Thirteen Years

My Man and I are celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary today. What a wonderful and crazy 13 years it has been. Never a dull moment! We were supposed to go on a cruise to celebrate however like our other vacation plans the last few months, we had to cancel. We still wanted to do something especially since I will be heading back into the hospital on October 3rd. I got online and booked us a hotel room at The Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead on Saturday night. I was already down there for the Type-A Conference so it worked out great. My Man dropped off The Boy with our friends Jeff and Devra and their kids for the night (thank you again!) He then drove down and met me at the hotel.

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Our room had a nice view of Stone Mountain in the distance.

Stone Mountain is the rock on the right in the distance

Stone Mountain is the rock on the right in the distance

Once we got settled, we went up to check out the club level. We have stayed at a few of the Ritz Carlton club level room and have really enjoyed the club. Good food, snacks and free beer and wine. When we got there it was snack time. The view was great. Could see all of Buckhead and the furnishings were very nice. The snacks kinda sucked. The Ritz always had a hot bar and little sandwiches. Also they didn’t serve beer or wine till 6pm! Boo! We had some ice tea and chilled out.

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Lots of Bourbon

Around 3:45pm we went down the Bourbon Bar for a drink. The Georiga/LSU football game was on so we talked and watched it. I was nice to relax and do some people watching. IMG_2970

We had dinner reservations at Bistro Niko, which was right across the street from the hotel. We went a little early to have a glass of champagne before our dinner.

Yummy

Yummy

We order a bottle of wine for dinner that was very good. My Man picked out a good one!IMG_2975IMG_2974

We ordered a dozen of oysters and crisped duck confit as appetizers. By this time they had turned down the lights so the pictures I took are pretty dark. I loved both of the appetizers. My Man said next time we are ordering two of the duck confit so he doesn’t have to share!  One of the dinner specials was a hanger steak with pommel frites which is french for french fries. We both ordered that and it was tasty. Only problem was I could not finish mine and since we were staying at the hotel, I could not take it home with me. Boo!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and the bar again. It had gotten pretty crowed and the Alabama game was on. RTR! We chilled out there for a while and watched the game before we headed up to our room. In the morning we headed up to the club room to see what the breakfast looked like. It was pretty good. I had a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon, fruit and chicken sausage. My Man said his eggs were pretty good. After breakfast I was ready to go pick up The Boy and get back to Hotel Yorba. I missed my fur kids!

We talked a lot about the last 13 years and what we would like to do in the coming year. We both need to get in better shape and one thing My Man is going to do in October is try to run everyday. Timber was very excited to hear about this. He loves to go running with My Man. I will try to ride the exercise bike as much as I can and after my 4th cycle, I will try to get back to working out with my trainer SK. Also, we are both giving up alcohol for the month of October. We talked about going back to Quebec City next year too.  The last 13 years with My Man have been wonderful and I look forward to many more happy years!

 

Day 2 Type-A Parent Conference

Day 2 Type-A Parent Conference

My day 2 of the Type-A Parent Conference started off with the Expo Opening. I love me a good expo. I love me free stuff! They have the conference in a few cities throughout the US, so it keeps it smaller, which is nice. I got a lot of different kind of bars for The Boy to try out. They also had some dog food samples for Timber!

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What a Zone Bar?

I also spoke with the people from the Minute Clinic that is located in certain CVS’s throughout the US. The clinic’s focus on colds, flu, shots etc. The nice thing is they are open 7 days a week. Have a sore throat on a Saturday? Go to Minute Clinic. Did your child wake up throwing up Sunday morning? Go to Minute Clinic. There is one near my office and I will definitely check it out. Plus they are sending me a swag bag with full sized samples! Can’t wait!

Free Stuff!!

Free Stuff!!

One session I went to was titled Semantic Markup and Webmaster Tools. Wow. So. Over. My. Head. Yeah, not sure what the hell they were talking about. I really wish my Dad was there. He would have been totally into and would have know what they were talking about. Blogging is a much bigger industry than I had realized. There are people out there making lots of money and I don’t think most of the public even realizes it. I also went to a session called Share Your Knowledge: Making Money with Webinars. The speaker was a women who makes a living doing webinars teaching people Photoshop and other graphic art programs. She said she start because a few years ago she was looking on the internet for help learning more about the latest Photoshop release and couldn’t find anything to help her. So she started doing webinars. She offers them free for a week, with notes and then sells the taped sessions later.

