February, in a nutshell...

I have a very good friend (aka. Amanda:) who very sensitively told me I'm not doing a very good job of watering my blog. That was several months ago and here I am still averaging about one post a month :) I do apologize for the lack of stability in my updating. However, I feel I am somewhat justified for the recent silence. I was in Birmingham for about a week and half visiting my sister for the birth of her fourth child. Yes, that's right, I said fourth. I don't know how she is able to do life day in and day out with that many children (all under the age of five) but not only does she do it, she does it amazingly. Thatcher David Reed was born February 10th! It was so good to be there for the birth of my sixth niece/nephew and I was able to get a healthy dose of life with children :)

I also got a not so healthy dose of bronchitis from my parents just in time for me to fly back to California. This wasn't quite as easy as just hopping on my flight home though. Because I was flying standby I wasn't able to get an open seat for two days (I needed to get back in order to leave again for Chick-fil-A's annual Seminar with Corey) so I resorted to buying a one way ticket for FAR more than a one way ticket should cost :( I set off on my overpriced American Airlines journey back to Rancho Cucamonga and Corey on Friday morning only to turn around and head to San Antonio on Saturday. Oh, I forgot to mention that I started out at four in the morning throwing up and trying desperately to not get dehydrated by drinking ginger ale, only to throw it back up again (sorry, TMI). As you can imagine, not the greatest of airline traveling experiences. I seem to have a knack for those :) Our trip to San Antonio is an entirely different story...

Let's just say that Corey is not too fond of Southwest's boarding policy as we weren't able to sit next to each other on our first flight and couldn't hear The Office on the second (because of the loud hoodlems behind us). While San Antonio seems like a wonderful city, our one free afternoon was spent in the urgent care for me to get a shot of steroids and a breathing treatment (and the incorrect diagnosis of "environmental allergies", when in reality I couldn't breathe because I had bronchitis), so we weren't really able to see very much of it. The details of Seminar are too extensive to share here but we did enjoy our time there and all that Chick-fil-A provided for us.

Chick-fil-A's Seminar is where the Symbol of Success Winners are presented and honored on stage, which made this year's Seminar extra special because Corey hit Symbol! I've said this before but Symbol is when your store does a 17% increase in sales from the previous year of sales. Let me just brag on my husband for a moment by saying that we were third in the West Coast market for Sales Dollar increase from the previous year and first in the West Coast market for Sales Percentage Increase from the previous year (also, he sent me beautiful tulips and chocolate covered strawberries for V-day while I was in Birmingham...I felt like that needed to be mentioned as well:)! Our store also hit the two million milestone mark! I am very proud of the Chick-fil-A Operator Corey is becoming and looking forward to what is in store for us! Hitting Symbol also means that we get a one year lease to a brand new Ford vehicle (we get the title if we hit it again next year :).
This is what we got...

Seminar reminds me of how generous and honorable the Cathy family is. We owe them so much...Corey and I would never have met if not for WinShape and we would certainly not be where we are without Chick-fil-A. We celebrated Truett's 90th Birthday at Seminar! I honestly could not sing without crying. From this man's vision, hard work and honest living thousands of lives have been touched and changed. I cannot describe how truly grateful I am to him and his family for living their lives truly honoring our Father.

Corey and I are tremendously blessed beyond what we could imagine. It's pretty amazing to look back through your life and see how the Lord pieces the puzzle together and how evident His grace is in all our lives.

ps...I'm on antibiotics now for my sickly self. I just hope I didn't infect a large majority of the Chick-fil-A population while trying to get over my "environmental allergies".