I have to tell you that this journey started long before the day we boarded the plane. It started with my notification that I had been accepted and that I was able to bring someone with me. I chose this oppurtunity to take my good and close friend Janet. The excitement we shared was pale incomparrison to what we experienced later on.
I joined the Yahoo Group of women that formed the community to share in the wisdom of past attendees and to get to know people before arriving in Phoenix. There were more swaps to partake in than you could shake a stick at.....I chose to partake in two Charm swaps, the ATC and finally the Candy Swap. This group was invaluable to me. I learned alot about standard protocol for the event, I learned about Sprinkles Cupcakes, I learned that this group of women
was a sincere and caring group. I learned that they are amongst the most generous and genuine people I will have the privilage to meet.
I have a collection of memories that need to be scrapped but I don't want to wait to share them with you. The memories start with me moving my parents back to Calgary after almost 10 years. We were pulling back into Saskatoon late on Sunday night when I called Janet to make arrangements to meet only to discover that she had forgotten we were leaving on Monday and she thought we were leaving on Tuesday. I will chuckle over this moment for years to come imagining the look on her face on the other end of the phone as the realization sunk in.
I spent the entire remaining evening washing clothes and packing. Despite having been up in excess of 36 hours I am proud to say that the only thing that was forgotten was the autograph book that I had been building with the downloads from The House of 3. Our flight left at 5 in the morning whisking us off to Calgary where we cleared US customs and then from there we zipped down to Denver. Upon landing in Denver we HUSTLED our tail feathers from one end of the terminal to the other (for those of you that haven't been in Denver it makes anything in Canada look puny) and got there just in time to jump on the connecting flight to Phoenix.
We arrived on time and my luggage arrived on time but alas poor Janets luggage just didn't have the stamina to get to the connecting flight on time so about 10 hours later it was delivered to us.
We were met at the airport by the Lovely Veronica (from the Yahoo board) she lives in the Phoenix area and was gracious enough to pick up Janet and I, and my other new friend Debbie from Texas.
I was tickeled pink to discover that Veronica was taking us to our first Creative Escape (hereafter referred to as CE) photo oppurtunity. We were headed to the legendary Sprinkles Cupcakes. I don't know how to portray to you the excitement that was generated on Yahoo over these little tasty treats but they are indeed some of the best your tastebuds will encounter.
After we devoured our cupcake and took a few dozen photos of the Sprinkles store we were off to the hotel.
The Sheraton Wild Horse Pass (here after known as WHP) is an awesome 4 star resort that gives you the feeling of being out in the desert in with a Pima Indian band not to far off. Oh wait we were in the middle of the desert. For the first night there my excitement was to get set up in the room and then fall asleep and leave poor Janet to wander around on her own. It might have had something to do with me being up for almost 40 hours.
