A Milestone Birthday, and a WordPress Happy Hour Event

Milestone birthdays always seem to make us pause and reflect on our past achievements, experiences and life in general. We often think of our family, and the friends we’ve made along the way, and maybe even those we’ve crossed paths with who were less than friendly. No matter what we focus on, these occasions are worthy of our attention and celebration.

Last week, we celebrated theTravelsketcher’s milestone birthday. As I mentioned in last week’s post, we had a nice lunch and a visit to Pittock Mansion on the day itself, and later in the week, we enjoyed a party at Tim and Lisa’s beautiful home.

It was Tim’s birthday too. Interestingly, their birthdays are just three days apart. Terry and Tim have been best friends since they were teenagers, and I have mentioned Tim and Lisa in many previous posts; click here to read more. They are dear friends and traveling buddies, and we have shared many adventures with them in several places around the globe.

Lisa pulled out all the stops for this party. She decorated the back yard stunningly with hanging lanterns, flowers, a beautifully set table and other special touches.

We even hired a caterer, Alison, owner of A Wonderland of Food, who prepared a multitude of delicious appetizers.

TheTravelsketcher didn’t want a big party, so we limited the guests to our daughter and son-in-law and one other couple, our new dear friends, Karen and Diana.

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’ C.S. Lewis

There was much fun, revelry, music, singing and dancing after enjoying our meal.

Friends are the family you choose. Jess C. Scott

Age is an issue of mind over matter, if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Mark Twain

It was a wonderful party and everyone had a great time.

Switching gears here to a new topic: a few weeks ago, theTravelsketcher and I each received an email invite to a happy hour function sponsored by WordPress. We were quite intrigued so we accepted. Once we arrived, we learned that WordPress was hosting a four day WordCamp conference in Portland. Click here for details. Apparently, these are yearly events held in various locations around the globe.

The event was attended by many WordPress employees, employees of the umbrella company, Automattic, as well as other bloggers. If we had known about the conference we would have attended, however, we never received any notices about it. Interestingly, every blogger I talked to during the event had no idea about the conference either, just the happy hour. So, when I chatted with WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, I politely suggested that they kick up their advertising. Later in the evening, we met Matt’s assistant, and she confirmed that most bloggers mentioned the same thing, that they had not heard about the conference, and she promised to do better in the future.

Regardless, it was a fun evening, we met bloggers and WordPress employees from Australia, The UK, Brazil and all over the US. We had a few questions that we received answers for and found all the WP employees to be friendly and helpful. We connected with other bloggers and all in all it was a great evening. Oh, photography was not allowed, and I actually followed the rules. 😮‍💨

Have you heard of or attended WordCamp or a WordPress sponsored happy hour? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Wishing you grand adventures,

Tricia