Phi Mu Convention Day 4

Saturday consisted of more business meetings and of course posing with our flag! Lambda Epsilon pride!!!

Also of note, I saw an ORIGINAL badge of Mary Myrick Daniels!!!! There was an older sister there who unknowingly married into the Myrick family line of Phi Mu! She said she mentioned in passing to her inlaws that she was a Phi Mu and the aunt went up and found the family tree of the Myrick line!  They had already sent the badge in to HQ, but was able to get it back a few years later!  It was amazing and I will probably remember that moment forever! Its flat and large, very much what the National Council badges look like (yes, you get a big SHINY badge when you join National Council...maybe that will be me one day ;)). It was so special to see. She said she only wears it to big Phi Mu events because she's afraid of losing it. Hey, I would be too! Once she passes away, it will go back to HQ. Its so special that it doesn't even sit out, they keep it in the vault!

As part of Foundation, they passed out this...Lambda Epsilon has raised $27,000 for Foundation! That's amazing! It puts them in the 3rd largest giving bucket! Way to go ladies!

Who knew that in 2004 when we sat on exec we would still be lending a helping hand to others 10 years later?!?!?!

Gayle riding the Carnation Collection bike into the Report of the Courtesy Resolutions Committee.

This is where the group recaps all of the funny things that happened that week at Convention!



And of COURSE I had to take this amazingly epic picture with the LE flag!!

Our friend Lisa P...

And the we HAD to try the Frozen Hot Chocolate from Serendipity in our hotel!

YUMMO even if it did make my stomach hurt afterwards hahahahaha....

Well worth it...

From there, we went and got ready for Carnation Ball!

Carlina and I

Lindsey and I

Me saving seats for my sisters who couldn't be here....

Outgoing National President Kris Bridges welcoming the new board!

Well, there you have it.....the last Convention wrap up. I had SO MUCH FUN!! I didn't take as many pictures this year, I spent much more time reconnecting with old friends and having a grand ole' time!

Hope to see you all at the 54th National Phi Mu Convention in 2016!!! Want to see where we're going? Click here!

Wanna read about last Convention's Day 4? Click here.

Phi Mu Convention Day 3

The beautiful thing about being an alumnae visitor is that you aren't required to attend any meetings! I was a bit hungover from staying up so late catching up with good friends. So I leisurely hung out in my comfy hotel bed until the Alumnae Lunch. Lovin life!

I got to sit next to one of my favorite Phi Mus, Carlina :) I miss this girl so much!

 Beautiful lunch set up with Lilly frames

Carlina gave the invocation!!!

 Oh hey there pretty lady!

Food at this convention wasn't that great, but the desserts were TO DIE FOR. This is the Key Lime Pie.

We had THE most amazing speaker at lunch, he was FABULOUS to listen to! He told his tale of "Climbing the Mountain" of Mt. Rainier, and he even took this picture at the top!!!!

From here, we headed off to workshops. I attended the OP OMG session and then "Phone a Sister" session. They were both great and I knew both presenters!

From here, we went off to get ready to board the yacht! There were 3 yachts for us to take us on a tour and we were able to watch the fireworks from the bay!

Um....just take a look at this! This is Chris' closet of accessories!!!  Homeslice brought all.the.things. with her! Bling bling!

One of the yachts

2nd yacht

OUR TRESTRELLA YACHT!!! Yes, that's right, I got into Trestrella this year!!! This is my 3rd Convention and I was looking forward to this for the past two years!

(L-R: Chris, Sarah Beth, Lisa, me, Lindsey and Katie)

An amazing picture of us before we split up for our yachts!

View from our yacht as it left for the water...

Waving goodbye to everyone

View of the very expensive houses along the water....

AAAAAHHHHHH we took our picture with outgoing National President Kris Bridges!!!!

Multi-multi-multi expensive houses!

 Sunset.....

Fireworks....

Beautiful ladies on the Trestrella yacht enjoying the fireworks...

