What was going on last night?

Thanks to Mile High Mamas, I had four free tickets to Disney On Ice! Claire and I asked one of our friends and her daughter to go with us, and none of us could wait. (Daddy was traveling on business and did a good job of pretending not to care that he wasn’t invited to our Disney Adventure.)

It was magical.
It was spell-binding.
How could it not be? It was Disney.

The seats we had were excellent, and Claire was enthralled.

I’m not sure which was more magical for me…the show or watching Claire’s face as she saw all the magic unfold in front of her.

Now, if I could just get the songs out of my head…

Click here to read the review AND for a chance to WIN A FREE copy!

I’ve posted over at Mile High Mamas today!  Go check it out!

Imagine my delight in looking at the photos from that month…four years ago now.

Look at my smiley girl!

Has it really been four years!?

In the meantime, here is a little recap of the highlights:

• We LOVE roadtrippin’, and the weather was perfect for the drive down.  The views from here to there are some of my favorite in the whole entire state of Colorado.  We had dry roads, blue skies, white-capped mountains.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

• I also got to eat an entire meal while chatting nicely with my husband.  Neither one of us were interrupted, and we almost weren’t sure what to do with ourselves.  AND, I got to go to the bathroom when I wanted to.  It’s the little things really…

• When I booked the room at the B&B in Crested Butte (more on that later!), I’d struggled with justifying the more costly room with the claw-foot tub and the private balcony.  Since we were splurging on other things, I decided to go with a more modest, yet awesome room.  When we got there, we found out we’d been upgraded…FOR FREE…to the room that I’d really wanted.  Our mountain getaway was off to a fabulous start!

• Claire did such a great job without us that she didn’t even care to talk to us on the phone. Grandma made her.

• I did great without being around Claire! Truth be told, I almost cried when she didn’t want to talk to me on the phone, but I got over it. Plus, Grandma made her.

• My husband had a fabulous time skiing, and the total rejuvenation package I did at the spa was beyond words.

• I was able to totally immerse myself in writing my book, and I made real progress.  Just thinking about that makes me giddy, and I can’t wait to get more written.  Writing in the midst of the real world won’t be the same as writing in seclusion, but the momentum is there, and I can’t wait to harness it!

• We found out that the awesome sushi restaurant in town was having all you could eat sushi on my birthday. It was fate.

• At one point, I’d realized that four of my last five meals had included bacon. There isn’t this much bacon in the real world. Who needs the real world?

• I forced my husband to go to a movie on the weekend it opened, which violates numerous codes and treaties. However, seeing Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D was worth it! …and he only whined for a little bit. I dare say we liked it better than Avatar, which we didn’t think would be possible.

• Today, the built-in-babysitters grandparents left, so Claire and I had a full day at the pool scheduled to keep her mind off of that. We had lessons in the morning and then swam with various other people afterwards. We were there for hours. We were both so exhausted that when we got home, we BOTH took a 3-hour nap.

I realize that the real world is relatively baconless and only 3D at times, but I’d like to petition the Naps Department to see if that part can stick around for awhile.

Despite evidence to the contrary, it is good to be back!

More later!

Click here to check it out!

We’ll be back on Monday with an update from our trip! Have a great weekend!

I was born on the only command of the year: March Forth!

Fourth.
Forth.

Get it?

No, I haven’t taken things to Literally on my birthday…it’s nowhere near Crested Butte! 

I hope you have a fabulous day. I know I will!

But, I just can’t stop saying it.

Maybe I’m not turning 36. Maybe I’m turning 12.

Either way, we’re off! We’re headed out on our Beautiful Mountain Birthday Getaway, sans babe!

We’ll be unplugged, so I won’t be around to respond to any comments until Monday.  There will be some things scheduled to post the rest of the week, so you’ll have something to read until we return…

You know when we return from Cressss-ted Byoooooot.

Wow. That was hard.

• On the way to the airport to pick up Round One of our March Visitors, Claire said, “We live so far from the airport, we should take a plane to get there!” If only it worked that way…

• At dinner one night, she said, out of the blue, “Did you know that if you cut a square from corner to corner, you get two triangles?” Yes, yes you do, and then I nearly choked on my food.

• One day she said, “If Merlin and Jasper had opposable thumbs, would they get in more trouble than they already do?” Uh, yes. Undoubtedly.

• Another day she said, “Do you know what Ell, Oh, Vee, Eee spells!? LOVE!” Then she said, “See Ell Aye Eye Are Eee can spell Ell Oh Vee Eee!” Yes she can, and I think that’s Aye Double-you Eee Ess Oh Emm Eee.

We’ll be away from Claire for two nights, which is two nights longer than I’ve ever been away from her. Can you believe it?

I know she’s ready, and I’m sure I will be too. This will be nice test-run for when we escape to Hawaii for two weeks in October.

The mountain town we’re visiting has terrible cell phone and data services, so we’ll be unplugged. The last time we were unplugged was for our 12-day Road Trip out to California via the Grand Canyon, and it was awesome. They say I’ll still have spotty cell phone and txt service, but the Internet will have to figure out how to survive without us for a couple days. (I’ll have Glenda with me, but I’m not about to pay $450 per kilobyte or whatever it is to check email and play online. I’ll be too busy being massaged and pampered. Darn.)

