Back from Convention!

I'm back! My friend, Monique, and I went to convention last week in Montana and we had a lovely time. If you remember, we took this same trip last year. :) This year, we didn't take as many pictures. It was more about seeing the people again this year than it was about the scenery. So, if you want scenery pictures, go to last year's post. :o) This year, it's all about the people.

I have a lot of "people" pictures, but I will only post a couple of them. I don't honestly know how comfortable all of our friends would be with me plastering their picture on the web, so I'll only post a couple of pictures. Just know that our time with everyone was absolutely wonderful. And convention, as always, was an awesome experience. :)

First off, there was Pauline. She is Monique's step-grandma and, like last year, she let us stay at her house one night while on our way up to convention. A stop at her house helped to break up the trip a bit, but it also was just GRAND to see her again! :)

And next is our group of good friends that we enjoy meeting up with at this convention. These friends of ours come from all parts. Michigan, Illinois, North Dakota, and Canada. I'll go through the back row first (L to R): Susi, me, Melissa, and Nancy. Front row (L to R): Elan, Ali and Monique.
Did you notice that some of them had jackets and scarves on? Those of us that didn't were braving the weather conditions in order to show off our nice outfits in the picture! The weather most of the time was COLD. Period. We about froze two of the days!! It was just a bit miserable! ;) But, luckily, they handed out extra afghans and blankets and we wrapped up in blankets during meeting. And it did warm up for part of the convention...just not much of it. :) Anyway, we just had a great time catching up with our friends (above) as well as seeing some other faces of friends from the area of where convention was at. Special, special times. :o)

And that was that! :) I should mention that one fun little activity that Monique & I did (same as last year) was to track the number of state license plates that we came across during our trip. All we did was write down the 50 U.S. states on a piece of paper and then circled them once we came across them. There were only thirteen states that we did not see: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont and West Virginia. Not too bad for only going to the next state from where we live! In addition to the states we DID see, we also saw British Colombia, Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. A fun little activity, I must say! Not only does it keep you alert while driving (you'd hate to miss a state!), but it's interesting to think about how many people are out and about while on vacation or traveling for work or doing whatever they're doing.

Now we're safely back home and while Monique had the day off (lucky duck!), I had to come to work. So, I'm slogging through my day and thinking about everything that I heard, about the visits that I had, and about what I need to do tonight to get completely "settled in" at home again. :) Thanks for keeping up with my adventures!!