These past few days I was in Dallas!! What?! Yeah...I travelled, with Brooklyn, to Dallas, Texas for the 2012 Nevus Outreach Conference. It was a whirlwind, but we managed to get there, visit with tons of people, meet new faces, learn a bit of information, & get back...all in just about 4 days! I went alone back in 2010 but this time Brooke needed to see Dr. Bauer to get a final say on what this last surgery would entail...so she went with. Originally it was supposed to be the 4 of us, because I won a family registration for filling out a survey from the 2010 conference. But when we got right down to it, we couldn't afford 4 plane tickets & the hotel. We wanted to save our money in Brooklyn's account for the last surgery, so we opted to have just Brooklyn & me go. I really missed Dustin & Cali while we were gone, but it was nice because we roomed with a great friend, another nevus mom, & her son (Amie Moller & Zac, who we were in Chicago with in January for our first surgery) while we were there so we only had to pay for half of the room. AND we gave them our extra adult & child free registration. So it was good, even though Dustin & Cali weren't there.
We left bright & early on the 4th of July (cause thankfully our party was on the 3rd) & flew to Denver then to Dallas. We had an "interesting" time on the plane...
...but after some bribing, we ended up on the shuttle bus in Dallas...happy!
The first night was a 4th of July party...but I tell you what...it didn't feel like the 4th of July at all. :( Several of us hated that the conference started on the 4th of July, but that's the dates they were already locked in to. Thankfully though, we had our party the night before. :)
So we had the 4th of July BBQ party, then went to bed. The next 2 full days were filled with speakers, meeting new people, catching up with old friends, & bonding with those super close friends that you'll have for life...just because of a nevus on our children. It's amazing what can bring people together. I wish Brooklyn wasn't born with a nevus, but I thank God that these wonderful people were brought into my life because of it.
There was free childcare offered at a local daycare, located right across the parking lot from the hotel we were at. So our kids played at daycare all day while we were in conferences.
One of the days, we had several hours of a break, so we talked the hotel into taking us to a mall so we could shop. :)
On the shuttle going to the mall
The last full day (Saturday) was the day we had our consult with Dr. Bauer. I'll write about that in the next post...
Saturday night was the big dinner & dance. It was a great dinner & Brooklyn actually didn't do too bad. She loved the hats!
Mom's & our kids... In the above picture there's a great friend Melissa & her son Aiden, then Me & Brooklyn, & a new mom we met, Amy, with her daughter, Emily. Amie, my good friend & roommate is in the top picture on the far right & in the bottom picture in the middle. Amie was replaced by Beth, another great friend, in the bottom picture on the far right. Whew!!! We were just missing Christine & Josh. :(
Our flights back weren't as rough as the flights there. See for yourself...
And on to the next post to explain our horrible news....
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