This conference was geared towards women, however there were few men. Most of the women I spoke to were moms. Some have jobs other than blogging, like me, some are stay at home mom’s who started blogging and then started making money doing it. I met a woman whose blog, www.EducationPossible.com, is all about home schooling her children in Florida. Her kids have never gone to a traditional school. One blogger I met started a blog, www.ViewAlongTheWay.com, about the foreclosed home she and her husband bought and are redoing. Her before and after pictures are amazing!

I also met Lindsey Peterson with Mom It Forward Media. She is the Social Media and Community Manager for the company.

Mom It Forward ™ is a social media community and worldwide network dedicated to enhancing the lives of women, their families, and the communities in which they live. By partnering with various brands and organizations, Mom It Forward provides the community with in-the-know information via a weekly #gno event. The #gno parties enable women to share and learn about a topic of interest from expert panelists, effectively creating a unique platform for real-time interaction with hundreds of participants. – from www.momitforward.com

The website is a great way for bloggers to get their name out there and have people learn about them and their blog. I will defiantly check it out and see if I become part of the community.

Overall I learned that I have a lot to learn about blogging, the community, branding, the tools….EVERYTHING. But I have only been doing this since June and everyone I met had been part of the industry for years, so I am not worried. I will defiantly try to attended more conferences and meet more smart inspiring women!

Type-A Parent Conference

Hey Reader’s!!!

Guess where I am today? I am at my first ever Type-A Parent Conference. This actually my first ever blog conference. It is being held at the Westin in Buckhead. I took the back roads to get here (so happy to avoid 285 and 400) and made great time this morning. I checked in around 8:30 and got my first ever “swag bag”. So exciting!

Swag Bag

Swag Bag

The keynote speaker was Amber Naslund and the title of her talk was The Other Side of Courage: Embracing Fear, Taking Risks, the One Truth You Need to Know. I thought his would be a perfect for me, not only when in comes to my blog but my real job too. The talk was great. Things I took from away from it: Don’t be afraid to quit. Don’t blame the world around you if something doesn’t work, take accountability for yourself, your life, your business. Don’t be afraid to take risks. I am the diver of my life. Quit taking everything so seriously. Laugh. Nothing is irreversible but death. Fake it till you make it.

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The next talk was How to Build Your Facebook Audience Without Breaking the Rules given by David Griner. I don’t have a Facebook page for My Hotel Yorba yet but I found the talk very interesting. I had no idea how big a deal/business your blog FB pages can be.

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The last talk before lunch was titled Selling Yourself- It’s Possible to Do It Without Being That Guy given by Lisa Lehmann and Titania Jordan. Once again, a subject that can help me with my day job as a Financial Advisor. Take aways: Share what you known. Be prepared. Be honest, be real. Share your failures as much as your successes. No one can refer you if they don’t know you. Know your market. Know your strengths. Focus on what you are good at. Stretching yourself way too thin makes you less authentic and less effective.

I met some nice ladies, two from ATL, and got some good ideas. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Finally!
Guess who is now parking in the garage after 5 years of parking in the driveway?!? My Man! We have finally cleaned out the third garage so we could move the motorcycle, which is in pieces, into it. Woot! Woot!

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Chicken Coop/Run UpdateDSC_0033 DSC_0034 DSC_0035 DSC_0036

 

Almost Done!!

The Chicken Man and Landscape guys are back! Woot! Woot! Due to the rain yesterday, no work was done. The landscapers are almost done with everything. They have to take down the basketball net, lay the pea gravel and plant three bushes. The coop/run is coming right along too.

Chicken coop/run

Chicken coop/run

The coop will be off the ground.

The coop will be off the ground.

The girls coop will be off the ground. They will have a walkway to walk up to get into it. I can just see Turbo and Poopy strutting their stuff up the walkway. They will have a nice area underneath to hangout in.

Coop/Run

Coop/Run

My three blueberry bushes!

My three blueberry bushes!

Leading to backstairs

Leading to backstairs

Backstairs

Backstairs

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The Boy in a Tree

The Boy in a Tree

I picked up some chocolate at Trader Joe’s yesterday. I have been craving chocolate while in the hospital and when I get home. I have a lot of hard candy but no chocolate! My Man suggested I stock up on some, so I grabbed a few different kinds. I just hope that I won’t eat it all before I actually make it to the hospital! At short time later….My Man could not help himself and broke out the chocolate last night! As he said, you still have time to go to Trader Joe’s and get more!

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Rain, Rain, Go Away….

Hotel Yorba Landscape Pictures

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Coop/Run Foundation

Coop/Run Foundation

Stairs are done!

Stairs are done!

