Walk on the Wild Side

{Texas Bloggers Unite at Sea World for a Slumber Party}

I am still recovering from such a wonderful weekend.  A group of Texas bloggers were invited by The Motherhood to join together for a night of fun and learning at Sea World.  As you know, I love Sea World, so I couldn’t wait to go.  Plus I got to meet several amazing women I had never met before and reunite with a couple whom I had.  I love meeting other bloggers in real life.  There’s something special about spending time together outside of social media.

San Antonio is about a 4 1/2 hour drive from my town.  My former mother-in-law lives about an hour and half from my house in the same direction so I dropped the girls off for a night with Meemaw on my way to Sea World. They were excited since the weekend consisted of horses, shopping and cowboy church.  Plus isn’t everything always better at grandma’s?

We gathered together in front of Sea World around 5:30 PM, well supposed to have been there by 5 but traffic!  We were given a tour of the park by Sea World’s finest, Chance.  He told us all about the park, lots of information about fish, sharks, whales, and well honestly I could go on and on.  Lots of information that I haven’t even processed yet.  We learned so much.  Over dinner Dan Decker from Sea World told us all about their conservation efforts and some amazing facts.  He asked us questions and it was very nice to sit, enjoy dinner and have a great conversation among friends.  Dinner was much more personal than just some speech, you could tell that Sea World truly valued our opinions and wanted us to get to know the company.

Although there is plenty I’d love to share all about, I am going to take this post to introduce you to the other Texas Bloggers.  Since it’s only Monday my head is still spinning from the busy weekend and I haven’t even gotten a chance to go through all the photos yet.  We do have a flickr group created for our WildSide SeaWorld event where we plan to all upload our photos together to share. I can’t wait to share more about the trip with all my readers and show the amazing photos everyone took.

{Meet the Texas Bloggers}

Erica from Austin, TX blogs at A Healthy Mom.  I can’t wait to see this woman’s vlogs, I’m not kidding when I say this lady had her FLIP in hand the whole time.  I bet she even caught some pretty funny bloopers on camera.  She was so sweet and a very new mommy.  Erica unfortunately wasn’t able to sleep over with us because she had to go home to her new baby, but who could blame her?  I love babies!  She stayed late and showed back up at 6 AM!  Which is very impressive.  What a trooper, huh?

Joy from Austin, TX blogs at Mommy’s Joy.  When we did our introductions my first thought of Joy was ‘gosh she is so adorable with that short, sporty hair style’.  I didn’t recognize her from her twitter profile picture.  My first comment was ‘did you cut your hair?’  I just love it, don’t you?  Outside of being a mommy and wife (and besides blogging of course) her life centers around tennis.  Her husband is a tennis pro and she even helps run a women’s tennis group. Multitasking and dedication is all I can say.  I can’t wait to learn even more about her and keep in touch through twitter.

Julie from Houston, TX blogs at Using My Words. First I want to say, can I please have some of your energy Julie?  This woman is amazing.  She was the mother of the group, the number one hostess with the mostess. Before we even all arrived at Sea World this lady was sending out emails, checking in with us all, making sure we had everything, asking if we needed anything and keeping things straight.  I bet her house is organized and everything is color coded.  Which I wouldn’t discount, believe me I wish mine was!  During our introductions she even had us pick our favorite song to add to the playlist for our night time listening.  How amazing, right?  That’s not all folks, she had several baskets setup with tooth brushes, tooth paste, deodorant and all the items you could have possibly forgot to bring.  Because remember, this was a camp out, not hotel stay.  I can’t wait to get together again with this wonderful lady and I must say kudos to her for helping organize and pull off such an amazing sleep-over!

Kami from Katy, TX blogs at Communication Overtones.  Kami not only is her own personal blogger but she is also the Social Media Expert for Sea World in San Antonio.  She was the go-to woman for this great slumber party.  However, besides working for Sea World she was able to kick off her shoes and relax with us.  This woman knows her stuff too, I truly enjoyed chatting with her about social media and learned some things as well.  Of course we connected on a personal level too, sharing stories about family.  Kami helped guide the discussions throughout our tour and reminded the Sea World employees of great stories to share and amazing facts, some of things we might not have asked about.  Although Kami is an expert in her field you can tell from talking with her that she truly valued our opinions.  As I mentioned above, Sea World was reaching out to us and loved our feedback.  Not only do I look forward to the next event we can hang out together again but I wouldn’t mind an opportunity to work with her.  I can tell Kami is someone you would want on your team.

