Lenore's Visit/Mom's Big Event

What an amazing weekend! My cousin Lenore came in on Friday and stayed with us at the house. We went to dinner at Brio. She was so excited to meet you...you and her were so cute together. You loved playing and giggling with her.

This weekend was our Fertile Dreams Gala and Fertility Awareness Health Fair. This is a project that I volunteered to help with through Dr. Trolice (our fertility doctor). I really didn't know what my role was going to be. First I just made arrangements with the venues...Portofino Bay Hotel (where Daddy and I got married) and Hard Rock Hotel. I very quickly became the entire event planner and organizer. We started in November and the event was April 21st and 22nd.

Lenore was in town because her client, Brenda Strong, was our keynote speaker. Brenda is the National Spokesperson for the American Fertility Association abd a famous actress on the show 'Desperate Housewives'.

The whole weekend made me feel really good about the time and energy I spent on this. The Gala was a huge success and so was the Health Fair. We received so much positive feedback. The last part of the Health Fair was a panel called the Journey to Building a Family. It was my idea to have 'real people' who have experienced infertility tell their stories on how they built their families. Then the attendees can ask questions that would help them know what they should do. I was one of the people on the panel. I had no idea what kind of impact I/we would have on the attendees. There were about 100 people there and most were crying. The moderator asked who was inspired to move forward on their journey at the end and everyone raised their hands. In their feedback they really appreciated what we did and expressed how it helped so much to know they weren't the only ones going through this.

It made me realize that whatever I wind up doing in terms of any kind of work/volunteering I need to be involved with helping people build their families. If I can make one person's journey easier then I want to do that. It's so much more meaningful than anything I have ever done in my life.