DC

Hello Friends! I missed you!

I've been out of touch over the past few days as I took a two day trip with a colleague to Washington D.C. to attend a Strengths Quest seminar. It was an awesome experience and if you've never heard of Strengths Quest I urge you to look it up. The quick and dirty explanation is that it's an assessment that identifies your top five "strengths" from 34 different talent "themes". Mine happen to be:

Empathy - the ability to understand the feelings of others
Communication - the ability to put thoughts into words
Strategic - the ability to see many different options in any given situation
Connectedness - the ability to see how everything connects
Discipline - ability to organize and be productive

So we spent two days learning about all 34 themes, how they play out in day to day life and how to build upon them to improve oneself both personally and professionally. I'm excited to put this information to work for me and to share it with my students and my colleagues. The best part about the whole thing is that Strengths focuses on what you are already good at and encourages you to build upon your talents rather than focusing on your weaknesses. At it's core, Strengths believes that "fixing" your areas of weakness may prevent failure but building on your strengths can lead to excellence.

As a person who continually focuses on the negative (my glass is always half empty, remember?) I love the idea of turning my attention and energy toward things I'm already good at.

Bored?

Well how about I tell you a little about where we had dinner? We ate at Rosa Mexicano WHERE THEY MAKE FRESH GUACAMOLE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! No kidding. And it was awesome. Here's a little snapshot of me getting excited about the guac making going on behind me...
Yum.


Now you might be wondering what I did with Picklebug while I was on this adventure. Well, sweet, wonderful, caring MG agreed that he could handle watching PB while I was gone. And since Picklebug spends most of his day at daycare - I thought it wouldn't be so bad for either of them. MG would only have to worry about three feedings and bath time. Not too bad, right?


But on Monday Picklebug developed a chest cold and spent both days I was gone at home. With MG. (Who did an EXCELLENT job! He took PB to the doc, administered medication, fed him on time and kept him entertained for almost 48 hours. My husband ROCKS!) Needless to say both were excited and relieved to see me walk in the door yesterday!

Now that you are caught up, go grab some guac (since I know you are craving it now!) and have a great Thursday.