That was fast!

Here it is, Tuesday, and CKU is past. It's amazing how quickly time flies. I had so much to do to get ready, and it seems like the days there, while jam-packed, just happened so quickly. The drive home seemed long, but that's the only thing I can say was long. Hopefully, I"ll upload my pics today and can share a couple.

First, I had great fun on Saturday evening visiting with Tori, my sis-in-law. We had a Chicago dog! New for me....yes, I ate the pickle; no, I didn't eat the tomatoes. Uh, yeah, I put ketchup on it. Sorry....it had to be done. Just had to. So, for authentic Chicago food, pizza - check, hot dog - check. Oh, and I gotta give props to Cricket for being the most fun ever. Chicky, I"m sooooooooooooooo glad we got to spend some time together and look forward to doing it again. Tell Sue that Iowa City is at least an hour past Davenport. ;)

Because the final event at CKU (graduation and prizes) does not require a ticket, Tori was able to go in with me and see all the craziness. It was fun though. I made a great poster and was fortunate to win my category. Got a great goodie bag for it. Later that night, roomie Sue and I "worked the crop room" by going around talking to people cropping and looking at albums we hadn't seen from the other tracks. I didn't get to see the AMM Life Lessons one though. I hear it turned out great. :)

The classes were pretty awesome, some better than others. The main class, my album track with Heidi Swapp, was truly awesome. It's too bad that she will be changing the class after this, but hopefully, it will have the same impact on participants. What an amazing experience. It's not so much that, ooh, it's Heidi Swapp. It's really that she shared with us some of herself, something she discovered, something she thought would touch other women, too. And it did touch other women. So many women in the group shared how it touched them, and it was great. I have a lot of work to do to finish my album from the class, but we did a lot of the hard technique work, so the pages should come easily.

The regular classes, the 60- and 90-minute ones, were pretty good. I can't say that any I took were great, but several were ok. The best I saw was the Rusty Pickle 26-Reasons one. Great project. I really like the little book we made in "The Guy in my Life," the board tag book we made in "Festivities at your Fingertips," and Bo Bunny's board book class. The other projects were a little less exciting and really too simple for a CKU albums class. Seriously. Too Simple.

As to the evening activities, they were ok. I had a blast on Wednesday shopping with Lori Bates and Kathy Northup and crew. Wild and crazy chicks. The Yahoo group dinner on Wednesday night drew a small group, but the 10-12 of us had a really fun time. I loved the pizza! Thursday night brought the dorm contests and CKU pep rally. I preferred last year's way of doing these on two nights, but it was ok. The dorm stuff is really getting major....not sure I'll do that again. Had fun seeing it all though. Friday night, no party, but cropping with our album track for 2 hours was scheduled. Heidi Swapp and crew ordered great pizza once the "official" time ended, and we kept going for hours. I loved that and I got a lot done, too. ;)

All in all, thrilled to have had the experience. Not sure how so many do all the CKUs that come along, but happy I went. I made new friends, stepped out of my box, did some great stuff, had tons of fun. Didn't spend *too* much either, which was nice. Now to unpack it all and get back to work on all the projects!

So now, it's Tuesday already. The husband is on a business trip this week, so it'll be another long week around here, or maybe it'll fly by like the rest of them do. Saturday brings a class with miss Ali over at Reminisce, so that'll be cool. At first, I thought of cancelling and saving the credit for Donna D classes in July, but I think I'll go and have fun with Tina, maybe some early dinner before hand, and some coffee talk. Sounds fun, no? Tina, ya ready to do Donna D with me in July??!!