Portland Trip

I'm back! Ok.... so it was my bday last wednesday and it was hilarious.

woke up, got the kids ready- got everyone sent off for the day- and guess what? NO ONE REMEMBERED!!!!! lol

Rick forgot- it was so funny. He emailed me an e-card about an hour later. he must have seen the date at work and it dawned on him or something. It's all good- i'll be getting a shopping trip out of it! it was good though- fun day.

WEd night i flew out to Portland and got there around 10:30. met up with Kim and Roxy and headed to the hotel. got in and pretty much crashed. Luckily we were able to sleep in a little come thursday morning and didn't get to the convention center until about 11. started setting up and holy smokes.... it happened to be the LONGEST day of my life. seriously. we had SO much product and so many new things that it took forever to figure out. Kim completely changed up how she wanted things- which was awesome. so i spent about 10 hours hanging Prima product. it was all to die for of course. :)

the center people kicked us out at 10 that night. Kim had gone back to the hotel already to fix up the classes she was teaching first thing the next morning, so that left rox and i to walk back. (wasn't far, but on empty stomachs and 11 hours on your feet, it was like death. lol) we made it about a block and found a Denny's and headed in cause we couldn't go any further. ate some not-so-yummy dinner and got back to the hotel around 11. we were so tired, but it's been about 6 months or so since i last saw Roxy and we HAD to chat. stayed up until about 2 talking.

the first day of the show was awesome. I was so overwhlemed for about the first hour or so because of how man people there were. the show opened at 9 and from 9:05, we had a constant line. was seriously at that register non-stop until about 4. then from 4-6, the only "breaks" i got were about 2 minutes in between customers- but i was rearranging product during those times.

show ended and we started re-stocking..... i couldn't believe how much we had sold. our booth was a mess, but a good mess!

went to dinner and headed back to where roxy and i again, had our nice laughs.

OH!- forgot to tell the BESTEST part of the day..... can't believe it. So , there was this national Barista competition going on in the hall next to us. didn't know what it was until i asked, it's some gourmet coffe making competition of some sorts.... must be pretty big. (who knew? lol)

anyway, so before the show started, i was walking out wiht a load of boxes and guess who I saw?

See the cutie-patootie Ryan on the left? Yah.... he was there with 3 of his buddies. I totall was like 2 ft. away from him. I did a double take as they passed and was like "wait a second". then i turned around and heard to other ladies talking about someone they just saw. SO i stopped and asked them who they were talking about and they both swore up and down that they saw him too. HILARIOUS. totally made my day. you see- ever since Hailey decided to get into this whole High school musical thing... i've totally fallen in love with these 3 boys. they are just so darned cute! so anyway... i spent the day stalking the coffe convention seeing if i could find him and get a picture, but alas... never happened.

ANyway....

saturday was much the same- excpet for one thing. WE got there early to finish re-stocking product and ran out of time before they opened the doors. Adn because the lines were constant yet again, we unpacked boxes in between customers. the booth was a disaster- and that was an understatement. lol. we finally got it all cleaned up and off the floor by about 4 that night. it wasn't as busy as it had been on friday- so it allowed us to actually have lunch.

finished the day and then started tearing it all down. what i love about tearing the booth down is that it only takes us about 2 hours to get it all done and packed. finished up and had to head straight to the airport to drop Kim off.

Little did we think that we had NO CLUE where we were or how to get back... we dropped kim off and headed in the direction we thought we were supposed to go. 15 min. later...... we're in some hick town outside of Portland wondering where we went wrong. found a hotel, got directions and figured we had gone in the opposite direction! it would have been funny, but we were tired and hungry. finally got back to the convention center and started looking for a nice resteraunt. I really wanted Applebees- but couldn't find one, so we settled on a chinese take-out place. got our food, headed out and wouldn't you know? just around the next corner was Applebees! I was so mad. Roxy got a good kick out of it, she laughed so hard she about killed us.

then we couldn't find a parking spot and ended up driving around for another 15 minutes looking for a place. finally got into our room just as our food got cold.

oh well.... Kim loaded us up with Prima product to last us for months and we had to divide it up. so that took another while, then we packed it all up. finally made it to bed around 2- but then the time change happened, so it was really 3. GREAT. we were able to sleep a whole 2.5 hours.

got to the airport around 6:30 and had some breakfast. we talked and said our goodbyes and headed home. I got in around 2 yesterday and iw as so happy to see my kids. although i enjoy the break and love the work, there's nothing better than coming home and seeing them.

yah... so all in all it was a successful show, had a total blast, and now i'm home recooping. Kids didn't have school today- so we've been hanging out.

So... there we go. there's an update for ya. I'll post some pics later- i've got to go make dinner. back to real life now. :)