Well this year my bestie (Sister of my heart) got to come along! She has been trying for over three years to get there but life and commitments got in the way.
The adventure started off Thursday afternoon when Roxann and her husband and daughter arrived from Indiana We had dinner (I fried catfish! YUMMY) and then we were off to a reception venue to place an arch for a wedding. (We have our own wedding planning business www.theweddingmoms.net ... < that was a shameless plug !)
We finished that up around 10 PM and headed to the grocery store for cappuccino. What can I say I was out and I am not a Coffee achiever.. I like more chocolate than coffee! When we pulled in we saw two girls in a car in front of ours with 2 forks binge eating a whipped cream and strawberry covered cake! I don't know if they had the munchies or had been starving themselves to fit into a ugly bridesmaid dress and decided to eat cake after the event ?? But it was rather fun watching them stuff their face!
Cappuccino purchased, we headed back to my house, I of course had not packed either my mega meet bag or my suite case so I had to do that. I have no excuse for this, usually I am packed and ready to go days in advance... (Senility??) By now it is past 1 AM and we have to leave the house at SIX THIRTY AM!!! In the end I had 4.5 hrs of sleep! Sleep deprived is no way to start Mega Meet!!!
The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and my mind said YIPPEE but my body said OMG what are you doing??
We got ready (in record time I might add) and were on the road at 6:35 AM. For those that know me I have been told I will be late for my own funeral so only being 5 min behind was something to celebrate!
We ate breakfast on the road (Yogurt and bagels) and headed up 23 to Novi.
A BIG thanks to the gals at Mega Meet for putting out the BOLO that 96 was a HOT MESS so we took 23 all the way. We hit rush hour and that was tedious but we turned up the radio and commenced to seat dance.. I am sure people thought we were crazy... (Okay I was dancing Roxann was watching for traffic... someone has to be the adult) We were able to bypass all that and almost drove past the convention center! We paid the $5.00 for parking (does anyone else feel this is highway robbery?...I mean you are going there to buy scrap supplies and have a great time.. WHY would anyone think it right to charge you $5.00 to PARK on private property? That was $10.00 that we won't get back and could have spent on washi tape, brads, QQ inks.. the choices are endless!) sorry I just had to rant. We got there by 8:30 and our first class was at 9 AM! For once I wasn't running to the class room.
Anyway we unloaded my rolling tote, Roxanns back pack, and headed into the madness.
Happily we had no waiting in line and and Roxann's virgin Mega Meet was off to a good start.
We got to our first class (the Acrylic frame class) and I kept making mistakes on mine and wiping it off.. By the time I got done my fingers looked like I had been working on cars! I still have ink under my nails. (note to self..leave the hospital gloves on while inking!) oddly enough the MM Virgins sign turned out perfect.
I can't say enough about Clear Scrap I love their albums and the classes are worth every penny!
After class we headed to the shopping... before we could do that I had to buy a 1 day ticket because ME the 6 or maybe it is 8 year attendee forgot to buy my 2 day pass on line WEEKS before! (I might add the MM Virgin purchased hers up front so embarrassing!) Then we were off to hit all our must haves first and then to start over and go one row at a time. During this time I forgot to purchase a ticket to Q & Co's Dip N Dots (a class the MM Virgin had purchased... I thought I did!! ) So I directed her to the class room...turns out that was the MM Album class... we were in the wrong room... so off we went to find the right one! Got there, dropped her and asked if I purchased a ticket could I come in late? They said sure! So off I went BACK to the floor to buy my ticket... and then there were NONE... sigh... so I trot back to the class (this time I went to the correct room) and the lovely teacher from Q & Co. let me sit next to Roxann to "Help" her. She was totally confused by the time I got there... (lets face it those classes go fast!) so I started helping her build her pages... I ended up having the papers going the wrong way even after reading the instructions! The MM Virgin caught the mistake and said "I thought you were supposed to help me?" (snot) we ended up laughing our heads off (figuratively of course) .. once we got to the glitter part of the page .. (glitter is evil) we trotted off to the group table and the new product by Q & Co was being a bit difficult so silly me grabs a paint brush out of a bowl of glitter and says "Here let me rub it down to see if that helps" and WOOSH the TEN pounds of glitter trapped in that brush came raining down on my leg and shoe! I was wearing a black shirt so it was pretty much covered also., along with my arm and the floor! This started the two of us laughing like loons again and when we got back to our chairs a sweet helper lady came back and said "I'm going to sit with you two, it seems like more fun than the rest of the class" I'm just glad I went pee prior to the class because we were laughing so hard I was crying and we all know what that leads to! Once we finished that class we went back to shopping (after all that is the reason we go) of course do to the glitter experience we looked like two old strippers escaping from the job for the day.
