Leader's Conference

Last week Graem was recognized by his company as one of the top sales agents in the country at the Colonial Life Leader's Conference. I have always known that he is a leader; it is so nice that his company agrees with me. :) Most of you know that after spending 8 years in the Colonial home office, Graem chose to leave his corporate role and is now managing a sales team. The transition from "home office" to "field" did not come without much prayer, thought, sleepless nights and of course number crunching. I never doubted that he would be successful with his new challenging role...but I think it surprised both of us when he qualified for LC in his first few months on the job!

We had a great trip...I don't have tons of pictures because I didn't tote my camera around the whole time like I do when we take trips with the children. :) In Graem's previous roles at Colonial, he worked closely with agents all over the country, so we were fortunate to have many friends with us at LC. We came home totally exhausted. There is something about taking a trip with lots of friends sans children that makes you stay up entirely too late! Maybe we were trying to prove to ourselves that we could still hang like we used to?!? There was definitely a sense of "Work Hard, Play Hard!"

The LC trip changes every year...this year Colonial chartered a Celebrity cruise ship, so we had the whole ship all to ourselves. We left from Miami and stopped in Key West, Cozumel and Costa Maya. Neither Graem nor I had been to any of the ports before so we were glad to see some new places.

Adios, Miami!


In Key West...(sometimes when you ask your waitress to take a group picture it turns out blurry, oh well!)


Awards Night...


We rented a boat for fishing and snorkeling in Cozumel...Elana, Mary, me & Julia:


Us and the Shealys...yes, we were the dorks wearing our name tags!


We had a wonderful trip but I'm not convinced the boys didn't have even more fun than we did. They stayed with my parents at the farm. My brother is a poultry farmer and he got a new flock of baby chicks while they were there. "Flock" seems like such an understatement when you are talking about 120,000 baby birds. They are delivered on the day they hatch -- they still have eggshell in their feathers! Both boys had a grand time riding tractors, checking on the chickens, feeding the horses, playing with their cousin Robert, and getting spoiled rotten by Grandaddy and Bebe!