Time out for us! ! !

We are back from Time Out for Women in Anchorage. It was a rough couple days to get started, and Alicia really earned her money taking care of me, but it was SOOOOOOOO worth it. We had the best speakers and subjects and we came away so spiritually fed, it was fantastic.

We feel really dumb as we didn't take a camera. On the morning of the second day, I noticed 2 of our favorite speakers across the room and I said, quick take a picture with your phone... so she whipped it out and tried to get it to focus and one of the speakers saw us and walked clear across the room to meet us - EMILY WATTS ! ! ! ! We were so excited . Our friend, Heather, first introduced us to Emily's books and she really loves Emily. So when Heather came in a few minutes later we told her what happened and encouraged her to go seek Emily out. It was really cute. They did get to visit for a minute and we tried to get Heather to get her picture taken with Emily - Heather actually remembered to bring her camera - but she said, No, just meeting her was enough... but we kept at it and I think someone did finally get a picture of the two of them together.

Then we were out in the hall helping Cassandra with her baby and one of the presenters = Merrilee Boyack came out and took the baby and shewed us all back into the hall and she walked him and put him to sleep. You know, usually, you don't go to a major convention in a big city and just hand your baby over to a stranger and go back into the convention, but we all just said, COOL = Thanks and didn't give it another thought. I talked to Merrilee about it afterwards and thanked her and she said she actually had ended up with 5 babies during the day. But it meant a lot to us - and it was kind of the theme of her presentation = taking those mini-seconds to stop and improve someone's life, just by a smile or a word or small deed.... so it was cool that she walks the walk, not just talks the talk.

We spent the weekend scribbling in our journals as quickly as we could scribble and then talked about it late in the night Friday night and then all the way home. Trying to embed the memories and concepts in our brains.

The music was by Hilary Weeks. None of us knew or realized that she grew up in Alaska - her family mostly all still live here (they probably realized she had grown up here - I just mean those in my circle didn't know it) , so it was really special and very personal for her to perform here and it added a lot to the event. Her parents and sister in law and such were all there and it was very touching.

We also got to hear the story of how Wendy Watson Nelson met and was courted by Elder Nelson and that was fun. Wendy and Sheri Dew are bestest friends and they were on stage together and had lots of fun and shared lots of BFF moments with us.

So watch out world, because we now have the tools to improve all our relationships and cure the world of its woes.... hehehe, okay, maybe not the whole world, but it was REALLY good.

Brian is off hunting this week. Keep him in your prayers - the weather has taken a giant turn to fall and winter.. Love, Charlotte