(L-R: Carlina, Chris, Sarah Beth and myself)

And then we got ready for Trestrella....and that's all I can tell you about it :)

Wanna read about last Convention's day 3? Click here.

Phi Mu Convention Day 2

Day 2 required for us to start out in our whites...shudder. I absolutely hate being in all white, because I am ALL WHITE myself. I look ghostly white! Anyways, we started our first full day off in a business session.  We learned about the state of the Fraternity, discussed some new business and did some voting. Here are a few numbers I found interesting:

• We had 652 sisters attending Convention this year
• 121 chapters across the nation represented
• 1,159 members in Trestrella! (That means each of those sisters have attended 3 or more conventions!)

This year I had to sit all the way in the back because I was only a visitor, sure different from my 2nd row from the front! Oh well, that just means I can get up and go to the bathroom without walking all that way!

 The view from the back!

From here, we were released to go to our ritual. In my opinion, you've seen one ritual, you've seen them all. This year, Chris and I decided to ditch and go put our toes in the sand and water!

This year, our resort wasn't big enough for us all, so some were also spread out to neighboring hotels. We had to take a shuttle to the next place over so we could get down to the beach!

Definitely worth being rebels to get out and enjoy the sunshine!

(l-R: Chris and myself)
Little did we know, this was the location of our pool party that night...ha, whoops.

 The view from our hotel room!

Beautiful grounds for our hotel!

 Pink buildings EVERYWHERE!

And of course lots of quatrefoils!

We are now up to 14,000 collegians and we opened 12 new chapters in the biennium!

(L-R:Lisa and myself)
'Charting our course' in all white

 But first, lemme take a selfie....

(L-R: Me, Lisa and Chris)

I realized I only took 1 picture from the pool party...whoops!

(L-R: Candice, Chris and myself)

Wanna read about last Convention's Day 2? Click here.

Phi Mu Convention Day 1

(L:R: Katie, Lisa, myself, and Lindsey)

Wow, I'm so far behind in blogging!!!  You'll just have to forgive me! In 3 weeks I've been from SFO to FLL for Convention, from FLL to SFO for a day, SFO to DFW for work, DFW to SFO and then hosted a sister for a week and then went to my first Junior League event!  I'm exhausted JUST WRITING THAT!  Goodness.  Anyway, I'm going to try to do my best to get you all up-to-speed!

I had some extra (meaning A LOT) of airline points and I already paid so much money to just attend Convention, I decided to turn my points into an airline ticket. Problem with that was that I had limited choices and there just aren't that many direct flights from California to Florida that don't take A WHOLE DAY to travel. I left at 8am PST and arrived at 5pm EST. So basically I missed the whole first day, which really didn't matter because I was an alumni visitor so I didn't have meetings, but alas, that meant missing a whole day that I could have spent by the pool!

Anyways, I jetted from the airport to the hotel to throw my bags down, changed clothes (because honestly, I always feel disgusting after sitting on a plane) and headed down to dinner.  Finding my friends, I quickly caught up and we got down to the business of eating. I must say, attending DU (don't want to explain what this is because I don't like talking about work on my blog...but my friends know what I mean) completely SPOILS me because the whole time at Convention I was like "well, this wouldn't happen at DU or this food is CRAP compared to DU). Anyways, we continued and then had a speaker talk for a while.  

Our whole Convention theme was "Charting the Course", so we had speaker Rick Barnes and I loved his lists and message about our responsibilities as Fraternity women. After dinner we headed back to our rooms. 

Well, like typical fashion, Convention is held in super expensive hotels. This place was particularly expensive and drinks were out of our budgets here. So, Lindsey, Katie and myself took a walk to the local Publix!  You could definitely tell no one around here walks because we got SUCH strange looks walking down the street. Well, could have also been because it was maybe 10 pm at night. Oh well, we walked to Publix and grabbed some alcohol and food snacks. Hey, what can I say? Convention is expensive!  By the time we got back, our friends got out of meetings and we all met up and drank and talked the night away!

Wanna read about last Convention's first day? Click here.