Women Alive...day one...

Oh, boy. I have lots to blog about...so this may be a long one...or I might break it up over today and tomorrow so I don't put you to sleep.

First of all, yesterday Cynthia and I were at her apartment in the afternoon and Cassie called from Chile! We went on Skype and talked to her for about half an hour - it was soooo good. She shared with us what God is doing in her life and how she's choosing to be obedient to Him - often in hard areas - and we're so excited for her. I love you, Cass!!!

Then when Andrew came home, we picked up Bethany from school and everyone came over to our house. The two kids were hanging out with Uncle Floyd while Cynthia and I went to the Women Alive Conference. Sam was at youth and was going to bus over to our house later.

We got to the hotel about 5 and registration was only a matter of seconds, so we went up to our hotel room. We were happy to see there were big fluffy duvets on the beds and the room itself was very nice. I'd brought my laptop with me so we could watch movies in bed and it was my first time trying to hook up to the "complimentary" internet. It wasn't wireless and so I wasn't sure what to do but then I remembered Mandy telling me about the cord that I'd bought (and never used yet!) - "Mum, that's what you need when you're in a hotel and want to hook up to their internet!" It's true, Mandy, I literally "heard" your voice in my ear telling me what to do!!! LOL!! So I said to myself, "Oh, sweet!! I know what to do!!" Ha ha... Yeah, within seconds, there it was... I was showing Cynthia my Google home page (that I've customized with my own "stuff") and I noticed a link saying "Add theme". I was like, what the heck? I'd never seen that before! So, ha ha, I picked the Tea Room theme!!! Has anyone seen it? It's sooo cute - it shows, across the top third of your page, a little Japanese fox (I've named him Sid) who runs a little tea house - there he was serving tea beside a Japanese lake and garden. Then, later on, before bed (I'll tell more about the between time in a sec) we noticed that he'd moved, and was now sitting on the dock, serenading the ducks and crickets! Then, the next morning I woke up, and, lo and behold, Sid was sleeping on the dock!! Ha ha!! Okay...enough of that...

Anyway, we went down to the conference about 6:30 and as we walked in, there was a band playing and singing. I joined in as we were looking for a table to sit at, singing softly with them..."Eres mi pan, Senor, eres mi pan, Senor. Dios, tus palabras son para mi..." All of a sudden, I turned to Cynthia and said, "Hey! They're singing in Spanish!!" LOL - it took a second before I even realized it! And Cynthia said, "Yes, and you know what they're saying!" Ha ha. We found a seat and settled into the nachos and salsa on the table and started looking at the weekend agenda. That's when we saw the Friday night schedule starting with...a Latin fiesta! Riiiight...that's why they were singing in Spanish! D'oh!! They were a group from the Gesthemane church here in Edmonton - Mandy, is that where we went??

The evening went on to have a fashion show from the Pear Tree - it was waaaay out of our league as far as the cost of the clothes (you could just tell!) but we enjoyed it and got ideas on different things like layering and "popping" your outfits with color! Ha ha...has anyone else heard that phrase? We hadn't but the lady used it almost every time a new model would walk out, so it must an "in" word in the fashion world. She would say..."here comes so-and-so, dressed all in black but notice how we've "popped" it with a red purse and scarf", etc... They also went into great detail showing us how to "wear" scarves - they always look so nice on the models but, on me, they look like someone was decorating a Christmas tree after having had too much to drink! Maybe I'll have to try again one day but I wasn't up to paying $40 for their scarves anyway!!

After the show they gave away some "Oprah-type" prizes (no, not because they were cars but because everyone got one!). No matter what it was all weekend, from books to little decorations, to specialty candies - everyone got one! Then the evening moved on to Phil Callaway - he was hilarious! I'd known of his books but had never heard him in person. He kept us in stitches and left us with a good message at the end.

About 9:30 the evening was over so we headed for our room. We were hungry because neither of us had had supper, so we checked out the restaurant in the Inn but it was like $27 a plate, so we decided to hop in the car and head to Wendy's (the restaurant!) as we both heard Frostys calling our names. We pulled in the drive-through behind two other cars, then when it was our turn, we heard, "Hi, welcome to Wendy's. Sorry, we're closed." What the heck? Sure enough, it was 9:59, so we were the token cut-off car, I guess. Grrrr. To McD's - greeaat. We got the Chicken snack wraps, fries (just to undo the healthiness of the wraps, I guess...) and drinks - then headed back to the hotel. There we jammatized (yes, it's a word - at least in our family, it is!) and got into bed. Then, we remembered: the pool! We had planned a swim or hot tub time before bed. Rats! It was 10:40 and it closed at 11:00. So we had to either go then and eat cold food upon return or forget it and continue on with our plan. Yeah, the pool lost and the beds won. Besides, we weren't sure we wanted to get caught running down the halls in our jammies. Cynthia picked the movie for the night - "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" - and we snuggled in for the night. I think I saw about the first half hour! She watched it all through but I kept zoning in and out until it was over.

