America's Hat

One of the reasons for my recent blog pause was this enormous conference I was in charge of for my extended team. The conference was in Vancouver, BC and had about 500 attendees. In the past there have been two or three people managing the event but this year it was just me so it was pretty stressful. Happily, the event was a success and it reflected well on me, which I am glad about since I will be leaving on maternity leave soon and wanted this to be something my management remembers.

One perk of being in charge of the event was that I got to assign the nice rooms to our executives and speakers. Most importantly, I got to assign myself one of the penthouse suites! It was both awesome and a little depressing that it was almost double the size of our condo. As such, Paul and Leah decided to come up toward the end of my conference to take advantage of the nice room and see some sights.

Since traveling alone with Leah is a challenge, we decided I would drive up and Paul would fly up with Leah. Upon arriving at the airport he discovered that despite my research, Leah did, in fact, need a passport to fly to Vancouver (a birth certificate is fine to cross by train, car, or boat). So he went straight to the train station from the airport and took the train up to Vancouver which departed at 7 and arrived after 11 pm (all this with luggage and a toddler). I would have given up and gone home!!! They arrived in Vancouver late that night and Paul was totally calm and said the train ride was "nice." I need his disposition, I was a stressed out mess just thinking of them.

While I finished up my conference they went to Stanley Park and rented a bike and bike trailer and rode all around the park. Leah loved the trailer which inspired us to buy one when we got back. Once I was done, we were able to check out some sights together including the Olympic Torch and a few areas of downtown Vancouver. We had a super fun time visiting America's Hat.