My weekend

Well, this past weekend, I attended a Willowcreek Children's and Ministry Conference in Mississauga, Ontario, and it was fabulous.


I went with Erna and Pam, who both work in our church's preschool Sunday School area. They were lots of fun to travel with, very considerate and kind. I asked a flight attendant to take our picture (the strange things that scrapbooking gives me boldness to do :) )





We stayed at the Holiday Inn Select on Argentia Road, where we met two other women from the conference, Donna and Vera, from Tilsenburg (?),who drove us to the conference on the second day and took us for lunch on Friday and Saturday. (This saved us from having to take a cab.)




Vera even risked life and limb to take this picture of us on our lunch break-- she stepped back onto a busy road to make sure she could get all of the clock into the picture!

Four of the main speakers that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to were Sue Miller (pictured above) formerly from Promiseland at Willowcreek (she is very dynamic and inspiring-- super easy to listen to!), Mark Holmen & Reggie Joiner.

The conference focused on something called Faith at Home, which stressed the importance of parents being the spiritual leaders of the home, and equipping them to be as such. It was really cool and very practical and doable. I'm excited to get my team together and share and come up with ideas of how to implement this at Westside.

Friday night, after the conference, we walked over a half an hour to get to the mall. I wasn't wearing the best shoes, so this was a little painful! The second evening, after the conference, Heather, an online friend, came & picked us up from the conference. She took us to Swiss Chalet for supper and then to IKEA. (LOVE IKEA!) We had a really great time connecting in real life. Such a cool time in which we live where we can form friendships in ways that 20 years ago, we would have never thought possible.

And, as great of time that I had, it was really good to go home. Austin had made a bunch of Welcome home signs and taped them to the walls. They picked up purple balloons (somehow I think those were Sage's pick) at the Dollar Store and blew them up and then tossed them around. So glad Cameron got a picture of the group hug!