Destin and Pensacola

A friend of mine from high school drove down to the panhandle with her family for spring break. We met in Destin for an early lunch.

One of her daughters is to next to her and the daughter's friend behind.

On Friday Jessica and I drove to Pensacola for the Extraordinary Women's Convention in Pensacola. They have them in several city through the U.S. They take place on Friday 7-10 and Saturday 8:30-4:00. If you sign up for the next year at the conference, it's only $49. A bit more online, and it goes up a lot nearer to the conference and is $109 at the door!

They have a face book pageHere. Some of the pictures below are from that page. Others were taken by Jessica, myself or someone in line with us.

Kasy Van Norman, Karen Kingsbury, Liz Curtis Higgs, Angie Smith. 

With Anne Kingsbury, Karen's mom

Karen Kingsbury

Jessica with Karen Kingsbury's daughter Kelsey and Kelsey's husband Kyle who sang at the convention.

Margaret Feinberg. I really enjoyed hearing her. She was funny, yet had a sound message about happiness and joy despite her struggles with cancer.

Michael O' Brien lead the worship music. Everyone loves him. 

Kyle Kupecky sang, and Mercy Me had the late concert Friday night. We left because it was really loud, and Jessica already had a headache.

This is the first time I'd heard Liz and she is funny and amazing and very genuine. I read all of her Bad Women of the Bible series when I was writing my devo about Bible women (The One Year Devotions for Girls Starring Women of the Bible), so it was nice to meet her in person. 

I have interacted with her briefly a couple of times at ICRS in the past, but she was signing her books set in Scotland (I think), and I got them for someone else since I don't read those.

We have her kid's books The Pumpkin Patch Parable, The Parable of the Lily, The Sunflower Parable, The Pine Tree Parable.

Tim Hawkins was there, too, but no pictures of him. He was funny, but honestly you could tell he was trying to be funny--sometimes too hard. But Margaret and Liz were just genuinely funny because they are women, and they knew what we could all relate to. 

If you ever have a chance to go to EWC, go. And take someone you are close to so you can share the experience.

The Weekend

I have a few more pictures of Tyler and Rick from last weekend at the Louisville Comic Con.

Ty at Job Corp near Mammoth Cave.

This past weekend Tyler and some of the other guys had a weekend pass and went to Louisville together with no adult supervision. Tyler, of course, is 23 and would be fine. But I don't know the guys he was with. I haven't heard from him yet so don't know how it went.

Adam had a week of rifle training at his reserve base, and he's back safely from that and did quite well with it.

Jessica and I went to the Extraordinary Women's Convention in Pensacola. It's always on a Friday night and Saturday.

We stop in Destin for shopping on the way each year.

 Michael O'Brien leads the worship every year. He's a really good guy.

 Comedienne Chonda Pierce spoke first. Last time I heard her, she was pretty inappropriate for a Christian women's convention, but this time she was better. We still could have done without so much sex talk. It may have been totally appropriate for the adult women, but there are always home school girls who are early teens. Chonda talked about her husband turning to drink a few years ago, the separation they went through and the redemption of their marriage also. She's had a lot of real life battles that she shares defusing the pain with humor.

 Then Jeremy Camp sang. He is an amazing young man with a lot of passion for Jesus.

 Jessica's future mother-in-law was there with a church group. We got to introduce her to Karen, Kelsey and Kyle.

 Saturday morning started out with Kyle Kupechy, Karen's son-in-law singing and then Karen speaking. But the schedule said it started at 9:00. I got there about 9:10 and it had really started at 8:30. The correction was on their facebook page, but I didn't know about it. So Jessica and I missed Kyle and caught the end of Karen's talk. I'll see her again in June at ICRS.

 Then Kasey Van Norman spoke.

She was followed by Margaret Feinberg who is battling cancer.

We had a lunch break and went to David's Bridal to look at wedding dresses. We set up an appointment for later in the day to try on dresses.

Lisa Whelchel who was Blair on Facts of Life spoke after lunch. Any watch that? She went through a divorce about three years ago. She was on Survivor Philippines. I don't think I could do that.

Miss Kay from Duck Dynasty ended the conference. She was a refreshing change. She just said it like it was. It wasn't worked out and refined like many of the testimonies. She talked about Phil being an alcoholic (and a mean one!) the first ten years of their marriage and the separation they went through.

I think all of the speakers have been through painful things in the past--alcoholism of a family member, separation or divorce, cancer or other illnesses. I guess that's why they do what they do. To share the pain and the victory.

