Today started out with the chaos of the Orlando airport at 6 am and all the Thanksgiving craziness..........
Ken and I landed in Denver at 9 am Mountain time.......it wa 23!! They tried to give us some little match book car to take on our 5 hour journey..........that was a big Nay Nay..... we wound up with the coolest Durango it has seats that heat up!! Our journey to Adams State was fun.....lots of snow, lots of wild life, lots of ice!
Matt and his crew turned out the numbers tonight! The crowd was great, lots of community folks were there. This school pulled off an amazing task. They pulled this event off in 2 weeks. I am so impressed by all of their dedication and determination.
I am so excited about working with all of you guys in the near future!! You are the most passionate group of kids I've seen ina long time. I hope the rest of your weeks activities go as well as tonight.
Hand in hand we all make the difference.
Cathy

Bacchus in Atlanta...............

Ryan, Kristin and myself loaded up Wednesday afternoon and headed out for the conference in Atlanta. We spent the first chilly night in Lake City. We got there about 8 at night and were joined by Ken, from Friends-Together for dinner.
Thursday morning we headed out for Atlanta, we stopped in Macon for lunch and reached the hotel by 1 in the afternoon.
The conference was a great experience for alll of us. We had one minor well major complication and that was there was a huge typo in all of my printed literature. Ryan the "idea man" came up with a great fix, but it involved lots of work. We went to the trusty office supply store and purchased 6,000 lables!! We needed several different sizes.............. we rant the printer for hours printing lables and new flyers and we all worked at night putting the lables on 2,500 brochures, business cards and post cards. So as you can guess I owe those 2 several really good meals!
The presentation went off without a hitch. We had right at 300 participants. I am getting ready for my tour out west! We had lots of folks from Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri and the Dakotas..... I have never spoken in any of those states so I sure hope I hear from some of you guys and gals.
Our trip home went well. We got back to Lakeland around midnight Saturday. Poor Ryan and Kristin I fed them at Cracker Barrell and stopped once for gas and a bathroom break and that was it......but we were all so tired all any of us could think about was our beds in Lakeland.
It was so good to see Kelly and Berniece and lots of other folks that I don't get to see nearly enough. I think we are all excited about the Regin 9 conference in Feb.
Cathy

St Augustine breezes

I was honored to be the key note speaker at the "first annual" AIDS symposium hosted at Flagler Hospital, by a number of local organizations. They had a standing room only crowd for today's events. It was so great to see Jere, Chris and Tasha all three part of our Friends-Together family.
Everyone there was energetic and engaged. It's so nice to have a group that everyone is there because they want to get educated. My challenge to each of the nursing students was to leave today's event and educate 3 people that they love.
Next road trip...............Bachus on Wednesday with Ryan and Kritsten. We will leave from Lakeland for Atlanta. We will be attending the conference and I will be a featured presenter on Saturday. I am really excited about the opportunity!!
Cathy