The one with the Annual Conference

This past week was a big week for me. The week that I plan for each year in my career, the Workforce and HR Conference. Planning starts in October with keynotes, breakouts in January,
sponsors and vendors in March, organization in May, attendees in July, and final details that boil down into September. This has been my fourth conference at Commerce but the third one that I've been in charge of organizing. Each year we've grown and not only do I enjoy the work with the conference but I also wanted to see the momentum continue to gain. It was hard for me this year to be in two places as once so I found myself working on some of y maternity leave to ensure that the quality of conference was where I would hoped it to be. It was our biggest conference to date.. with over 500 people. By the end of the week, I was exhausted.

When I decided to attend, I asked for Matt to support me and come with to help with Eleanor and Grady. He didn't disappoint... he was there for it all! Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy. When we were trying to get Eleanor down on Tuesday night before the conference, I actually said to myself, "What the heck am I doing?" but at the end, I looked at him and said, "This whole week went bette than I thought!" I did chuckle though when I walked into the room on Thursday, during the vendor show and all of them were snoozing!

The nice part was that not only did my boss appreciate my efforts, but so did our Commissioner, who called me out in front of the entire welcome address. He acknowledged that the conference was my baby and also introduced my baby, Grady. And to top it off, Gov Burgum and his lead also appreciated my efforts. However, the best part was getting some of the feedback and seeing the changes that we made have a positive impact on the attendees. Also, everyone wanted to see, hold, or congratulate me on Grady... that's not a terrible thing to hear either!

After the first night, Eleanor didn't mind staying in Fargo, she got to see Janice and Jerry and she swam in the pool every night! She loved it and wasn't one bit scared of the water. In fact, when we were packing and she saw her swim suit, she was pissed that it was in the suit case and wanted to put it on. We stayed in Fargo through Saturday morning, which made crawling into the weekend a little easier. It was really nice though to sleep in our own beds on Saturday and it was even nicer to have Eleanor and Grady allow us to sleep in a bit on Sunday!

After the swimsuit in the suitcase temper tantrum

EER wants sippy cup from the kitchen

ALR: No, you already threw it, you don't get it any more

EER has temper tantrum.

MJR brings in cart to load luggage.

EER can't ride on cart because luggage is on it. Temper tantrum ensues.

MJR: So we've determined this vacation is over... obviously we should have been home last night, someone just can't handle any more fun.