If you get a chance to go to EWC (used to be Extraordinary Christian Women but is not Extraordinary Women's Convention) then go. Take a daughter, sister or friend.

After the convention, we went back to the Bridal Shop. Jessica had three dresses she wanted to try on. She chose the second one. Sorry, but I can't show you. 

But here I am paying for the dress, bra, slip, preservation pack and cloth bag.

 We took a very scenic way home to look at possible wedding locations for Jessica.

So that was our weekend. How was yours?

Time Away and Time Home

Jessica and I left the house around 10 a.m. for Pensacola Friday. Our convention didn't start until 7 pm, but we wanted to stop along the way.

We more or less ate our way through Destin. Red Brick Oven  Pizza for lunch. When we  ordered we found out there was a wait, so we went to the candy store.

We didn't do too badly there. We only bought one small square of  fudge and a caramel chocolate dipped marshmallow stick.

The pizza was amazing.

And a bit messy.

Jessica was trying on swimsuits. I won't post the ones that she chose :)  This was my "you don't know who is staring at your body so let's cover it up" choice for her.

And this is it with swim shorts instead of the skirt. I think she should save up for the top with either bottom. What do you think moms?

We shopped at the Destin outlet stores, but for some reason I thought "outlet stores" meant reduced prices. Um, no.

With comedian Tim Hawkins. He was hilarious. But the photo isn't. I think that he thought he was being funny, but  you can't really see his face.

We got a chance to talk to Anne and Karen Kingsbury. More Anne because Karen's line was really long, but most people didn't realize it was her mom standing off the the side. Always good to see them again. I haven't gotten her latest book, The Chance, but I've heard it's really good.

Jessica had a bad headache so we skipped the very loud Natalie Grant concert. We were wired when we got back to the hotel room, so Jessica watched Hunger Games at her computer at midnight. We had to be back up at 6:30.

The hotel breakfast was not so great so we had nachos and cheese and a soda at the civic center at great price. Blah.

The had a children's choir there that is made up of children adopted from the U.S., Ethiopia, Haiti and China.

I also got to meet an adoptive mom I'm fb friends with, and we are both on a  Haitian support group page. We talked  out in the hall during an entire session. We would have talked longer, but Tim Tebow's mom was scheduled next. Unfortunately, it wasn't what we were all expecting. I guess we were all waiting to hear her testimony about how God worked in their family and Tim's life, but she actually more preached/taught.

But all in all, it was a good convention. It's definitely something you need to take a friend, sister or daughter to with you.

Of course there always has to be some drama while I'm gone. One child was involved in way too many activities and has an F in an important class so will be reluctantly spending considerable amounts of time working on that classwork that was skipped this week. And entitlement issues are flaring up. 

And Kayla decided to shave the front of her head. She's done this before and you'd think she'd learn. First, a couple of years ago, she cut off a lot of  her braids so we cut her hair short.

And we kept her hair short for a while. Then we braided it again, because she said she wanted to grow it out. And she cut out braids again. Then she shaved off a whole side last year, but I just left the rest of braids and the side was bare.

But this time she shaved the front. You can see on the side where she took it clear down to skin.  Rick took her in  to see if the rest could be cut down to like a half inch, but they said it looked ridiculous and shaved it. They said it needed to go down to the skin like the one patch to even it out, but that will be done later once that patch grows out a bit. Right now there is just no way to make it look good. I hope this is lesson learned. And thankfully there are no important pictures coming up right now, but it's not that long until summer vacation and the cruise and this is what she'll look like. Oh well, at least it will be easy to take care of at camp.

After church yesterday.

Tyler felt the pictures needed livened up, and he timed his jump perfectly.

Sisters.

Just Dance 4

We are working to make sure we have a least a little bit of family time each evening.  We did for a while, but then everything started getting crazy.

FCAT is over with for another year and now we're into end of the year trips, incentive awards, concerts, appointments, IEP meetings and so on.

I have been dealing with hives for about three weeks and it's crazy. They'll go away over night and then flare up into big red raised bumps all over my body the next day. I will spare you the pictures. It's not pretty. They haven't figured out what is causing it. I'm on steroids right now and I think they may be the reason I hardly sleep anymore. Hope this passes soon.

Tyler is in his third week of his new job and really likes it. He's jut not  big on getting up at 5:20! He wears the mask for weed whacking along the highway.

There were some interesting comments posted on the last post about vacation. If you didn't leave a comment, there's still time. You don't have to answer all the questions, just the ones you want.