Love For Lyla
I wanted to do this race again because it is a great course, and also because it was where I ran my first half marathon. I will most likely do this course again next year too.
I ran with Diana again and we are hauling through the first part of the race which runs along the Farmington Canal. We run well together. With each mile we were going faster and faster! But I told her it’s a good thing we were getting these times in in the first half of the race because it is like putting money in the bank that we may need later on because the last 5 miles of the race have hills and suck the energy out of me.
Around mile 5 I was doing the math in my head and it was reminding me of the first time I ran the Cheshire half. I remember texting my husband my first year and I was doing between a 9:30 – 10 minute mile if I can recall. I’ll have to see if I can find my old stats from that race. But I was doing the math in my head and was thinking that if we maintained that pace I could possible pull of a 2:15 half marathon! I know that Jeff Galloway said that when you maintain an 11:30/mile pace you can do the half in 2:30. So I knew we were under the 11:30 and I was guessing that maybe with the hilly ends we could pull off a 2:20.
We had a quiet race. We were chatty in the beginning and then during the race we were in work mode and pushed on. As we left the canal after mile 7 and headed to the road I was feeling a little more winded. We ran most of the hills, but a few times needed to catch our breath. There was only 2 hills that we had to walk through one of our running cycles, I imagine that was mile 10. I was feeling very fatigued at that mile for some reason. But we only had a 5K left so we kept pushing. Diana was really pulling me along, despite the fact that she might not have been aware of it. At the very end of the race when you leave the canal and head back up towards Route 10 there is a small hill so we walked up a little bit of that and then hunkered down to get to mile 12 and then the last part of the race.
Just as I was about to leave, I saw a crowd around a table and realized it was the Achilles International club. I had commented to Diana during the race that I wanted to be a guide one day. I talked to someone there and told her I’d like to be a guide and she handed me a form to complete and asked me what shirt size I wanted! That was all I needed to do to become a member of the team! I am so excited that I can fulfill something I had been thinking of doing since I read the book The Long Run by Matthew Long. They were such a nice group of people to work with and I met Tony who was a wheelchair athlete. I hope to perhaps guide him for a race in the future! He has done the NYC marathon several times and will be at the Hartford Marathon in October.
Tony from Team Achilles
It’s been fun running local races near home and seeing my Disney friends at these races. The next local I am running is the Mystic Half Marathon. That’s going to be a VERY early wake up and a nice drive to Mystic. Hope to possible PR at that race! I am looking forward to running it with Diana. Mandy we miss you! Wish you were here!!!
