I am a strong believer that when you need it the most, something happens in your life or someone steps into your life to help guide you in the right direction or confirm you are on the right path. That event happened this weekend at the "Alpaca Training Academy" sponsored by Autumn Mist Alpacas, K-Ran Alpacas and Autumn Kiss Alpacas. I openly admit, I didn't want to go. It was a stressful week at work, I was tired and I was getting frustrated. I love all of my Alpacas, but it didn't feel like we were getting anywhere. Dan dragged me along (with me complaining the entire time) - we already paid the tuition, so we better go! I signed up for all of the Marketing Classes, put on by Nancy Ogan of "Look At Me Now Alpacas" and farm manager for "Double "O" Good" Alpacas and Dan took all of the fiber classes taught by Cheryl Gehyl and Wini Lebrecque. Right out of the gate, Nancy got me - "It's all about attitude, maintaining a good one and being positive!" Almost felt like she was in my brain and talking directly to me - snap out of it Jodie and remember why your doing this. From that first point on, things started to change. Nancy's "Out of the Pen" marketing ideas started to get the creative juices flowing again - I couldn't wait to get home to start putting pen to paper. At the end of day two, Dan's look was priceless. My seminar ended early, so off I went to find him. I found him in a state of shock. Cheryl Gehly was evaluating our junior herdsires fleece "Storm" - and had nothing but good things to say - those standing around the table were silent as they listened to her praise and congratulations - - "This fleece is stunning!" Cheryl gave Storm's fleece character a score of EXCELLENT, there's only one score higher than that! For us, this was huge and a boost in confidence that we truly needed. We are on the right path! We ended our weekend seminar with a one-on-one session with Wini Lebrecque, who patiently answered all of our questions, helped interpret histograms and even walked around with us and helped us to evaluate some females we were interested in purchasing. To hear from Wini that I was on the right track and had a good eye - made my weekend. We went thinking we would be the first to leave on Sunday, only to be the last to go. The ride home was far different - it was filled with "OMG's did you hear was Cheryly said, and then Wini said this..." it was also filled with "we should do this, or let's do that." The Alpaca Academy happened right when we needed it most - it's renewed our energy and our passion for what we are doing and where we are going with our farm. And we finally found our tag line "Fiber * Family * Fun!" - - we breed for the Fiber, are on this great adventure with our kids, and are having a blast doing it! Thank You for a great weekend!