VEGAS!

Wow, where to begin this post...

I have been back in Texas for two days now, after a fabulous trip to Vegas for the first ever Teachers Pay Teachers Supercharge Sellers Success Conference!!  I am definitely so thankful that I was able to attend and so excited about all of the connections I made and new friends that I met!

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon after some flight delays in Austin.  I went straight to the hotel to meet my new roommates!  Did I mention that none of us had ever met in real life before Wednesday??  We all knew of each other's stores and blogs and are members of some collaborative Facebook groups together, so it was fun to meet in real life!  And as it turned out, 4 of us were from Texas!  We were running around too much and I think this is the only roomie picture we got-

That's Cheryl from Crayons and Curls, Farrah from Mrs. Shipley's Classroom, me, Natalie from Teachery Tidbits and Chrissy from Buzzing with Ms. B!  All such sweet, sweet ladies!!

The first event on Wednesday night was a huge teacher/blogger meet-up put on by the two ladies of What The Teacher Wants.  It was crazy and loud and so much fun!  We definitely need a larger room next year!!  I was overwhelmed by it all but still managed to grab pictures with some great teacher friends!!

Tanya from Journey of a Substitute Teacher, Amy and Lisa from All Y'all Need, Deanna Jump from Mrs. Jump's Class and Grace from First Grade's a Hoot.

Jenny from Luckeyfrog's Lilypad, Rachelle from What The Teacher Wants, Cara from The First Grade Parade and Erica from Erica's Ed-Ventures.

On Thursday I woke up early to check out the gym at the Venetian (gotta keep up with my #jigglefreejuly friends!).  It was awesome!  Totally like a real gym, not just some dinky room with some treadmills!  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, everything in the Venetian (and Vegas) is over the top!

We spent Thursday roaming around, checking in for the conference, picking up some show tickets and getting lost in the hotel.  Who am I kidding- the getting lost part happened every day!  That place is huge!  We had to take two different elevators to and from our room and I'm still loopy from it all!

On Thursday night we went to the Beatles Love show at The Mirage.  It was awesome!  It was my first Cirque de Soleil experience so I was just trying to soak it all in.  There was soooo much to look at, though!

Friday was the TPT conference.  It was a great experience just to be in the same room with so many like-minded teachers and bloggers!!  We had some amazing Keynote speeches from TPT's founder Paul Edelman and our most famous seller, Deanna Jump.  Both brought tears to my eyes, and just about everyone else's as well!

The sessions were great, some more basic than the others, but I learned A LOT!

Oh!  And I met Kristen from A Teeny Tiny Teacher!!  I was so excited!!!  I love her!  Here she is with me and Chrissy.  And yes, she really is teeny tiny- she's standing on her tiptoes in this picture!

selfie with Paul!

with Vera from The Tutu Teacher, she used to live in Austin and it turns out that we had our weddings at the same place!

Since this was the first conference and the first time we've really met everyone, Rachel from Minds in Bloom and Michelle from The 3AM Teacher organized and created a fabulous gift for Paul, Amy and all the other staff members of TPT.  Michelle created beautiful collages of many seller logos and they turned out so great!!  Rachel presented them on Friday and it was so amazing to be a part of that moment.

It's been fun reliving the week all over again!  If you want to read more about it from other fabulous bloggers, click the button below to hop over to A Burst of First.  There are a ton of great stories over there!  And you know, as they say, What Happens in Vegas...