all smiles

For the past 14 years, my employer, Marquis, has hosted a client conference in various locations across the country. Kicking off last week in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, we hosted 200 clients for four days (and a day and a half of employee meetings). While it is never fun to be away from home for that long, I have to say, this was the best Marquis conference I have attended. Not only were the educational sessions timely and extremely useful for me and our clients, but the evening events were pretty amazing.

I was in Florida for 6 days, which was enough to remind me why I love beach vacations. On Monday morning, I had just enough time to watch the sun come up over the Atlantic Ocean as I ran 4.5 miles along the beach. (Vanilla Ice fans, I ran the A1A-Beachfront Avenue!). And Thursday afternoon I had a 45 minute break to sit in the sun and shade with a cold beer near the pool with some old friends. It was enough time to decompress and soak up enough vitamin D to keep the vacation bug at bay until July (I hope.)

Wednesday evening, we chartered a yacht (which was really just a big boat, nothing really fancy) and took the clients on a 4 hour cruise up and down the intercoastal waterway. Under drawbridges and past "Millionaire Row" where the houses are worth more than my salary in a lifetime. Pretty amazing. During the trip, the Goodyear Blimp was out and about and all I had was my mediocre iPhone camera. So I snapped a quick photo.

The only down side to the trip: The cooties I caught. It started out as allergies before I even went to FL. While I was there, my allergies were a little better...or so I thought. They were just different. So, with a lack of sleep, a little congestion, oversensitivity to boat movement and a 5 hour flight home, it seems as though I came home with Vertigo. And it is MISERABLE.

If I am going to feel like I am on a rocking boat I would prefer to have sunshine, humidity, sunscreen and a good book...oh, and water too. Water would be nice. All in all, it was a perfect end cap to my 35th birthday, which I must say, was one of the best birthdays I've had in a long time. Just me and Chris, a perfect day and a perfect dinner.

And I would like to nominate my husband for "Husband of the Year." He gave me a beautiful vase of red, white and purple tulips (my favorite flowers in the world!) on my birthday which was the day before I left. While I was gone, he went to the flower shop to get extra plant food so they would last until I got home. And while I was gone, every morning when he got up, he sent me a text message with a picture of my flowers and told me how much he loved and missed me. Really sweet.