Diamonds are a girl's best friend...

As some of you know I have the privilege of serving as an advisor for my sorority and my chapter which not many women get to do...let alone at my age.  It is a really cool experience to be able to give back to the chapter and the campus that gave me such an unique and meaningful college experience.  

This year I was able to travel with 2 other advisors and 2 collegiate members to Atlanta for Leadership Seminar/Impact!  It was by far one of the best sorority experiences I have been able to have both as an advisor and as a collegiate member.

Now of course this trip did not go out without a hitch because after all this is me we are talking about and let's be honest I am a planner which usually means my life turns out to be a hot mess 99% of the time...I never quite understood that but nevertheless it always seems to happen that way!

Let's start out from the beginning...I had Maverick set up to be boarded way in advance (yay me!) I had laundry almost all the way done, I had the plan to get dropped off and picked up from the airport...heck I even had the morning of the flight completely planned out almost to the minute.  So of course the day before the flight I figured some pool time was much deserved!  After getting out of the pool I decided to check in for my flight (24 hours in advance) and upload my ticket to my Passbook (yay technology!).  Except for one problem...there was no confirmation number for my flight...in fact my flight info didn't actually exist...the initial flight info was there but no confirmation did because I forgot to actually pay for my flight!  So in a panic I called the travel agency that was supposed to book our flights (yes we had to use them) and let a frantic voicemail and shortly thereafter received a call from the agency and after some time and a lot of luck I was able to get booked on the flight I was originally scheduled to fly out on! 

Thursday: I was able to get everything done almost on time...it was my first time dropping Maverick off to be boarded which caused me some stress but the guy who came to take him back was so sweet to him so I was able to breathe easier after I saw that.  
Of courses I got to the airport with plenty of time to watch almost the entire USA game!  

So we landed in Atlanta and my smart self thought we should walk from the last terminal all the way to Baggage Claim...not a great life choice...such a long walk...I wish I were one of those people who counted their steps or had a monitor on because I would have crushed it! So finally get to the luggage and it's no longer luggage shaped!  Yep my brand new luggage that has only been on one other trip with me has been misshaped and cut...how does luggage get cut...it's it like tetras in the cargo area...everything fits in there all nice like and boom...liftoff?  

So to make matters worse as we are headed out to the shuttles it begins to monsoon...yes monsoon...it was horrible.  The whole left side of my body was soaked and as soon as we were "safely" across the rain stopped...thanks Mother Nature...you win again!

Now the coolest thing about getting down to registration was seeing that a sister who wasn't even there with us had sent me a Violet for my name tag.  It was so sweet and it made me day!

Friday started off great with meaningful conversations with other advisors about things that we wanted to talk about and problems that we wanted to address.  It is refreshing to feel like your advice can help or comfort someone and it's nice to know that we are doing some things correctly!  I can honestly say that by lunch time I was mentally exhausted from everything I had heard and discussed which is a great feeling but also hard because we had a whole afternoon of programming left.
During lunch we heard and amazing about Mean Girl culture that really hit home to so many of us...I think I took away the most out of the presentation is the idea that we as women have to stop thinking there is a limited quantity of things...just because you are pretty doesn't mean I can't be pretty too, just because you are smart doesn't mean I am not just as smart.  I think that is something that we as women who are raising, mentoring and maybe will raise or mentor women one day need to start teaching...we can all be beautiful, smart, qualified, amazing, courageous and a million other things and these great, amazing qualities are not limited we can all be these things without tearing down others because when we as women tear each other down we teach others that its okay to do it as well.

Saturday rolled around and needless to say I was in desperate need of real food as I had been getting the allergy friendly meals because of my onion allergy which as one of my fellow advisors put it...my meals were more like a punishment than a safety measurement.  So I made new friends and ate the most amazing omelet at the restaurant in the hotel and I got a coffee to go! Lunch was so awesome because we got to listen to a panel of sisters who were successful and pretty much awesome!  They had a lot of great things to say and it was so awesome to hear them speak!

Moving on to Saturday night we finally got to see our whole "delegation" now let me tell you I knew that we were having a great time because my newsfeed told me so but it was so fun to see us all together and to actually talk face to face...and of course to take pictures and laugh about life!

Well...Sarah and I might have just gotten a little silly at one point in time during dinner...but let's be honest isn't that what life is all about!  Trust me it got worse but I will spare you!

 So Saturday also had a lot of entertainment that we were both prepared and unprepared for.  We were ready for live entertainment and I was excited because let's be honest at my very core I am such a country girl!  What we didn't know about were the two awesome displays of talent that we would get to see pre-dinner that were so awesome! 

We got to see some awesome baton twirling which was awesome because our International President did it!  Talk about being awesome!  Then to top it off we got to see Grand Council dancing to Happy!  Needless to say my night was made...we all know I love to see dance no matter what kind!  It is always awesome!

Now here is a special treat...Deana Carter is a sister of ours and she played some of her songs for us on Saturday night!  Now I love her song Strawberry Wine...like seriously love it!  I was so happy to get to see her play and to hear a little bit of her story and get to learn about her as a person!

So Sunday came and it was time to go home...now I think the most exciting part of the whole going home experience was the fact that I finally got a DIET COKE!  Yes I went almost four whole days without a diet coke! It was so hard!  So what did I do when I finally got a diet coke...well like any good diet coke addict...I took a picture!

Now we couldn't leave Atlanta without taking an advisor "selfie"...yes I went there! But it was truly awesome to go on this adventure with these wonderful sisters!  I can't wait to see what this next year has in store for us!

With Love Always,

Alex