Regional Meetings 2010 (Great Wolf Lodge)

Once again it was time for Edward Jones Regional Meetings!  We love these meetings and we are so blessed that Chris works at a company that values family as much as productivity!

I put all the pictures on the blog at once and now I can't space in between to write comments...so I guess I'll just narrate now. (Just like watching an old fashioned slide show!)

We were a little unsure what to expect with our meetings this year.  Our region was re-drawn last year and almost all of our good friends were taken out of our region!!!!  We were so bummed but also optimistic to meet some new people.....however, I'm just not good with change.  I enjoy my comfort zone and like to live squarely inside the box.  I'm happy to say that we still had a great time and at the banquet Saturday night, I probably laughed harder than I have ever laughed at one of those dinners. It was a great group!!!!

Onto the pictures.....

Day One:  The kids did so well waiting for several hours until we could go to the waterpark.  We had warned them that we had lots of things we had to do before we could go.  We arrived at Great Wolf Lodge around 1pm and the first meetings began at 1:45.  We took the kids to the child care room and headed off to the advisor/spouse meetings and then to dinner (which was an outdoor barbeque! Very cool!)  After dinner, we headed to the water park for the first time.  The kids were ELATED!  We got there around 7:30pm and stayed until the park closed at 10pm!  Sleeping the first night went amazingly well.  I couldn't sleep but it was through no fault of the kids! 

Day Two:  Chris had to get up early and go to his business meetings (which we tolerate because the meetings are why we all get to go!!  The kids and I slept til almost 8 and then got cleaned up to go down for the breakfast buffet where my children ate more food than they sometimes eat in an entire week.  Afterwards, we went downstairs and played in the arcade for a while and then went to the outdoor pool when it opened to wait for Chris to get done with meetings.  When he got done, he joined us and we had lunch by the pool (what a rough life) and then he stayed in the waterpark with the girls while I brought Carter upstairs for a nap.   Amazingly, it worked and he really slept.  He slept so long that after an hour and 40 minutes, I decided that I'd had enough and woke him up! We went back down to the water park and Chris went for a 3 mile run.  We stayed at the outdoor pool almost the whole time.  The kids played so well together.  Around 5pm, we decided to head up to the room to get ready for the kids' pizza party and the grown ups' awards banquet.  A great time was had by all!

Day Three:  Everyone slept until 8am again and we headed down for the breakfast buffet!  Yum!  After breakfast, we got all checked out (including having the $14.99 movie that Carter ordered for us taken off our bill) and headed back down to the water park!  Some friends of ours were coming around 1pm and we were going to try to make it until then to get to play with them for a while.  Somewhere around 11:30 Chris decided he was not going to make it.  We changed clothes and got packed up, stopping on the way home for some Skyline Chili.

As always, Regional Meetings were tons of fun!!!  They seem to get more fun the older the kids get, too!

Regional Meetings Day 2

Day 2 began rather early. Carter woke up at 6am. I was just pleased he had slept nearly 9 hours in a hotel room! I put him in my bed and he didn't sleep but he did at least sit there quietly and allowed the others to sleep for about another hour. Chris had to be downstairs for meetings at 7:15 so he got up and out early. The rest of us went downstairs for breakfast. In a moment that I can only describe as sheer insanity, I decided I'd take all 3 kids to the pool by myself.

They had a blast. Morgan is such a good little swimmer now!

Emma got so brave....she swam all around the pool with her water wings on. Later she asked if she could try without them and I said sure but I was talking to a friend and the next thing I knew, she was going underwater. She was startled but fine and I played it off like it was what she was supposed to do and that she had done great so she wouldn't be scared.

Carter had fun but he was insistent on sitting on the little drain that runs around the pool. It is only about 5 inches wide but he evidently thought it was a little step just for him and he was very upset with me for not allowing him to sit there even though he would have fallen directly into the pool if he had.


After the pool, we headed upstairs for a Carter nap while the girls and I watched a million and 6 episodes in a row of Wizards of Waverly Place. A cute Disney Channel show but I was ready to be done watching. Chris got done with his meetings a little bit early so we headed over to Circle Center Mall to have lunch at Johnny Rockets.

The waitresses got up to do their dance that they do every 30 minutes or so and my kids wanted to dance too.

For some reason, Carter really liked our waitress and really wanted her to pick him up. Then he would not let her put him down. He insisted that she keep him or he'd throw a fit. I wasn't sure I appreciated it!

After lunch, we went to the Gameworks Studio where we had been given a 2 hour play card. So...we played games for 2 hours.

We played air hockey.

We flew a helicopter with a bare midriff.

Courtney & Jacob flew a helicopter too!!

Even Morgan & Vivian flew a helicopter!!!

We played air hockey again! Did I mention it was 2 hours?!?!

After the mall, we went back to the room to get cleaned up and change. Here is Morgan ready for her kids' pizza party.

Carter ready for the pizza party! (although I'm not sure the little little kids actually consumed any pizza)

Just as we were about to leave, Emma fell and hurt herself so she layed here on the floor for a bit.

