2015 Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-up Weekend in Review

Wow, where do I even begin to review my amazing trip to the beautiful French Lick Resort in French Lick, Indiana for the annual Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up? So much anticipation led up to this trip, and I must honestly say, it did not disappoint. Holly Ehle from Mrs. Ehle's Kindergarten Connections and my teaching partner, Brittany Banister from Mrs. Banister's Kindergarten Kids, really put in the hard work and time to not only put together a great opportunity for all of us teacher bloggers from around the country to get together and collaborate, but for us to also receive some great teacher swag! Seriously, just so amazing. I'm excited to share it all with you, and when I am finished, you have an opportunity to win some teacher swag for yourself! So, here it goes...

I met up with my bestie, Jena Hudson from Sew Much Music, and headed to French Lick on Saturday morning for the day and night full of fun. 

A detour and a few scary minutes of driving through flooded waters later, Jena and I finally arrived in French Lick, excited and anxious to see everyone. 

This was only my second time visiting French Lick Resort, but it took my breath away just like it was my first time. The inside of the resort is seriously stunning.

While waiting for the time to enter our designated room for the meet-up, I immediately began running into some of my favorite people in the resort lobby. One of them being by Breaking Bad buddy, Deedee Wills from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten. I first met Deedee when she presented at the Indiana Kindergarten Conference presented by SDE in November, and I was excited to be able to reunite with her. 

Once the doors opened to the meet-up room, I was instantly surrounded by over 100 of the best teacher bloggers around, and a handful of them were all teachers from my district. 

{The room was once again decorated beautifully from pom centerpieces to name tags by the wonderful Schoolgirl Style.}

{Below are all the girls, minus Brittany Banister, who attended the meet-up from Scott County District 2 in Scottsburg, IN where I teach at. I am so proud and blessed to be a part of a district who encourages and supports all of us to grow professionally through blogging about our teaching.}

While at the meet-up, we were able to enjoy lunch and then we introduced ourselves to everyone. I loved being able to put faces and "real" names to blogs that I have followed for a long time. 

Introductions was then followed up by breaking up into grade levels and conducting our "Teacher Tool Gift Exchange." You can read all about it on my previous post by clicking on the picture below of the teacher tools I received during the exchange.

{Pictured above is the four groups we broke into for the exchange. I was obviously in the Kindergarten group on the top right.}

After the exchange, we were able to see what Holly and Brittany had been teasing us about for weeks. We had donations from several companies such as Lakeshore Learning, Scentos, Vera Bradley, Erin Condren, Creative Teaching Press who provided all of us in attendance with some amazing teacher swag. Everyone was seriously so blown away by the generosity of these companies!

{Below is all of the goodies we were presented with, aka: Teacher SWAG!}

{Above are all the goodies we were given from the above companies. We were clearly excited and thankful!}

After we were all blown away by the amazing gifts, we were released for dinner on our own. We hit up Chicago's pizza in French Lick for dinner and returned to our hotel room for a little friendly game of "Heads Up" on our phones and to change into our pjs.

At 8:30, we headed down in full pajamas and slippers to the PJ Party. A huge thanks to both Teachers Pay Teachers and GoNoodle for sponsoring the party. GoNoodle also donated lanyards for each of us teachers. We had so many fun things at the party to keep us busy such as pillow decorating, a photo booth, GoNoodle fun, a "business card" exchange, and lots and lots of food goodies!

{French Lick has the best ice cream, so we needed wanted to grab some before heading to the PJ party.}

{Photobooth station fun with my favorite ladies!}

{Pillowcase decorating station. Photo credit goes to Brittany Banister's Instagram account: MrsBanistersKindergartenKids.}

{GoNoodle station. Who says only our students can love GoNoodle?!}

{As the fun started to die down, many of us gathered together on the floor with our pillows and enjoyed catching up with others.}

My entire reason for this weekend was to be inspired all over again. I'm inspired almost daily by so many of these wonderful educators via their blogs, and I loved the opportunity to collaborate and continue the inspiration face to face. {Each letter is signed by each person at the meet-up.}

After hours of fun, everyone returned to their rooms, and if others did what my roomies and I did, we stayed up for hours continuing to talk until the wee hours of the morning. 

The next morning we all met for breakfast and said our goodbyes before heading home, rejuvenated and inspired about teaching our little ones.

Whew, now that you've got the inside scoop of all the happenings at the Spring Teacher Blogger Meet-Up 2015, now it is your chance to win your own teacher swag!

You can win all of the items below by entering our giveaway below. Also be sure to check out the fun that the other bloggers at the meet-up had!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up