What DisneySMMC Meant to Me
I'm supposed to show you big fancy pictures of my swag bag(s). And show you smiling faces and yummy foods. But I don't wanna!
You know I'm at Disney every chance I get. S'amatteroffact, I would like to be there right this minute. Sitting on a bench at Epcot as I marvel at the magic around me (I still do this).
But alas, I am not. Thing is, I love Disney. All that they create. I can't explain it. I often ride the monorail and wonder what Walt thinks of it all. This magic that brings people together.
That's the BIGGEST thing I've taken from the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration (#DisneySMMC). This was my very first time joining and I have no words.
The speakers were amazing and inspiring, y'all, we got to see a snippet of Finding Dory (YASSS!), Hanes stopped by and made sure I threw out that crazy bra with an almost non-working elastic (don't act like I'm the only one!). We got spoiled. I'm not going to lie.
Every night there was a little (or not so little) something waiting for us in our room. And it felt wonderful. It's hard to figure out Mother's Day as a single Mami. The idea that I could hang out with my friends on this special day was just added magic in my book.
All the things were great. The Frog Princess did not want to take pictures with the Princesses on the last day. Which made me sad but I am honoring her requests when it comes to this blogging world of ours. But you know what she wanted to do? Same thing I did!
Take pictures with our friends. For me, THAT'S where the magic lay! So often we go to conferences and see one another sparingly, only glancing at our families on social media channels. I just cannot put a price on being able to not only see my bloggy friends but meet their awesome families!
Add to that the fact that our kids get to meet and what we have here my friends is a puddle of oohhh and aaaahhhs worthy of Walt Disney World.
I got to take a cool pic with my girl Amiyrah (she will tell you that I needed tissues the entire day on Friday because everything that was said or shown on the stage made me tear up).
I got to hang out with Cristy and make fun faces in the hallway:
Special note here, Cristy is awesome but her daughters are the sweetest things evah! We both gushed at how well the girls get along and how this seems like mentoring already! Ugh, I can't stand the cuteness!
Oh and I sat next to Central Floridian and fellow chill deficient/behavior lacking beauty maven Brittany. We should not be allowed to sit together. But we should. But really...we should. Look how cute we are.
These two met at a conference years ago and had both Vanessa and I teary eyed because they saw each other and automatically ran up to hug. I'm glad to see the love has not been lost:
Y'all, remember that post I wrote 50 billion years ago? The one that inspired the t-shirt? The one that was part of a link up? Well after 800,000 light years, I finally got to meet and hug Mary aka The Mommyologist. She was the FIRST blogger I reached out to and she was always generous with her time and just so friggin' amazing. I pink puffy heart her and I can't tell you how happy I was to see her in person!
I love EVERYONE! That's pretty much how I felt at Disney during this conference. I wish I'd met more folks that I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting but it's not easy. I don't even know how many of us were there but I can assure you, it was busloads!
I'm still riding off the high of friendship that was brought to me during a hectic time of my life, courtesy of the Mouse. I'll be forever grateful for this experience. There were lots of quiet tears on my part. Mostly out of extreme gratitude for being in the company of so many extremely amazing people and being able to call them my tribe.
Yeah so...I might need more Kleenex after all.