Last year I had many of my blogging friends tell me, “you have to get to Mom 2.0 next year.”  They weren’t just recommending it, they were requiring it.

So this year, I made it my mission to get there.  Lifetime Moms sponsored me… and I left Thursday morning with such a huge sense of excitement to get to NOLA and get into the Mom 2.0 experience.

Magic always seems to happen when our community gets together.  It’s a combination of passion, happiness, excitement, dedication and love for what we all do.  We learn from each other. We grow from each other. We become inspired by each other.  We become better at what we do from each other.  We’ve all come to this spot for different reasons and different stories… and it’s the sharing of those stories which makes each and every single one of us so unique and different.  I love to hear the stories… that’s what captures me the most at conferences like this… it’s the “what brought you here…”

For me, it’s all about the engagement.  By nature, I’m a people person. I’m so used to seeing and listening to my blogging friends online, and sometimes in just 140 character bites, that it’s refreshing to come and hang out with everyone and see each other.  Really see each other.   And then when you see each other, it’s all about the community and the togetherness and making some blogging-magic happen.

And magic happens in many different ways…

There was something very special to me that I had the opportunity to participate in this past weekend… a Service Project with Let’s Play!

Let’s Play is a community partnership led by Dr Pepper Snapple Group to get kids and families active nationwide.  I’m proud to say that I am one of their ambassador’s. Their goal is to help families achieve balance by providing tools, places and inspiration to make physical activity a daily priority.

So when I heard that Let’s Play was hosting a Service Project at Mom 2.0 with KaBOOM, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. What I love about KaBOOM is that they bring the community together to build playgrounds for kids.  KaBOOM is a national non-profit dedicated to saving play for America’s children… and it was so beyond special to see Mom 2.0 embrace this project and allow moms the chance to volunteer their time while at the conference. They create PLAY-places for kids to be kids, and I love that about them.  As a mom of 4 little boys, I know the importance of play… and how playing breeds imagination.  A playspace can be ANYTHING.. a spaceship, pirate ship, moon, etc… the possibilities are endless! It was very emotional to be in New Orleans, in an area that had been devastated by Katrina and build a beautiful playspace for kids. It was one of the most incredible things to be a part of… take a look at some of these photos from the day…

From the beginning when we got there… to drilling and cementing and painting and banging and lifting all the way to cleaning the playspace… it was AWESOME!

There aren’t accurate enough words to fully describe what it felt like to see something stand that would truly benefit so many kids, especially in an area that had been just devastated not too long ago.  It felt good.  It felt really good.

Thank you Mom 2.0 and Let’s Play for making this happen.

xo