Honestly, I can’t wait.

The grandparents will be here to watch Claire, and I wonder if she’ll even notice that we’re gone?

Still…I was shocked!  I was going to get to meet Tom Martino! He is a household name here, and he’s someone that I consider to be a celebrity. So, not only am I doing a presentation on Live TV, Tom Martino will be there!? Gee! No pressure!

But, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I was in sales for a good 6-years. I can do a presentation frontwards, backwards, and probably while standing on my head…but my wardrobe stylist frowns upon that.

Speaking of wardrobe stylists, I have to give my sister credit. She’s my go-to person when it comes to clothing advice. She helped me with my wardrobe for last Live TV appearance, too! She lives in California (and I’m in Colorado), but by the magic of texting and photo-mail, we put together an outfit that works! …and it only took an hour-and-a-half. Imagine how efficient she’d be if she could actually see my closet!

I told her she should do this for a living, but then I wouldn’t be able to afford her.

So, back to Tom Martino…

I figured out how to get to the FOX 31 studio, which wasn’t hard. Figuring out where to park was, but once you know what to look for, it’s super-simple. (It’s really easy to see where you need to go once you’ve gone past it. Funny how that works.)

I’d given myself plenty of time to get there, with the rush-hour traffic and possibility of getting totally lost. I finally figure out where to go, and park. I’m sitting there checking some last-minute things on Glenda when I see a truck pull into the parking garage.

It’s Tom Martino! Or, at least I think it is. I’m pretty sure it is. It has to be, right? What are the odds of a Tom Martino look-alike at the FOX31 parking garage?

I have to walk right by the truck on the way to the “Visitor Entrance” sign, so I stop and say, “Excuse me. You’re Tom Martino?”

He looks at me with a wary look and answers affirmatively. It’s official: Tom Martino thinks I’m a crazy stalker-lady.

I put my best “I’m not a stalker” smile on and said, “I thought so! I think I’m on your 9am show!”

He immediately relaxes and pretends that I’m not a crazy stalker-lady.

He escorts me to the building, and to Security, and then on to the Green Room.

All the while, he’s making small talk and I’m trying really hard not to shout “IT’S TOM MARTINO! YOU’RE TOM MARTINO!” out loud. I have to pretend to be calm. I need to be cool. This isn’t a big deal at all. *cough*

Unlike the other Live TV gig I did where I didn’t even have a mirror before I went on the air, FOX31 has a real Green Room. It’s a Green Room with soothing lighting and a lighted mirror and a sink! Yes, the photo I took of the sign is a tad blurry because I’m trying not to be conspicuous about taking a photo of the Green Room.

Amateur.

I have plenty of time to set up, and seeing the behind the scenes action is really cool. I’m amazed by the cameras that glide across the floor like sentient robots, moving with minds of their own. The lights and colors of the studio are fantastic. Everything is so vivid. Headset’d people are walking around saying random things to the people on the other end of their mics.

People I’ve only ever seen on TV introduce themselves to me.
I’m in awe.

I go over my script. Like any sales presentation I’ve ever done, I always have a script. It serves as a guide and safety net, and I know that I’ll be pulled off track, but I can always see it in my head. It’s there, ready to catch me, ready to pull me back on track. I never have ANY IDEA what they’ll ask me, so I have to be prepared. I’m good at going with the flow, so I wasn’t too worried.

Still…it’s live TV.

I’m mic’d, and it’s too late to turn back now.

Smile.
Breathe.
Don’t mess with your hair.
Smile.
Breathe.

And, just like that, it was over.

The segment went really well.  (Click here to see it!) I wasn’t sure what to expect with Tom Martino and Paula Haddock, but they were great.

I was asked by Paula to tape another clip that they’ll use during a 4pm show (I don’t know when, but I’ll keep you posted). We were going to do that when she was done with Martino TV, so I got to see the rest of the show from an inside seat.

There is a lot of bantering that goes on behind the scenes, and it was so much fun to eavesdrop.  I may or may not have tweeted about the fact that I was watching from the best seats in the house.  I loved seeing the comments about the segment come in before I’d even seen it.  That’s the funny part about doing Live TV…you see it after everyone else does, even though you’re right there.

When they wrapped up that show, I went with Paula to do another clip. If there’s anything worse than being mic’d once, it’s being mic’d twice. I have a love/hate relationship with the mic. Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t love it. It is fun to think “I wonder who will hear what I say if I talk now?”

I learned from my last Live TV Segment that they’re tricky little things. I’d figured that into my wardrobe choice. After a tiny bit of wiggling, everything was in place, and we were good to go.

When that clip was finished, Paula helped free me from the mic, find my way back to the Green Room and then back to the elevator.

And, just like that, I was back in the real world and found myself waiting in line to pick up Claire from preschool.

I’ll admit…the rest of my day seemed rather boring.