Work Trip to Orlando

Every year, NIST MEP (Are you ready? The "National Institute of Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership") has their national conference.  Since I have been on board with Washington's MEP, Impact Washington, they have held the conference in Orlando, Florida.  This was my 4th time attending the conference in the 6.5 years I have been working at IW, and it is always a great time to get away from the office and meet our partners across the country.  While we are definitely working hard each day in our conference sessions, they also are sure to build in plenty of "networking" and down time to make it fun!

This year, my coworker Shauntel and I flew down a day early so that we could spend a day at Epcot Center prior to the conference starting.  We were expecting to escape the dreary Seattle weather, and were surprised and irritated to arrive to 2 days of on and off thunder, lightening and POURING rain, (with sunshine back home, of course).  Regardless, we were able to enjoy our time at Epcot checking out the exhibits, walking through the various countries and sampling some delicious food!  Epcot is a pregnant woman's dream :)

Delicious desserts in "France".

We spent Sunday in sessions all day.  That evening was a networking event - poolside.  The food was delicious and they had a live band for entertainment.  The only negative was that for the first time ever (that I recall), they had an OPEN BAR.  How bummed was I to not be able to partake?  (Silver lining - watching others enjoy themselves, some a little too much...). ;)

Monday was another day of sessions, followed by a staff dinner (just my team) at Raglan Road in Downtown Disney!  I was in charge of coordinating the dinner and finding a place for us all to go.  I turned to my Disney-fanatic friend Karla, who pointed me in towards this establishment.  It did NOT disappoint!  The food was excellent, the entertainment (Irish dancers) was awesome and we all had a GREAT time!  Our clients who attended the conference with us and joined us for dinner were also very impressed.  Thanks, Karla!

Linda, Me and Shauntel at dinner

Soraya, and my bottle of Pellegrino

I flew home on Tuesday, but not before enjoying one final breakfast of the delicious fruit that Orlando has to offer and laying poolside for a few hours.

Cute baby duck by the pool

My enjoyable last day was completely wrecked on the flight home by the screaming 15-month old kid on the plane seated directly to my left.  I absolutely have a new found sympathy for the mom's who have to deal with that for 5+ straight hours, (as I know that could easily be me in a couple years...) but at the same time I found myself more than a little freaked out about having to handle that stuff with my own child. 

I plan to ramp up the yoga this week and chant some OM's in hopes of creating a nice little zen baby for myself ;)