Oh my gosh. What a week last week was. I had four jewelry shows….two last Sunday, one on Friday, and another on Saturday. I also signed two new jewelers this week! After almost a year running my own business, I will be getting a promotion to the first level of leadership, which is very exciting for me. What it means is new jewelers to support and encourage, a nice bonus check every month, and more free jewelry! Woohoo! I love that I have become more comfortable talking about the business so that I can help women get their own businesses started. There’s an amazing freedom, flexibility, and confidence that comes with running your own business, and that is HUGE when you feel like all you do is run the household or raise the kids, or you’ve run up the credit card debt trying to pay for anything and everything, or you feel like you’ve been working all day every day just to pay for day care and one or two bills.

Anyway, this weekend, we went to visit T.’s cousin, Megan. She lives a couple of hours away, in central Kansas, near a lot of his family. She takes amazing pictures (check some out on her blog) and she was gracious enough to host a show for me and then take our family pictures. Her jewelry show was fun, because it was my last Halloween-themed show for the year (and I was JUST getting it down!), and I got to see, not only Megan, but Carisa as well. And I got to meet some of Megan’s coworkers and her mom. I’m going to be SUCH a dork for a minute, for two reasons. First of all, Megan and I actually got to sit and talk for a while, which, in the two years since T. and I have been married, has never happened (with any of his cousins or their wives, really). But on Saturday, we got a chance to chat between the jewelry show and the pictures. Do you ever feel like you would be such good friends with someone if only you had the opportunity? So, I’m a big dork and wish we lived closer and could hang out.

The second reason I’m a big dork is that I almost felt like I was meeting a celebrity at the show. One of Megan and Carisa’s friends has her own blog, which I’ve read several times. I’d never met her but felt like I knew her. But she came to the show with her daughters (who I also felt like I knew). This is her blog. You should check it out. Maybe someday you’ll meet her and feel like you should be asking for her autograph (I didn’t, I swear).

The whole trip was kind of exhausting…E. Belle starting getting car sick before we even made it to Topeka (about 30 minutes into our two and a half hour trip). Then after lunch, Henry AND Essie were threatening to get sick….actually, Henry was and Essie was too busy actually throwing up to threaten anything. It ended up being a very long four hour trip, and the car sickness really didn’t stop all weekend. We drove to my grandparents’ house on Saturday night, and I just did NOT want to get back in that car with those kids. It was only an hour trip, though, and thankfully nobody threw up again. On Sunday, I just dreaded driving all the way home again, but the kids were so tired that they all fell asleep almost immediately and didn’t wake up again until we were in Topeka. I am very happy that we spent the day with Megan and her family, and we definitely needed to see my grandparents (it had been a while), so I’m glad that it all worked out. I don’t know what it is about Ivy and her grandmas, but she globbed on to great-grandma immediately. She insisted that she sleep with “gweat gwamma” Saturday night….my grandma is always go-go-going and doesn’t sleep much…when she does, it’s usually in the living room chair, I think. But, she pushed the two small couches together in the living room and made a bed for the two of them. It was a good night and half a day of quality time for all of us!

So, anyway, this week should be a little more mellow (fingers crossed), so I should be able to get caught up on the stuff I’ve been wanting to write about (pumpkin patch, anyone?). I hope you’re having a good week so far!