Otherwise known as reconnecting with friends, business connections, inspiration, and random fangirl moments at the 2015 Mom 2.0 Summit
Last week, I had the extreme pleasure of attending a four-day getaway in Scottsdale, Arizona while my amazing husband kept the balls in the air at home. I fully believe that when I leave my family for any length of time, my primary job is to “earn it” and suck the marrow fully out of my new surroundings.
I arrived early so that I could explore the Scottsdale area with Anna from Mommy Poppins. We had a blast on the waterslides, got way relaxed at the spa, ate entirely too much at Hacienda restaurant (including my face in the bowl of guacamole and a glass of whipped cream). The next day, we were joined by Jyl from Mom it Forward and Liz from Cool Mom Picks to visit a butterfly wonderland and another amazing pants-unzipping meal.
I promise to share more about tips for traveling to Scottsdale with families in the near future.
Since I’ve been running this blog for nearly ten years now, I often meet people in person and can’t recall if we’ve ever met in real life or only on the Internetz. Sometimes I get embarrassed in these moments when I’m not sure if my relationship with someone is a two-way street or lives mostly in my imagination. This is especially true at blogging conferences! Once the summit was underway, I was bombarded blessed with large and small moments with favorite people, some of whom I had never met:
- Attending panels and workshops given by content producers like Kelsey and Erica from The Girl Next Door who taught me so much about podcasting, I plan to launch one this year.
- Meeting Katie Workman in an elevator. I have a well-worn copy of her book, The Mom 100 Cookbook, and heartily recommend it to anyone who needs to eat and prepare three meals a day. I am so grateful for Katie’s book and was excited to meet her in person, so of course I blanked when she asked me about my go-to recipes. P.S. They are Spaghetti With Meatballs, Teriyaki Flank Steak, and many of the vegetable side dishes.
- Hugging the Honest Toddler. Bunmi Laditan is hilarious and engaging; she totally gets me and the little crazy people I live with. If you’re not already reading her books, following her on twitter, or checking out her various blogs, I implore you to do so! Check out The Honest Toddler, a child’s guide to parenting, her new one Toddlers Are A**holes: It’s Not Your Fault, and @HonestToddler on twitter because you should be laughing more.
- Attending the Iris Awards. It was a serendipitous honor to be sitting at the table with two of the founders of BlogHer, Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort Page, when they won their Vanguard Iris Award. Supercool!
- Being the makeshift paparazzi. Whitney and I were assigned the job to back up the professional photographer on the Iris Red Carpet so people could have pics for Instagram on their own phones. I also tried to recreate the Kim, Kanye, Amy Schumer moment in front of The Bloggess with mixed results.
- Seeing friends that live too far away. My visits with down-to-earthiest parent blogger Asha Dornfest are always too few and far between. She has been writing ParentHacks.com a million internet years — or ten, same as us — and has a new book in the works that we can’t wait to get our hands on.
- Catching up with Momables writer Laura Fuentes about homeschooling, food, and email newsletters. I also can’t wait for her new book to ship: The Best Homemade Kids’ Snacks on the Planet, which is totally inspiring for those of us with mom guilt about buying sooo many pre-packaged snacks.
- Meeting Krystyn Hall, who made it all ok when I stuck my foot in my mouth at least three times during a lovely dinner with Beechnut Baby Food. (Thanks, Beechnut, for the nice dinner and putting baby food in our drinks and dessert. I totally didn’t mean it when I joked that I hoped dessert wasn’t baby food. And then it was.)
- Trading tricks and tips with the folks behind some amazing hyper local blogs like Stephanie TucsonTopia and Colleen from San Antonio Mom Blogs for our own East Bay family site 510families.
From left to right: Andy from How to Be A Dad; Whitney and me from RookieMoms.com; Asha from ParentHacks; Anna from MommyPoppins; David Vienna, author of Calm The F*ck Down: The Only Parenting Technique You’ll Ever Need and blogger behind The Daddy Complex. We’re just winding down from an incredible day of winding down from our real lives.
Any questions about my time at the Mom 2.0 Summit?
Notes: Parts of my trip were provided by the good people of Scottsdale.
Photos: All pictures with the watermark are from the Mom 2.0 Summit photographer, Michael Cummings, Instagram photos are labeled, others are Heather Flett selfies.
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