BlogHer’11 with the #MomMob

My head is still swim­ming from all of our Cal­i­for­nia adven­tures and BlogHer’11! It was a whirl­wind of peo­ple, events, par­ties, friends, net­work­ing, and a whole bunch of crazy!

I’ve been to very large National Sci­ence Teacher Asso­ci­a­tion con­ven­tions, so I had a rough idea of what to expect in terms of the high num­bers of peo­ple and large expo hall. But, wow–a large teacher’s con­fer­ence and a large blog­ging con­fer­ence are two VERY dif­fer­ent things! BlogHer’11 was close to 4,000 mostly women who all under­stand the need for blog­ging & social media. It was a blast and I have a group of 6 other ladies from Ari­zona to thank for that ( Amy B, Sara B, Amy L, Karen, Kara, and Becca!

The #Mom­Mob as we called our­selves ended up being a genius idea! We banded together in almost every sense of the word–all or parts of us trav­el­ing together, room­ing together, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and invi­ta­tions, secur­ing spon­sors, attend­ing events…it was fab­u­lous! And, it got even more excit­ing upon arrival when peo­ple rec­og­nized the #Mom­Mob hash­tag from twit­ter and were excited to find out who/what “the #Mom­Mob” was! We all wore #Mom­Mob but­tons and adorned items like lap­tops and bags with the hash­tag thanks to SMO Stick­ers (they’re a per­fect, inex­pen­sive way to “adver­tise”!) Here’s what my bag looked like…

The trip began by rid­ing in style with vehi­cles spon­sored by Lexus and Toy­ota. Seri­ously, how sweet is this Lexus RX350?! Nice!! (More infor­ma­tion about the cars/road trip can be found on twit­ter #LexusToyotaBlogHer11. And, thanks to the San Diego Air­port, we got to park our sweet rides for free!). We also had all kinds of great road trip snacks like Pop Chips, Chiq­uita Fruit Chips, ZonePer­fect Bars, Crys­tal Light Pure Fit­ness drink mix, and spe­cial #Mom­Mob coupons for yummy Chick-fil-A sand­wiches from Chick-fil-A Chan­dler Fes­ti­val! Plus, we had spe­cial Snug­gMugg drink hold­ers to wrap hot or cold bev­er­ages and new super awe­some soft bot­tles from Platy­pus Hydra­tion!I LOVE these bot­tles as they com­pletely flat­ten when not in use and can con­form to fit in any cup holder!! Such easy trans­port! It was per­fect for our whole time in Cal­i­for­nia & Big Brother loved drink­ing out of it at Dis­ney­land!

After attend­ing the #Dis­neyAna­heim event, we met up with the entire #Mom­Mob to host our Snack ‘n Go pic­nic spon­sored by Fry’s Food (one of our main spon­sors). It was great to kick things off at BlogHer in a casual way, meet­ing with so many Ari­zona blog­gers! Our other main spon­sor was Angie’s Ket­tle Corn (sooooooo goood!)! Often times, you could find us tot­ing our Angie’s bags, shar­ing the yummy ket­tle corn good­ness with many other BlogHer atten­dees! Stay tuned for some great give­aways from these spon­sors! And, the really fun stuff?! All the par­ties and events! Here’s a high­light of some my favorite things:

1. Best Meal =  Hash House a go go with the @ThisisGMC team
Seri­ously, just look at those ridicu­lously GINORMOUS plates of scrump­tious food!! Since we ended up hav­ing to miss the GMC ‘Lend a Green Thumb’ Event (to host the pic­nic), we were thrilled to go to break­fast with the GMC team. And, eat break­fast we did! Joe seemed to know all about Hash House and told us in advance about the size of the dishes…we thought maybe there was some exag­ger­at­ing going on. But, no, they were the biggest plates plat­ters of food we’ve ever seen. Unique dishes (like snick­ers pan­cakes, bacon waf­fles, etc) that were SOOOOOOooooo good and obvi­ously gigan­tic. The food was del­ish; the GMC cars we got to ride in were sweet (I LOVED the GMC Aca­dia with seat­ing for 8!); and the com­pany was great!

2. Most nerve-wracking, turned most unique & fun = #Oper­a­tionGlory Flash­mob!!! (aka MobHer’11)

This really does deserve it’s own post (so stay tuned for that with videos & pic­tures galore). Becca, Karen, and I were happy to rep­re­sent the #Mom­Mob in the Flash­mob (appro­pri­ate that we par­tic­i­pated isn’t it), while the rest of our group took pic­tures and video! So fun!

3. Most fun party = Clever Girls “I’m with the Brand”

Rooftop, Hotel Sola­mar. Super fun, super “rock­star”! It fea­tured the Smurfs (which Big Brother is now intrigued by and referred to as “elves”, lol!) and a whole bunch of fun things to do! We got tem­po­rary “tat­toos” (notice the pink “#Mom­Mob “tat­tooed” on Becca’s arm above), had a hilar­i­ous car­i­ca­ture done of the group…

…and gen­er­ally, “par­tied like rockstars”!

We had all 3 lev­els of the posh Stin­ga­ree Night­club all to our­selves, not open to the public–just us super cool blog­gers! The spon­sors were great; the weather was GORGEOUS (yet another rooftop soiree); the food was SO good (by FAR the best of any other party); and there was even a celebrity appear­ance by Top Chef Final­ist, Brian Malarkey (head chef at Sear­sucker in San Diego). 5. Favorite celebrity sighting…

If you don’t count the mup­pets (because there is going to be more on that later…eek, it was SO fun), then it def­i­nitely was trainer Bob Harper (from the Biggest Loser). A lucky group of 50 got to do a Bob work­out, then there was a yummy break­fast (thanks to Quaker) and Q&A with Bob! “Believe in your­self, trust the process, change for­ever” was Bob’s answer to a great ques­tion from @FamilyNLifeLV! Seems like a good mantra to have! Then, of course, there was The Help screen­ing and event, which was fan­tas­tic (and you can enter a fun give­away for through the 20th), the expo hall, swag, cool peo­ple, other par­ties (that I just don’t have any­more steam to write about in this small novel), more swag, more good food, more danc­ing (um, can we say, “Sparklecorn?!”), more peo­ple, still more swag, and, well, you get the idea! So, thank you #Mom­Mob ladies for mak­ing my first BlogHer expe­ri­ence com­pletely unfor­get­table and thanks to all of our fab spon­sors for mak­ing our trip more affordable!