In 1992 I made a trip to my home town in Arkansas to visit family. My cousin and I wanted to see a movie and Pure Country was playing at the dollar theater. This was our first real exposure to George Strait, and although he may not be an Oscar caliber actor, he’s quite a singer and easy on the eyes, too. We made such a big deal out of it that our mothers went with us to see it again the next night.

When my dad heard our story, he calmly said, “You know you could have met him at the fair, but he was country.”

My dad tuned pianos for the concerts at the Arkansas Oklahoma state fair during my childhood and met many famous artists. As a teen, however, I was too cool for country and apparently had turned up my nose at the chance to meet George Strait.

“Couldn’t you have shown me a picture?” (Yes, I acknowledge this is a shallow comment, but I made it nonetheless.)

My collection now brims with George Strait CDs, and yes, I eventually attended a concert (although not with the backstage pass my dad could have provided once upon a time).

Sitting here listening to “I Saw God Today,” I wonder how many things in life I miss because of preconceived notions or prejudice, because I’m too stubborn to see beyond a label.

Sorting through the pictures I took this week I found this seemingly random shot. Looking closer, I realize that the details paint a small picture of me: the Lowepro CompuDaypack totes all my camera gear and is my close companion; the lens cap gives evidence that the camera is in use; bottle of sweet green tea; Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours, my current read; High Museum of Art “Louvre Atlanta” bookmark; MacBook Pro (oops! I guess that’s a figment of my imagination - what a tease!).

I have another WW on my photoblog!

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom or Wordless Wednesday for more Wordless Wednesday participants.

When Lori and I were paired as partners for the most recent Homeschool Blog Awards swap, we discovered that we have a lot in common.

Oh, my word! Lori was a FAST swapper, which of course made me hurry so as not to make my new swap buddy think that punctuality was not one of the traits we shared. Our gifts were exchanged within a week of receiving each other’s questionnaires, surely setting some sort of HSBA swap record. For me at least.

Look at the awesome stuff I got! She even gave me GUMMY BEARS!

Thanks, Lori, for being such an awesome swap sister.

This weekend’s She Speaks Conference was both a surreal and a “coming home” sort of experience. Surreal, in the sense of hanging out with well-known bloggers, writers, and speakers; comfortable in meeting other women - the bloggers - who are interested in and familiar with the same things that I am. In how many social settings could I engage in meaningful conversation about IP addresses? You tell me.

The day started with a four hour drive, arriving just in time for a lunch date at Chili’s with Robin, Valerie, and Lisa. We got our I-don’t-actually-know-anyone jitters out of our systems, a perfect ice-breaker before heading to the conference.

Robin and I have emailed back and forth a lot and even talked on the phone once, so I was psyched about getting to meet her. We recognized each other immediately and really clicked. Amazingly, we were signed up for exactly the same sessions throughout the weekend.

Friday afternoon’s bloggers’ reception was the perfect way to put faces with fellow bloggers (around 100 of us) in the sea of 560 conference attendees. I met 14 ladies whose blogs I’ve designed, as well as 4 who are presently in my queue. Sophie (BooMama), Shannon (Rocks in My Dryer), and Melanie (Big Mama) were the featured speakers for 3 blogging sessions throughout the weekend.

Shannon and I are originally from towns about 40 miles apart in Arkansas. We could have Called the Hogs, but that might have frightened people.

Renee Swope (The Journey of My Heart & HeBrews Faith Cafe) was one of my earliest P31 clients.

Sophie was every bit as sweet and Southern as expected. What a precious and witty woman, capable of using the word “organic” intelligently in a sentence without referring to food items. She brought the house down during the Blogging Q & A when she referred to “pimping your post”!

Being Lysa TerKeurst’s blog designer is certainly one of the claims to fame of my little SAHM web design business, Barefoot Blog Designs. After all the calls and emails, it was a sweet meeting. Not only is she an inspirational speaker, she has a gift for making others feel special and valued, and that’s no small thing.

