Kentucky

April 23-28 I took 6 students to Louisville, KY for DECA's International Career Development Conference (National Competition). My two state officers went to officer/leadership training, I had two students attend the school-based enterprise academy since our school store was awarded gold level certification, and my two students who placed 2nd at state competition moved on to compete at the national level. Everyone did really well and had a great time! This trip was a little harder for me. By this point I had been gone a lot and this trip was so long. It was 6 whole days without seeing the kids. There was also quite a bit of down time that I had to think about the fact that I missed the kids! It's something I always enjoy but I am super glad to be home and can't wait for summer (30 more school days!).

We arrived in Louisville on a Friday. We had rented a Tahoe which is huge but doesn't quite hold 7 people and their luggage! We stuffed ourselves in and luckily our hotel was only 7 miles away from the airport. After settling into the hotel we went and got some food and explored a little bit.

Saturday we slept in a little and then headed down to the waterfront for Fest-A-Ville. This is the two week long festival celebrating the coming Kentucky Derby. There was a marathon that we watched for a while and then lots of food and a few rides. We listened to a band and the kids mingled with some other students. Down the street from our hotel was an area called 4th street live. It was a nice area of restaurants and bars and we ate most of our meals there. After dinner we went to the opening session where 15,000 DECA members and advisors came together to kick off the conference. We were recognized for our school store and then we watched a fashion show from FIDM.

Hanging out at Fest-A-Ville

On stage for our school store

Virginia is for Lovers!Campaigning for our state president
who was running for national officeSam and Eric

Sunday the workshops and competitions began. I worked from 9-2 running one of the events with some of the other advisors. Then we went to the exhibit hall where we got lots of great ideas for our school store. Sunday night we were supposed to go to a baseball game but it was cold and raining so we went bowling instead. We had a lot of fun!

Sydney and Evan in their matching outfits

Bowling night!

On Monday workshops and competitions continued. Between practicing and taking students back and forth we were pretty busy. Monday evening four of the students went on the Belle of Louisville steamboat. I had to stay back and wait for the other two students to finish their competition. After that we went to a DECA exclusive Lady Antebellum concert which was really good!

Heading out on the steamboat

The girls at the Lady Antebellum concert

Tuesday morning we all got up and went to the mini-awards session. If you received an award here it meant you were a finalist and you had to compete again. My students did not make it through so we went to the Mega Caverns. It is 17 miles of underground caverns that were originally planned to be used as an evacuation site during the Cold War. Now they are used for storage of large things like boats and campers. It was actually pretty cool.

Ready to go exploring!

Tuesday night we went to the grand awards ceremony where Virginia did pretty well. Then we had an ice cream social with our state.

Me and my kiddos!

The girls at the ice cream social

Wednesday we spent the day traveling and were very happy to arrive home! I took Thursday off to spend some time with the kids and it was totally worth it!