Extraordinary

This past weekend I traveled to Greenville with several girlfriends and my mom to attend the Extraordinary Women conference. There were a host of speakers including comedian Chonda Pierce, Angela Thomas, Julie Clinton and author Karen Kingsbury, which was pretty much the whole reason my mom came. She (and my sister) loves Karen's books and has read pretty much every one of them.

Friday night during one of the conference breaks, mom bought two of Karen's newest books and then stepped in line to have them signed. Luckily, she spotted me coming out of the bathroom and hollered for me to come over. I was able to snag a photo of mom & Karen, who is very tall! After the break, NewSong performed. It was an uplifting concert full of several of their greatest songs.

After the session ended, we raced through the rain to the car and set out in search of the nearest Krispy Kreme (something that is at least 45 minutes away from us back home). We were able to find one about 2 miles from the Bi-Lo Center and it was packed with dozens of hungry (presumably) extraordinary women. We waited patiently and then carried a dozen piping hot doughnuts back to our room at Embassy Suites, where Andrea had gotten us a free room with her rewards. The doughnuts were better than I remember, and we stayed up late gabbing and giggling.

Six-fifteen came early the next morning, but if we wanted to take advantage of the free breakfast...we had to get going. We all managed to stumble out of the hotel and make it to the conference where we met up with the rest of our group. We were pleasantly surprised to hear Karen Kingsbury speak first. She was incredible and had the entire place (about 7,000 women) in tears when she read her book Let Me Hold You Longer. If you've read it, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you should...but make sure you have a tissue handy.

After hearing a couple more speakers, we headed home a little early...but not before a stop at Chick-fil-A for lunch/snack. Although, Jack was a bit grumpy because he's been teething and a little under the weather for the better part of a week, it was so good to see him and give him a big hug. Josh was such a trooper to give up two weekends in a row to be full-time dad/mom so I could get away for some girl time. Thanks, Josh!