Still with me? Need to go for a bathroom break or drink of water? LOL. Don't blame you if you do....

I woke up at 6 and couldn't get back to sleep so I checked out blogs until Cynthia woke up a few minutes later. Then we showered and got ready for the day. We packed up and put our stuff in the car so we wouldn't have to do it later at check-out time. Breakfast was "continental" but there was lots of variety - muffins, croissants, danishes, scones, etc... The conference schedule got kinda messed up as they made some last minute changes - not sure why - but they apologized and it was okay. We had signed up for two different seminars - one in the morning and one in the afternoon and they'd moved the morning one to the same slot as the afternoon one! So we knew we'd have to decide between the two when the time came, but we were fine with that - no big deal. There was a lot of booths and interactive shows going on so we spent about 2 hours doing that kind of thing. My favorite was a 'class' put on by the Bosch Kitchen Centre - oh, I loved that one!! The lady answered sooo many of my bread questions and I found out where I can buy all those organic and healthy grains and flours for my breads! Not to mention the machines to mix them in! Don't even go there, Wendy...suffice to say I left my drool all over her displays...ha ha. They have weekly classes - 2.5 hrs for $10! I think I'm going to sign up for some of those - not only making breads but soups and other things like that...

From there we went to a Curves demonstration - okay, I was educated! I thought they were just like another Spa Lady or something - I never knew how they operate! Apparently, you go and join in a circle of equipment and work each machine for 30 seconds (yup, you read it right!), then move to the next one. You continue that for half an hour and you're done - having worked every major muscle area in your body! Hey, the idea of no more 10-15 minutes on the treadmill really appealed to me. And apparently everyone in your circle cheers you on and encourages you to do your 30 seconds, so it's a fun time as well. Cynthia and I got a free week pass, so we're gonna give it a shot this coming week. We'll keep you posted on that one!

By now it was almost lunch time, so we went back to the conference room for a wonderful buffet lunch - yummy soup and sandwiches, with cookies and squares for dessert. Then, after yet even more prizes, was one of the main speakers - Dr. Steven Genuis (pronounced Genus). If you don't know him, he's been a leading doctor/teacher in Alberta for many years (at the U of A) and a big supporter of the Pro-Life cause back in the late 80's. I was blown away by his talk. I can't go into it now but I promise I will blog about it tomorrow. Suffice to say, he is doing cutting-edge research into what our environment and the chemicals in our foods and cosmetics are doing to us. Tanya, you will be really interested as it's what we've been talking about. He maintains that pollution could be causing up to 25,000 premature deaths in Canada each year and burdening the health care system with up to $9.1 billion annually. To hear it from him was incredible and he had all the stats to back up what he was saying. But more on that tomorrow...

After Dr. Genuis, we had a break before going into the second session. This was the one where we had to decide which one of our two we were going to go to. So we picked one but it just wasn't grabbing us, so half-way through we sneaked out (fortunately we were sitting near the back) and went to the other. We were glad we did as it was a lot more interesting for us. More prizes - and guess what? I won one of the door prizes!! These were the bigger ones that were donated by all the companies represented and I got a basket chock-full of chocolates (for Floyd), bath soaps & creams (for me) and perfumes (for Cynthia!). So we all came out ahead! Then, the final speaker - Judy Rushfeldt. She was talking about her new book "Making Your Dreams Your Destiny" and it was very good. It (again) reminded me of a lot of my dreams that I've had in my life and made me realize that I need to haul them out and place them before the Lord. She talked about how God made us with the spiritual DNA that we have and that the goals and dreams inside us are placed there by Him for a reason. More on that later as well...

Well, that (to make a long story short - NOT!) was our conference. We left and drove home about 5:30 and decided to top off our weekend with Beulah's Saturday night service. Floyd will have to blog about his time with the kids...that's his job. He'd taken them home by the time we got to our house, so the three of us went to church. It was a good service with worship and Keith talking. Floyd and I then took Cynthia home and came home...and that brings me to this blog... It sure was a fun couple of days with my sister, doing "girl-stuff" - I think she enjoyed it as well.