PCB - Rogers Family Vacay

We rented a condo in Panama City with Mark's family during the kids' fall break. It was such a nice time to be at the beach. It wasn't so crowded, it wasn't hot and it was just the right time.

We did your typical beach activities, slept late, layed on the beach, played in the ocean, napped, walked on the beach, went to dinner, played games, looked for grabs and then did. it. all. over. again. We did get to take in the Priate Festival too. I do love a good festival but this one eh, not so much.

There's nothing like sunsets on the beach.

Rogers Family

Last day at the beach

Indy

I was in Indianapolis for a conference the first week of October. Again, this was a city I'd never been to. The only thing I knew about Indy was the Indy 500 and the Colts. And well.......that's still all I know. We stayed at the JW Marriott and it was great, but you know, I do love a Marriott. It's located right in front of this very nice park where I ran every morning along the river. The scheduling is perfect at this conference, fun nights and not-so-early mornings. We didn't really get out into the city much so I wasn't able to really sight see. Oh well, I'm not just dying to go back but maybe my travels will take me back there again someday.

And really that's all I have to say about that........

After Indy I hopped on a plane to meet Mark and his family in Panama City Beach.

Boys II Men

Mark and I had a date night with Boyz II Men and the Nashville Symphony. We had never been to the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center for an event so we were very excited. And Boyz II Men, come on!

We find our seats, which are on the third balcony, right above the stage. We noticed there weren't any microphones on the stage and the program just mentioned the conducted and Boyz II Men music. The first song the orchestra plays is "Mama." They then started into another song, we began to think that maybe the group wasn't actually there but that they were just playing their music. We were disappointed that we had paid all this money just to see the symphony. Which don't get me wrong, it would have been great, it just wasn't what we had planned on.

So they continue to play for about an hour and we have a 15 minute intermission. At this point we are cracking up because we're with a bunch of blue hairs at the symphony. Well we get back to our seats and now there are 3 microphones. Still there are 4 people in the group so I'm thinking they may have a few instrumental soloists or something. Whatever, we decided to stick around. So again, the orchestra starts playing and still no group. Then finally...............mid-way through the second song here they come! Woohoo!

We grew up with Boyz II Men so we loved them because of that but then we have also grown to be a bigger fan of Shawn Stockman who was a celebrity judge on The Sing Off.

They sang all of their greatest hits well.............except for Motown Philly. It was certainly a more mellow concert without all of the production, etc. We kept waiting for them to rock out Motown Philly. It didn't happy but they still put on a great show.

We also got to meet the group backstage! They were awesome and what a fun date night with my love.

Labor Day on Lake Martin

Labor Day Weekend we headed south to Eclectic, AL to send some time at a friends house and some time on Lake Martin. We work wtih a few people who actually work remote out of their home in AL so they invited us to come spend the weekend. It was a MUCH longer drive than we expected, some of which we attribute to all the stops we made along the way but nonetheless we made it.

We spend some time jetskiing, skiing, tubing, floating, riding and oh man how fun and yet relaxing at the same time. I had never tried to ski but I think I needed just one more day and I would have gotten it. Now knee-boarding I'm a pro at that. Honestly, it was a blast!!!

This was pretty much how skiing went for me.....every time!

Mark on the other hand did a better job.

See how fun much fun I was having on the kneeboard!

We had a great time, hopefully we'll get an invite next summer! :)

 

Arrington Harvest Fest

Arrington Vineyards has become a favorite spot of ours. We have joined their wine club, I've worked with and become friends with one of the owners and we just enjoy the atmosphere and well the wine.  They held a Harvest Festival in August so we grabbed some friends, our picinics and made it a night.

The entire event benefitted Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Kix Brooks performed, they launched several hot air balloons, had special wine tastings and event tshirts. The weather was awesome and we couldn't have gotten a better seat!  The night was so much fun!

Doesn't get much better than this!

Our camp

Look at ALL the friggin' people. You can see there was still a bit of grass in the

"our camp" photo but that filled up fast.

St. Louis

Back in July I attended an educational conference, MPI's World Education Congress, in St. Louis. I had never been to STL so I was looking forward to seeing the arch. That was the only thing I even knew about STL, besides the Cardinals.

I participated in a 5K which was ran in the park around the arch. What a beautiful setting to to start the day.

There were several great sessions but I won't bore you with those details. One fun thing they incorporated into the meeting was a scavenger hunt type game, Goosechase.  It's an app you download onto your phone and the creators are setting up and adding missions of something you must take a picture of. Some things were relevant to the education, events, meals, etc. It was so much fun and being the competitive person I am I had to participate. Only two of us out of group did but we had a great time. We didn't win but it gave me a good sense of how I could use this for/during some of my meetings/events. I can't wait to try this out with our Marketing team during the holidays.

Being a conference of meeting planners they had to blow it out with some of the evening events too. The first night's welcome reception was at the Cardinal's stadium, and we were on the field! They had food truck catering, different entertainers, live music, games, tours of the locker room, photo opps, you could throw pitches in the bull pin and you could even get your picture made with the World Series trophy.

They also treated us to a great time at the City Museum which was a really cool place. I'd like to go back here one day. And I am NOT a museum person but this just let's your imagination run wild.

Can't wait for next year in Las Vegas!

Our First Experience at Aldi

I've seen and heard several people talking about Aldi lately and what a great deal they get on groceries.  One Sunday afternoon Mark and I decided to see what it was all about.  It goes a little something like this:

When we pulled up, I remembered that we were supposed to bring our own bags. but noticed I had forgotten them. Ok, no big deal, we'll still go in and see what this is about.

Mark walks up to get our buggy and realizes they are chained together.
Some lady saw Mark and told him you have to pay a quarter to get a cart. WTH?
Mark turned around and was ready to leave. Laughing, I encouraged to stay.

As we are cracking up because of the buggy incident, we clearly were Aldi virgins, we enter the store.

Immediately we realize everything is in warehouse pallets,again  no big deal. We also don't recognize any of the brands.

So we continued on just to see if there was something that we needed. We made it to the cereal and breakfast items. The breaking point was when we saw off-brand poptarts and Mark looked at me and said "honey, there are just some things you can't substitute." He is used to Kellogg's and was really ready to bail now.

Again, we continued on and actually did find some nacho chips, canned goods for soups, taco shells and a frozen pizza that Mark is still scared to eat.

We made it to the checkout and had a moment of panic when they didn't take plastic. We NEVER have cash but luckily this day, for some reason, we did. So we had just enough to pay for our groceries.

Remember we had no bags, so all this piddly stuff was just in our cart. We take our groceries out and load them into our truck where they were slung around the whole way home. We returned our cart AND got our quarter back.

The experience was nothing like we had imagined and I'm not sure I really saved anything on my grocery bill but it was worth the laughs and funny experience I shared with my husband.

And no wonder they can sell things for cheap, they have no expense of bags, they charge you to use the cart, no real stocking labor and no credit card fees.

Maybe one day we'll return and when we do we'll look like old pros.