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Below is a great story on how important it is to have a good foundation of family and friends surronding you when you have cancer (or any illness for that matter). I can’t begin to tell you how much my My Man and all of my friends and family have helped me. I couldn’t have gotten through all this without them.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53088893/#53088893

Whatcha Reading?

I finished up The Wife by Meg Wolitzer and The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty recently. The Wife was ok. I liked her book The interesting’s much more. The ending  to the Wife was very abrupt. I was like Wait? What? I really thought I had missed something. I flet like she kids got bored writing the thing was like “The hell with it. I’m done.”

I really liked The Husband’s Secret. It posed a few tough “What would you do?” questions that I am still not sure what my answer would be. I really got into the book and finished it in about 3 days. It takes place in Australia, so I had to get use to the comments about Good Friday being the beginning of Fall and some of the slang I didn’t get but overall I it was good. Right now I am reading What Alice Forgot also by Liane Moriarty. I am only 10 pages into the book, so I will let you know if it is as good as The Husband’s Secret.

I am also listening to a book on audio. It is called The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. I saw her interviewed on the Today show about her book and thought it sounded good. I think they have a book club and this is the current book they are reading. Shannon is like 24 years old and this is her first book. She has already sold the movie rights and ithe book going to be a series. So far I like what I hear. The story takes place in London in the future. If you are into audio books I recommend this one. The narrator, Alana Kerr, is doing a great job so far. A bad narrator can kill a book for me. I have been known to stop listening all together due to the narrator.

It has been overcast and rainy here in the ATL for the past two days. I fear the weather will slow down the chicken coop/run progress and the rest of the landscaping. Fingers are crossed that it clears up later this morning like it did yesterday. Busy day today. I have financial plans to work on and finish, two conference calls, laundry that needs to be started, need to go to the bank and I really need to go to Trader Joe’s. The Boy’s lunch is looking pretty pathetic!

Reader’s! Have a wonderful day!!

I”m Late! I’m Late!

I’m Late! I’m Late! Reader’s! This was supposed to go out yesterday but life got in the way! Sorry!!

Happy Monday Reader’s!

I hope you are all having a good day. The sun is out here in the ATL and it is a beautiful day. I love Fall, it is my favorite season. I love the smell in the air, the leaves falling, wearing hoodies and light jackets, pumpkins and drinking hot tea wine on a chilly night, on the screened in porch. Oh and football! Love me football on the weekend…as long as my team is winning. I went 1:1 this weekend. RTR!!! Falcons= Fail. :|

The landscape crew is working on finishing the back steps and started laying the pavers for the new pathway from the pool to the pool equipment. No more gross, splotchy, pee  (Timber) stained crab grass. They will be putting gravel between the large pavers.

New pathway in the works

New pathway in the works

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I met the “chicken man”, Matt, today. He, Molly and I reviewed the plans for the coop and I showed him all the wood and tiles we had in the second garage. I think he will be able to use a lot of it plus some of the wood from the play set. He thinks he will be done by the end of the week. That would be perfect. I want to be able to move the girls into their new home and get them settled before I go back into the hospital. I am so excited!

Matt, The Chicken Coop Guy, working

Matt, The Chicken Coop Guy, working

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Will they ever be friends?

Will they ever be friends?

Target Cancer

Happy Sunday!

I hope you are all having a wonderful morning. It was very raining here in the ATL on Saturday. If anyone watched the Georgia Tech game you saw. Poor kids. The sun is out today and I will be doing some cleaning in the garages. We have a huge dumpster at he end of the driveway and we plan to use it! Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Dry Creek Bed

Dry Creek Bed

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There will be bushes soon!

There will be bushes soon!

Drainage problem fixed!

Drainage problem fixed!

Getting there

Getting there

He is licking her?? True Love!!!

He is licking her?? True Love!!!

Hanging out with Panny

Hanging out with Panny

So Yummy!

So Yummy!

Sleeping beauty

Sleeping beauty

What?

What?

Readers! My Dad and I have come up with and idea to help cancer patients and their caregivers for a competition Target is running. Please check out our idea and vote for it if you like it. Just to warn you, I will be asking everyday!! Please go to the website:

https://www.targetsimplicitychallenge.com/gallery

Under the search menu type: Target Cancer
Then scroll down till you find it listed and my name: Shay H. Atlanta, Ga —-That’s me!
Click on it, read about my idea and please vote. The button is at the lower left corner.
Let’s try to win!!!!

Shout Out’s

Katie C.- I want you to know that I am thinking of you and your family everyday. I am praying and sending positive/strong/good/kick ass vibes your way. Stay Strong my Sister!!! LOVE!!!!!