Employee of the Year

I won an award this year. It took me a long time to post about it for a couple of reasons - I wanted to have the trophy to show you, and it took me a long time to get comfortable with talking about it. I was kind of embarrassed in the beginning! I like attention when it's about showing off my crafty stuff, but somehow when it came to this I got really shy!

I absolutely love my job. In case you don't know, I work for the US Army and I run an Arts and Crafts program. I really believe in the power of arts and crafts for stress relief, family bonding, and the general well-being it gives. I believe every person has a spark of creativity inside them. Everyone has a different type of creativity from art to drama to music and everything in between. Our job is to provide an environment that inspires people to try new things and find the one that brings them joy. Seeing so many people learn to sew, or paint, or frame, or throw pottery makes it a joy to go to work every day!

My job is to do all the behind the scenes stuff to make sure the program grows and is successful. In the last two years we were able to get the program to the point that if the military decides not to fund Arts and Crafts centers anymore that we would still be able to stay open because we are self-sufficient. Without boring you, there are two types of money - tax payer money and self-generated money. It was really important to me to not have to use tax payer money. So our customers fund the program themselves through their purchases and class attendance.

SOOOO.... to wrap it up, my boss put me in for the Recreation Employee of the Year award. I won at Europe and thought that would be it. But low and behold, I won at the Army level! I was so astounded and flattered! There is another award called "Career Employee of the Year" for employees that have worked for MWR for years and done awesome things. The lady who won that was from Europe too, so the region decided to present our awards at the theater awards ceremony called The Toppers.

So we went! Rob got to go with me and we had a blast!

All these photos (except my iphone pic) are from Martin Greeson, the official photographer.

The Toppers are like the Tony's. They award best plays, actors, actresses, costume designers, makeup, the whole works!

In between every award was musical numbers! It was really entertaining! The acts were GOOD!

I was like a giddy school girl up there. It was kind of embarrassing! And I couldn't stand there gracefully because the award was SO heavy! Haha!

 The lady standing there with me is the Regional Director for my organization! It was really neat to have her do the presentation!

 This is our Stuttgart leadership. Left to right is our Command Seargent Major, my boss Oliver, our Deputy to the Commander, me, and our Garrison Commander. They all got to present awards to actors and stuff, so they were going to be there anyway. But it was super neat to have them all there! There were also lots of people from Stuttgart because they were there to support the plays and actors that were nominated for awards.

The crowd was EXCITED about these awards! They went nuts every time their play was nominated for something! It was really fun to be there.

This is the lady that won the Career Employee of the Year. Look how graceful she looks! Her trophy was also stunning!!

I have had people joking with me for days about what to use the trophy for. Fruit bowl, candy dish, fish bowl... I took it to work today and had even more jokes. So after lunch today I filled it with fruit! It really is a beautiful trophy!

I'm really grateful for my boss for putting me in for this and for all the people I have gotten to work with over the years and work with now. I'm not alone and there is no way I could be successful at my job without amazing people working with me. I really do feel like this was a team effort that spanned over the last nine years. This isn't a cheesy "I want to thank my ... " speech. I really do love what I do and I'm flattered that I got an award for doing it well!

If you want to see more pictures from the event you can see them on the website for the official photographer here: Greesonpix.com (Just so you know, the website doesn't work right on iPad)