Are you still with me ??? Hello? Bueller??
By now it was lunch time and time for our now annual tail gate party in the parking lot, (who needs football when you have scrapping!!! ) We headed out to find our car.. really should have took note of that prior to walking away from it. Once we found that then we had to find Ginny and Sandy (my other two scrapping buddy's) because they had the table .. We loaded up with our bag chairs, PBJ's , drinks and snacks and started wandering the parking lot.. We found Theresa Knopf first and then it dawned on us we could leave the scrapping supplies in the car for lunch. So I opened the car we tossed it in and headed to Ginny's car...only to remember we forgot our chairs...so I went to retrieve them , and we sat down to a lovely lunch with all our friends and had a great time. See Photo...
On a side note the person in charge of booking events at the Suburban Showplace where the convention was held must have lost their mind since last year or they are new. They scheduled some sort of dental hygienist event in the first two large ball rooms by the classes, basically putting them in the middle between shopping and classes for us. I honestly think those dental girls will be having nightmares for a while because the fear in their eyes upon seeing 100's of scrappers charging towards them while they had coffee in the lobby was just comical. They didn't know where to scurry to get out of our way and quite frankly none of us had a bit of sympathy for them. Had they ended up in piles or falling over furniture I don't believe many would have stopped! After all no one gets in the way of a scrapping queen and her classes.. or the bathroom for that matter...
Then it was 5:00 PM and we were off to dinner .. or so we thought. ( this is where the "You can't get there from here" part comes in..) We decided since Toledo OH is so back woods and doesn't have a Cheesecake Factory we would go there for dinner. After all we walked at least 5 miles that day .. we deserved something yummy! As it turns out that took forever due to rush hour traffic.. (note to self .. next year leave at 4 PM for dinner!) We finally figured out that Cheese Cake Factory was in the mall and literally drove ALL the way around the mall to get to it. Since the weather was so nice we ate outside and our hottie waiter was great, we each got something different and I must say I loved my Shepherds Pie. Then we all ordered cheese cake in to go boxes and headed to the car.. for what we thought would be a simple trip to the hotel..
NOT !!!!
We followed the GPS which took us on no less than 3 or perhaps 4 detours.. We could see where the hotel was but we could not get to it. I pulled over on a overpass and called the hotel.. Roxann got out of the car and went back to Ginny and Sandy to tell them we had to figure out a back road route ... they assured us they were fine as there was a bottle of wine in the car somewhere and if we were stranded at least we had cheese cake and wine!
Thankfully the gal at Town Place Suites knew where we were and directed us to the hotel in Lavonia ... imagine our shock when we found out that had we continued down Grand Ave (where the convention center is) we would have had to only make ONE right turn to find our hotel ... We took this route the following morning and had no trouble. By now I am running past empty, we are exhausted and starting to get to that point where everything is funny and nothing goes right. I pull into the hotel parking lot, (In the space marked 10 min parking for check in) now one would think these spaces would be right next to the door for the front desk... I hop out run into the building and walked the entire hall only to come out the door at the other end (which by the way is right where our suite was) to see a large "WELCOME" sign across the parking lot.
