LA wrap up (for lack of a better title)

Is it weird if I call going to LA representing 5 Minutes for Mom a life changing experience?  Because I keep thinking how can you really change your life in a little over 48 hours... but I feel like I did.  Or started to rather.

As much as I wanted this trip I was also terrified.  All I did was pack some things in a bag, get on a plane, navigate an airport, get on Another plane and land.  But I did it.  And believe me when I say that two years ago... hell ONE year ago... I would not have been able to do this.  Not because I couldn't have gotten away.  But because then?  I did not have it in me.  The push, the drive... the confidence in myself.

Whether I could see it or not, I lost my sense of who I was a very long time ago.  At some point you fall into being a wife, a mother...and while it happened ever so slowly, I didn't know who I was anymore.  Not until I really started to go public with my blogging and put it all out there.  And try like hell to not only write for MYSELF (which is where it started) but to start to get hired to write elsewhere as well.

I can not believe how far I have come... from my first day trips to NYC for blogging to actually working with Conde Nast on Santa's Hideout.  Being in LA to attend the fitness blogger pop up event with Jamba Juice was huge for me.  I know I need to lose weight, I have struggled with it for the last few years.  Coming into the event I was shocked to find that I was basically the second biggest girl there.  In a room full of fitness bloggers what did I expect.  Standing there in front of all those mirrors though was yet another wake up. 

I am changing who I am.  I want to be healthier.  Skinny again.  I want more energy.  I tried my hardest to keep up with all the other girls and for the most part I did a pretty good job.  But a few years ago I would have been standing in the front kicking ass and taking names... not trying to blend into the back.  And you know, I now have photos that look like this.

Where else can you get better motivation to lose weight than that, right? 

Because oh.my.gah.

The other incredible part of the trip were the girls that I met.  So supportive, so encouraging.  Bloggers are really a close knit group I think.  You go in knowing no one and leave feeling like you have made some friends. 

And I am so proud to be a part of that.  Buying my tickets for BlogHer this summer tonight and I am going to keep on going with this travel thing as far as it takes me.

This trip has inspired me to want to do more, travel more, be more...try to get a morning mile started at the boys school.  Which I think I will also volunteer to run.  And I have some ideas I want to run by the YMCA too.

I'm hitting the ground and I'm running.  Changes are coming this time.  And I'm serious when I say that Jamba Juice is a big part of why I am about to make the changes.