The Embassy Suite has the glass elevators that go all the way up to the top. The kids seemed to enjoy the elevators!!

Carter enjoying the view!

We tried to take some pictures at the reception before the last night's award dinner but Erika (on the right) broke my camera! Just kidding....she just tried to take a picture of Chris & I with our friends Chris & Marly (of Valencia fame) and put her finger on top of the flash so it wouldn't pop up. While trying to fix it, I took this picture of Erika & Marly (who is pregnant! YAY!)

So we didn't end up with a picture of the 4 of us, but we did get this one of just Chris and I which I thought turned out pretty well.

Chris won an award and I am so so so proud of him. He is amazing for working so hard so that I can stay home with the kids. I know he has really been stressed lately but I am so proud of the work that he does and how much he genuinely cares for his clients!!!! *end of mushiness*

After the awards dinner, we picked up the kids who were TIRED but still wanted to go swim! (we didn't let them this time since it was already after 10pm) Chris went back down to the hospitality suite for a bit and I put the kids to bed. We got up around 7am and had breakfast and headed home. We were home by 10am. As much as we thought Indianapolis sounded like a bummer of a place for our regional meetings, the 45 minute drive home made it all worth it!

Fun, fun, fun weekend!!!!!!

Regional Meetings Day 1

After meeting Princess Anabelle, we stopped at a Wendy's in Beech Grove for lunch. (side note: have you had the new fancy chicken dishes now that they've been advertising as like those in fancy gourmet restaurants? Yeah, um...they are chicken nuggets that they throw in a dish with a lid and some sauce and then shake it up really vigourously before they hand it to you....classy)

When we got to our hotel, the girls had asked 15 times if we could go to the pool before we even got our keys. We finally got them to chill on the pool talk and we settled into our room. We had about 30 minutes before our first meeting, so Chris started ironing. *scratching record sound*

No, really. He had to iron his pants. He's such a good wife.

The kids, of course, found the remote in the cool little sitting area and made themselves comfortable.

Just chillin'

So, at this point, Morgan yells back "can we watch Phineas and Ferb?" to which I say "well, of course you can, honey" while patting myself on the back for being such a nice mom! It didn't quite occur to us that it was 1:20 and the episode started at the beginning. Shortly thereafter, they yelled back "now can we watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?" to which we realized that there was no way there was more than one Disney Channel on this TV. That's right, folks, we were buying Pay Per View Disney!!! So, after we took the remote away from Morgan we called to the desk to find out that the 30 minute long Disney Channel show that is free when it is on the 36 times it is on every day cost us $3.99!!!!!!

Here is a picture of the most expensive 30 minutes on television....

It's like he's ironing his pants in heaven.

So, we took the kids to the kid's play room. They always arrange sitters from a local sitter service and thus far, I've always felt comfortable with them. We went to our opening meeting that was for brokers and spouses. Then there was a 45 minute break before the spouse's only meeting so I decided if we wanted to have a chance of making it through dinner, I needed to go get Carter and give him a nap. He actually did take a decent nap of about an hour and a half and I got done just in time to go get the kids. After Chris got out of his meetings, we all headed to the nice buffet Italian dinner. Following dinner, there was a hypnotist. It was quite entertaining! I volunteered to try to get hypnotized. I went up on stage with all these other brokers and spouses and we concentrated on the hypnotist's voice.

I have always wanted to get hypnotized so I was eager to try. We started out by sitting, relaxed with our hands on our knees and our feet flat on the floor. Then we closed our eyes and tried listening to the hypnotist. The whole entire time, my mind was racing "how do I look sitting here in front of all these people? Is this working? Am I hypnotized? I don't think this is working. Is this working? Maybe I'm hypnotized and I just don't know it? Has it worked yet? When will it work? Is it working on anyone else? Will he know if it isn't working or will I be stuck here and he'll think I'm hypnotized when I'm really not?" You know, things like that. Here is the whole group getting ready to try it out.

Dean was the first one eliminated. He is our good friend who is another one of the Muncie Financial Advisors. I'm still trying in the background.

Only 3 people were actually able to be hypnotized. One of them was Mike, this guy. Here in this picture, he thought he was Elvis. Priceless.


After dinner, we decided that Chris would take the girls to the pool while I tried to get Carter to sleep.

After the Great Wolf Lodge debacle, we took great measures to ensure sleeping would go better. We were blessed to have a suite with 2 rooms and a door that separated the two. After Chris and the girls left, I got Carter and myself ready for bed. I got his bed all ready, put my phone on vibrate (which for those of you playing along at home was already putting me one step ahead of the aforementioned GWL situation) brushed my teeth, got the girls' toothbrushes pre-pasted and put them on the sink in the front room, got their jammies, towels & clean underwear and sat them out on their hide-a-bed in the front room, pulled the blinds in the back room. Seriously, I thought of everything! Then I put him to bed. He literally went straight to sleep without a peep and slept all night!!!!!!!! I heard the angels singing as I drifted off to sleep!