Vegas on My Mind

Well, if you follow my Facebook page, Instagram, are related to me, or happened to come see me present last week, then you know that I've been in Vegas.

Seriously, sorry for the lapse in blogging, but losing three hours of sleep does not help a blogger create awesome blog posts.  Every night, I went to bed at midnight Vegas time (3:00 a.m. Georgia time) and woke up before 8:00 Georgia time.  Yep, you guessed it - that's 5:00 Vegas time.

Anyway, enough about my sleep deprivation and utter exhaustion.  After several days, I seem to be adjusting back to summer life although I swear I still hear ringing in my ears from the slot machines and the all night chaos that you experience in Vegas.

Before I tell you about my experience, I have to tell y'all my Georgia friends are simply the best.  If I learned anything over the last few weeks it's that they won't let me fail.  They let me practice on them, helped me put stuff together, sent me tons of encouraging text messages, gave me cards, and I even got flowers from one of my friends within thirty minutes of being in Vegas.  Sometimes I have no idea why I'm well loved, but I hope it's because I love them well because they deserve it.  I know it takes a village to raise kids, but I have a feeling it took a village to get me to Vegas, too.  Actually, I know it did.

Now, if you were there Thank you SO much for coming!!!!  I so enjoyed showing y'all some of my favorite ideas and how I pull off centers in my classroom.  Y'all were such a sweet group of listeners and made it so easy to make eye contact.  I loved seeing your eyes light up, your smiles, and you taking photos of everything.  It meant the world to me.  Now, I'm going to admit something a little funny.  I was slightly nervous at the beginning as in I went through the first three slides in less than two minutes.  Oops!  Well, when I mentioned my dog, I said her name was Paisley.  Funny enough, I did the same thing in my practice round.  Um... hate to tell you, but my dog is actually Bella.  Paisley is my dog that died a few years ago.  I didn't think it was the right time to try to explain that, so I kept rolling.  My friend and I were talking a few nights later and she said, "Do you realize that you called Bella, Paisley?"  Yep!  I did.

Once I got past the first couple of minutes, I think I found myself.  I have to say, presenting was a total adrenaline rush for me.  I loved every second of it.  I also really enjoyed putting together the presentation.  It really got me excited about going back to school.

I promised the awesome teachers in my session that I would load some of the things I mentioned on here as freebies, so here you go.  Just click on the images below to grab them.  If you were in my session and there is something missing, let me know and I'll pop it on here.

My presentation was on Wednesday morning.  I spent the rest of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday popping in and out of sessions, meet ups with my blogging pals most of whom I had been dying to meet for several years, more sessions, and in typical Faith fashion decided to disappear for a few hours and go exploring.

Friends, if you ever visit Vegas, then you have to go exploring, so definitely plan an extra day just for that.  I didn't, so I ended up choosing exploring over a class or two.  May not have been the best choice, but no regrets.  We ended up going to Fremont Street, the Pawn Stars (television show) store, the Stratosphere, the Bellagio Gardens and fountain show, the mini Eiffel Tower, the mini New York, and tons of other places.  The views were incredible.  Oh, and we definitely LOVED our hotel.  We
stayed at The Venetian and it was gorgeous.  Make sure if you go that you take lots of $1 and $5 bills.  You tip everywhere.  I think we even tipped at times when maybe you didn't have to tip.

It definitely was an incredible trip and although at times overwhelming and exhausting, I already can't wait to go back next year.  I actually think round two will be even better because I'll know what to expect and I'll get to see so many of my blogging pals again.

Have an incredible week!