Ginny and Sandy were in their car laughing at me and my mistake... humm.. I believe the words "Directional Challenged" were mentioned... I made it in got the key and headed out. to park my car down by the room.. we unloaded our stash and the pajama party got underway. We had a two bedroom suite with a great kitchen. We put our stuff in the frig and I tossed a couple cans of Vernors in the freezer to quick chill and then we sat down at the big dining room table where we all tried to finish the stuff we started in class that day before we forgot what the heck they told us. We broke for cheesecake and decided there are some things on earth better than sex and Cheesecake Factory cheesecake is IT! I got my usual snickers and should have gone with the salted caramel Ginny got because it is to DIE FOR!!!
We finished up and went to bed around midnight and set the alarms for 6:30 AM (why did we schedule a 9:00 AM class for Saturday?!!" (Someone needs to tell them not to schedule the Latest & Greatest at 9:00 AM... ) We loaded the coolers (remember that ginger ale in the freezer?? Well I didn't ..so I spent 10 min cleaning an exploded can of pop out of the freezer ...sigh) We went to breakfast and saw the new "Hotel" eggs for this year.. someone needs to tell them these suck worse than the milk carton o scrambled eggs they previously served... (see photo)
We finished up our class and Ginny and Sandy had to leave for home so Roxann and I headed to the car for lunch, which consisted of the remainder of our cheesecake from the night before .. wouldn't want it to spoil in the car now would we... then we returned to shop more and happily found the paper packs for $5.00 (these bags have 23 pages of the same paper and we divide them up between us)
After dropping what seemed like 400 lbs of paper off to the car we continued on to the last class well Roxann did .. I went to search out my favorite album company but they were not there this year. (sad face)
Once Roxann finished with her Disney class we decided we were all Mega Meeted out and left for .....
IKEA!!!! As if we didn't do enough walking at MM! Apparently I forgot about the night before and jumped on the expressway... only to come up to another "You Can't Get There From Here" road block. Roxann took the GPS and we figured out you can pick an alternate route by tapping on the screen! WOOT so we took the LONG way to Ikea and almost drove past it.
We walked in and headed towards the restroom .. I had a full can of ginger ale in my hand and sat it on the hand rail ...as I was leaving the stall it slipped out of my arm so I quickly grabbed it with more force than I should have.. this caused said pop to come flying out all over my shirt and up in my hair... So then I had to wash my hair in the sink at Ikea...OH FUN!! Then we walked and walked and walked.. stopped for dinner in their lovely cafeteria, I don't recommend the bar stools for short people... I had a hard time sitting on them and the darn thing kept spinning around so I was sitting half on the front and half on the back of it.. Then we headed down stairs to the as is room to see what was there. Since it was Saturday the place was picked clean.. so we paid for our Ikea stuff and headed home with our ice cream and cinnamon rolls and a few other things... lets face it who had any money left after Mega Meet!! ????
Thankfully there were zero road blocks and other than the worlds worst highway pavement we were off and running towards home.... made it there about 9 PM and I don't think I have EVER been that tired even after working on tour (I used to be a Roadie) after we arrived we remembered we had a Wedding arch to dismantle at a restaurant banquet hall UGH !!!! Soo off we went .. forgetting our tool box , containers for tulle , burlap, flowers, the hex key to take the arch apart...
Once we arrived we noticed the ball room was decorated for Mothers Day Brunch. Our arch looked lovely in the room so Roxann said ... I wonder if they want to leave it up for photos tomorrow?
I ran down to the mgr and asked if they would like us to leave it there for Mothers Day photos and they were thrilled .. .. So .. happy day we got to go home and leave it for a Monday pick up!
We headed back home and sat on the floor dividing our paper packs like two paper junkies on a street corner. (see photo)
So that was our weekend with a whole lot of Lucy & Ethel moments , lots of laughter and good times.
Now to put all the stuff I bought into my ScrapRack !!!!
OH and MOVE .. after all I JUST GOT A NEW HOUSE!!!!
