And although most of my photos are from my phone, I wanted to take just a minute to share how it went.
A huge thanks to Linda and Richard Eyre for letting us hold it at their lovely common room in Salt Lake and to Koni Smith and Saren for figuring out all the details. Power of Moms is such a team effort. I feel incredibly grateful to get to be a part of it.
I flew in on Wednesday afternoon, and Saren and I grabbed a quick dinner at Blue Lemon. It's fun to get to be together in person. We spend so much time emailing and phone-calling, and there's just something nice about talking face to face!
When we arrived at the Eyre's lovely common room, I started to feel a little giddy. Oh, how I love being with my Power of Moms friends. Here are Linda Eyre and Catherine Arveseth:
This is Shawna Woodworth, her mother, and her baby, Julia. (Shawna and I were roommates in college, and now it's fun that we got to work on this book project together.)
All the authors in attendance (7 out of 12, plus Linda, who wrote the Foreword) gathered for a quick photo before the event started:
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| Saren, Allyson, April, Tiffany, Shawna (Julia), Linda, Jennifer, and Catherine |
Then Saren welcomed everyone and got us started!
We'll have better photos to post later, but I at least grabbed a snapshot of each speaker. Here's Allyson Reynolds:
Catherine Arveseth:
Jennifer Cummings:
Saren Loosli:
Shawna Woodworth:
Tiffany Sowby:
(I spoke somewhere in there, and I've just posted an adapted version at Power of Moms.)
After the more formal speaking part, we gathered into small groups and had some great discussions. "What do you feel like you're doing well as a mother? Where do you want to improve." Loved that time we were able to talk about the things in our hearts.
In my group, we talked a lot about discipline, and of course we discussed how much we like Amy McCready. Then one of the moms, who had listened to my podcast with her, pulled Amy's book right out of her bag! (Great book, by the way.)
After our discussion groups, I took a bunch of pictures with friends (some new and some from years back):
And I got to spend a few minutes with my sister Page (I miss her):
This is Christy Elder, who edits all our podcasts and is an amazing board member:
And my other college roommate, Laurie, came with two of her friends/neighbors who I just loved:
Here's me and Laurie:
I wish I had gotten a group photo. We had about 65 mothers there, and I felt like I was in heaven.
At the end of the night, I got a text from Alia. Spencer's birthday was the following day, and he'd wanted streamers across his door so he could crawl under them.
Alia made that happen:
Here's a close-up of those amazing streamers (they're still up):
Then, on the way home, I was chatting with Allyson Reynolds on the phone about how I think she needs to write a book of her very own, and I was so excited talking about it that I ended up in Irvine and had to drive twice as far to get back home:
Happily, though, I made it home 10 minutes before my children got out of school, and I got to spend all last night celebrating Spencer's birthday with him and the family. He turned 6 at 5:17 p.m., and at 5:00 he ran over to me and said, "I need to give you a hug! This is my last time being five."
I love being with my family. They mean the world to me. Publishing a book is fantastic, and spending time with friends at a book launch is a precious experience, but wow, nothing compares to being home with my family.
Much love,
April
P.S. If you'd like to order a copy of the book, it's on sale on Amazon right now. I think you'll love it!
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