From Florida to Garth

As I mentioned in my last post, I headed to sunny Florida last week for our annual planning meetings. I flew in the day before to stay with Aunt Frances and see my old manager, Michelle. When I arrived at Frances' condo, I opened the door and there was dog. I totally forgot that Frances and Tom decided to adopt an 8 year old pup named Cooper, so that was kind of a shock.

Obviously, we immediately took a selfie.

I met Michelle for a quick drink at Red Bar before we headed to dinner at OTC in Mary Brickell Village. The food was really good, but the playlist was even better (think old school Jay-Z and Eminem). Gosh, I really miss Miami.

On Wednesday morning, I headed up to Sole on the Ocean in Sunny Isles to meet up with the rest of my team. Um, talk about amazing. It's off-season, so it felt like we were the only ones in the hotel.

We were welcomed with these goodies on our kitchen counter (yes, I had a kitchen in my room).

Living room...

...and my bedroom. I was able to wake up and look out over the balcony from my bed. Can we move here?

The first day we spent presenting Business Reviews over our territories. Being on the job for only three months, I was a little worried about how I was going to put together enough material for a 30 minute presentation. But I managed and my manager told me I did "freaking awesome". Yay!

We celebrated with dinner at the hotel's restaurant, Alba. The restaurant was actually closed (because it's off-season), but we have a great relationship with the chef, Ralph Pagano, so he opened it up and made us an Indian feast. I had never had Indian food before, but it was yum. Anything spicy is a-ok with me!

The team! (Boo for being blurry.)

Look at the fun decor along the wall!

On Thursday, we finished our planning a little early so we went ahead and covered Friday morning's material. Obviously, we decided to take advantage of "no work Friday" and had a great time on Thursday night.  We headed off to a delicious dinner at Sea Grill and then all headed down to the beach to drink some more wine. I tapped out at 1:30am and there was still a big group down there. Crazy, kids!

Me introducing some of the team to Uber!

On Saturday (back in the ATL), Natalie headed into town to prep for the GARTH BROOKS concert on Sunday!!

After attending Jill and Tyler's baby shower on Sunday, it was time to get ready for one of the best concerts, ever!

Every seat for his concert at Philips Arena cost the same - it was basically first come first serve. I logged in the second tickets went on sale and was able to grab 5 seats... on the floor! Fun Fact: My mom was able to get two tickets to Friday night's show and when she had no luck selling them, Ticketmaster let her swap them out for better tickets on Sunday - no charge! Great to note for future reference. That meant that her and Kathy sat together, and Adam got to join our group.

Totally didn't even notice Ruthie and Hank are in this - ha!

We ran into a college friend, Michael Chapin, in the food court!

Oh, don't mind us and our AWESOME seats!

I mean, seriously? This is with no zoom!

I didn't take any pictures during the concert because I was way too busy singing along, but he was an amazing performer! And so was Trisha! Ah, so much fun! Most definitely worth staying up late on a Sunday.

Sorry, no recipes this time! I can tell you that I had Lobster Linguine at Sea Grill that was amazing. Does that count?