Summer Regionals

Every year the brokers from Brian's region at work get together with their families for Summer Regional meetings. Usually we go to some resort in the valley, but the past few years, they've chosen a farther destination. This year was in Rancho Mirage, California, which is just south of Palm Springs. I wouldn't choose that place as a vacation spot, but we had fun. We left Friday morning and made the 4 or so hour drive to our hotel. We were tight on time, so we put everything in our room and then headed to the first meeting. We took the kids to their kids activities and Brian and I went to our first meeting. Basically it was just introducing each other and spouses. After that meeting, we had the spouse's meeting. This year we were supposed to bring our favorite "excellent" thing. I brought my favorite hair brush and hair product--a CHI hair shine (thanks Brooke for hooking me up!). So as we went around and introduced ourselves, we also told about our favorite things. Then we chose a name and that person got our stuff. The person who gave to me was a husband of a broker and he was so funny. Just a funny old man, who really didn't know what we were doing. I ended up with a box of Raisinettes and a little quote wall hanging thing. I think maybe his wife did it for him. The spouse in charge of the meeting gave us a little box of some of her favorite things, one of the product partners gave each of us a little box of the small Paradise Bakery cookies and the regional leader gave every spouse on of her favorite things--a Pancake Pen. After the meetings, we picked the kids up. The ladies in the infant room didn't want to give Ruby up. They wanted to eat her up! They loved her. We always laugh though at those things--they always feed them way too much! I was gone probably 4 hours and she had had two full bottles. They said she was still hungry. HA! Sure she was, but you just don't keep going and going. Anyway, we just laugh about it. That night we had a family dinner and games. After dinner, they played "Minute to Win-It" games. Eliza had a lot of fun doing a couple of the games--she did the one where you put some Vaseline on your nose and try to transfer cotton balls from one bowl to another and she did one where you have a tissue box belted to your back and you try to bounce all the ping pong balls out of it. Somehow Brian got out of doing anything, but I got nominated to do the one where you have a banana hanging from a belt and you have to swing it to get an orange in side a hula hoop. It was quite a site to do and see, I'm sure!

The next morning Brian had meetings, so after our breakfast, I braved it and took the girls to the pool. They had fun--it was a big pool and they had a slide. Ruby ended up falling asleep on me, then Brian came after his meetings.





We swam for a while and had lunch, then we headed out to the really good outlets nearby. We scored some really good deals at the Quiksilver outlet. They had a major clearance and I got my girls a ton of Roxy t-shirts for $5.00. I think they are set for shirts for school clothes. Now on to finding shorts.

We got back and got ready for the final awards dinner. The kids went to the kids club again, then Brian and I went to dinner. The dinner was yummy (salad, beef and fish, asparagus, potatoes I think, rolls, and a super delicious caramel cheesecake). Throughout dinner they did awards for various things. They do some funny awards like "fertility awards" and I got one of those for having had a baby within the past year. I think people thought it was for people who were expecting so someone came up after the dinner in disbelief and said, "Are you pregnant again?" It was pretty funny. Brian got one for being in the top 10 of the region for "Customer Service Excellence." They call and survey the clients about the financial advisor's customer service, so that was neat for him to get that. Then they do production awards and he got the Jack Phelan Award for having a certain level of production and he was the fourth highest producer in his region. Their regional leader said some really nice things about him as she called him up front, just about being a hard, quiet worker and a great business owner.

After dinner we rounded up the kids. Ruby ate a lot again and they said she was "rattling." We were like, huh? I guess she was making noises when she was breathing. She healed quickly because we didn't hear it again. We got a kick out of that. The next morning we got packed up and came home.