The Personal Day

Last week my good teacher friend from school, Andrea, asked me if I wanted to take a personal day to attend a scrapbook convention in Portland on Friday. I thought it was a great way to use the one personal day I get! It's also a few days until my birthday so I thought it would be a fun way to treat myself.

I had a great plan in place to make this happen. I would take a personal day, Aaron would be traveling to Bend on Thursday and would return Friday afternoon, so I needed to make arrangements for the kiddos. Ellie would go to kindergarten as normal and Easton would go to Debbie's. My mom said she would pick the kids up after school and spend lunch and the afternoon with them while I enjoyed the convention.

Well, Thursday night, all of sudden the kids hit a brick wall and came down with fevers, chills, aches...flu! Luckily so far that is all it has amounted to, although they are feeling it pretty bad! I was so bummed Thursday night; feeling sad to use up a personal day, but feeling guilty if I went on to the convention with sick kids at home. After a pep talk from Aaron and talking with my mom, I decided to give it a go unless the achy-flu developed into something-only-mommies-should-be-cleaning-up flu.

My mom makes a REALLY big deal out of birthdays so she said go and enjoy the convention, the kids would need to rest anyway and she would be happy to sit and comfort them; thinking they may even be less whiny for Grammy.

So, a big thank you goes to my mom! THANKS MOM! Andrea and I had a GREAT time! The convention was a lot of fun. Basically it's a giant scrapbook store wit lots of vendors selling their products. Our favorite booth was the Dollar Scrapbooking Booth. Although the line was long to pay, it was definitely worth the wait. Here is a picture of my bounty from the dollar booth.

You can also register ahead for classes at the convention as well. Although we did not preregister, we did get to take one class and it was a lot fun. It was a mini circle album using chipboard and acrylic. Here is a picture of some of the pages. I have yet to finish and add pictures, but I think it will turn out so cute.

We had so much fun we decided to plan ahead next year, sign up for classes and really make the most of our personal days. Thanks, Andrea! I had a blast talking scrap with you and hanging out. The topper of the day was Andrea buying me her latest favorite scrapbook idea book and one that I have been admiring from afar, a scrapbook sketch book by one of our favorite scrappers! Thanks for your generosity!

I returned home to two really pitiful kidlets. When my kids are sick, you can just see it in their eyes. They just look so sad. I love the cuddles, though!