Heather from Dallas blogs at Your Frugal Buddy (formally Your Coupon Buddy).  This weekend actually wasn’t the first time Heather and I have met.  She is a local blogger to me and we have been to another DFW Chix gathering together.  Although that gathering was only a couple of hours and this time was over night.  I have gotten to know Heather a little before this event through skype group conversations but it’s always a pleasure to meet up again.  Her blog is a great source for money saving and a place to find coupons.  It’s great for people like me, who don’t do their own price match ups with coupons and just want one place to find it all.  She tells you how to get the most for your money.

Kelly from Austin, TX blogs at Savvy Moxie.  Although she is a fairly new blogger and a twitter newbie she has a thrust for knowledge and already loves it.  It doesn’t take long for someone to get sucked into social media does it?  Sharing real life stories with Kelly while laying in our sleeping bags on blow up mattresses was fun.  We laughed about old stories of our families and reminisced about the birth of our children.  She was a lot of fun to be around and a great person to chat with on any subject.  I have faith she will grow her blog even larger and I hope we keep in touch throughout her journey doing it.  Too bad she doesn’t live closer, otherwise I’d drag her out for some girls fun.

Debi from San Antonio, TX blogs at San Antonio Busy Kids.  She has a disabled son so of course we had plenty to talk about.  As you know I first started this blog to write about Gab and share her story, it just grew from there.  Growing a wonderful network of friends no matter how far away they live has been amazing for me.  It is a true inspiration to share stories with other mothers who can relate.  I love meeting bloggers in person and meeting Debi was a real treat.  She was so sincere, laid back and real.  I look forward to seeing her again one day and would love for our children to even meet.  I know I could learn so much from her.

Rachel from Corpus Christi, TX blogs at A Southern Fairytale.  I love me some Rachel!  We first met at Blissdom ’09.  Since February we have tweeted together a lot.  She made me the cutest camera strap cover (photos coming soon) and I had her make one for my mom for Christmas too.  I love homemade gifts.  Rachel is so loving and true.  I swear to you, she just puts off good vibes being around her.  Corny but honest.  She was the woman behind the camera most the trip.  Matter of fact she took so many photos that I opted out.  Her camera was clicking non-stop.  Plus she’s a much better photographer than I am and I knew she would share.

Colleen from San Antonio blogs at Baby Potential.  She is so fun.  She was always smiling and laughing.  Colleen is also one of those women whom you have hair envy over.  I swear to you this woman looked just as amazing when she got in her vehicle at Sea World on Sunday as she did when she stepped out of it on Saturday.  Her perfect curls stayed tight all night, even through a pony-tail and fish water splashing.  Plus Sunday morning was somewhat foggy and my hair was even frizzy.  Thankfully Colleen didn’t have too far to drive home because she didn’t sleep all night.  I heard she pulled an all nighter watching Glee from her iPhone.  I HAVE to see that show, heard so many good things about it.  I look forward to learning more about her and reading both of her blogs.

Dawn from San Antonio blogs at Not Going Postal. This woman was hilarious!  She was making everyone crack up at the very beginning of the night.  She brought gifts for us all which was awesome and she was just a total sweetheart.  Plus her birthday was Sunday and she chose to spend it with us.  Of course after eating cupcakes for breakfast at least she can say she had the funnest birthday celebration ever.  I mean who has had a Sea World party before?  I can’t wait to see her again at our next event and already have her blog open to read more.

Emily from New York is Co-Founder of The Motherhood.  So no, Emily is not a Texas Blogger.  However she is from Dallas, TX so that counts, right?  Plus The Motherhood was the one who hosted this wonderful get together for us Texas Bloggers so we can’t be more thankful!  I had actually gone to one other event hosted by The Motherhood before at the Fort Worth Zoo yet Emily didn’t make it there.  So this was my first time meeting her.  It was great having her at this event and I’m so glad she was able to fly back home for it.  Of course after feeding the dolphins and them splashing all over her on Sunday she probably ran off all the people on the plane ride home.  It makes me giggle just to think of the smell of fish, although I know Emily thought it was all worth it.  She truly brought a great group together and I am very appreciative of that.  If it wasn’t for Emily I’m not sure we would have all met.  I hope she comes back to TX to visit us again soon!

This concludes the list of Texas Bloggers who attended the Sea World Walk on the Wild Side event.  I loved each and every one of these women and I really can not wait until we meet again.  I plan to keep in touch with them through all our favorite social media platforms and learn more about them through their blogs.