This is a group shot, and in order from left to right are yours truly, Shannon @ Rocks in My Dryer, Jo-Lynne @ Musings of a Housewife, Big Mama, Annie Downs, BooMama, Robin @ Pensieve, Valerie @ Valerie at Home, Lisa B. from Simply His, and Sarah @ Genesis Moments.

There was a block of time on Saturday afternoon when the speakers and writers had meetings, but we bloggers were at loose ends. What it created was a perfect opportunity for the “seasoned” bloggers to pull together some tables, pick each other’s brains, and discuss topics that would have been beyond the scope of the sessions.

Oh, and to gab, too. Bloggers have more than the average share of words per day, which is why we blog some of them, thereby sparing our families.

My husband confiscated the laptop for the weekend, telling me that I needed to be a normal person. In this crowd, the absence of a laptop was not normal, so that one backfired on both of us.

Heady with new friendships and a touch of silliness, we hit the local outlet mall, where we tried on outrageously expensive shoes in Off 5th. From left to right: DeeDee @ Fiddledeedee, Missy @ It’s Almost Naptime, me, Tina @ Antique Mommy, and Robin @ Pensieve. I don’t know about the other ladies, but I couldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in those painful-but-pricey heels

I have to tell you, meeting Tina was a thrill for me because she is one of my favorite writers. Missy was cute as can be and totally tops me in the childbirth category; she has 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-year olds!

DeeDee and I snagged a last minute photo op with Marybeth Whalen and realized that all of us are scheduled to speak at the Heart of the Matter Online Virtual Conference. [At this point I could probably say we're scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention and no one would notice since I've probably lost 95% of the people who started reading this increasingly long post.]

Marybeth is my ticket to this P31 ride. She contacted me a week and a half before last year’s conference about designing her blog, and the rest has been blessing upon blessing showered upon me by these kind and generous women.

We had a relaxed visit in my room Saturday night with our feet propped up and our hair down, so to speak, which is entirely natural considering how much we have in common: homeschooling moms, well-known authors and speakers, lots of kids, authors for the Homeschool Blog Awards, Southerners. Meeting her was one of the great treats of the conference for me.

My calendar is marked for next year’s conference.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the blogger portion continues to expand. Wouldn’t a blog conference for Christian women be an amazing thing?

For more summaries, visit the blogs of the other She Speaks attendees.

I’m so excited to be attending Proverbs 31 Ministry’s She Speaks Conference this weekend in North Carolina!  There are sessions on blogging, and a bloggers’ reception tomorrow afternoon.  I should be meeting at least four of the ladies listed in my sidebar links, as well as several of my Barefoot Blogs customers.

I hope to eat lunch today with Robin (Pensieve) today if I can get out of my house by 7 a.m.  WOO HOO!

I’m really kind of psyched about the 8 - 9 hours of drive time I have ahead of me this weekend (except for the parts when I pay for the gasoline).  What a perfect excuse to drink lots of sweet tea and listen to my favorite CDs!

If I had read How to Make Your Blog Disappear for Dummies (don’t bother checking Amazon for that title) I couldn’t have done a better job than I’ve somehow accomplished lately.  My feed has had so many strange issues that I’ve uninstalled or deleted lots of plugins or post content that I’d really have preferred to keep.  Bloglines has apparently snuffed me, because my feed completely disappeared.  I subscribe to my own feed at Bloglines to help monitor it’s health, and it went from the dreaded [!] symbol (which means your feed is seriously messed up) to just gone.  When I tried to resubscribe it showed that I had 0 readers.  I guess that’s what happens when Bloglines terminates you.  If you subscribe to this blog, you might want to check your subscription, especially if you use Bloglines.

I’ve revamped my About page, based on the really cool layout of the about page at Scott Kelby’s blog, which I thought was much more interesting and informative than my neglected page.

Watch for a post soon (hopefully later today) with all the details about my Totally Twisted giveaway on March 24 - 28 (see graphic in top right sidebar), and of course I’ll be here for Wordless Wednesday (although I haven’t yet picked a photo).

Here’s a fun shot from when I first got my new camera, and please visit my photoblog for a beautiful fountain I photographed at night on our recent vacation in Gatlinburg, TN.

Today is my 2-year bloggiversary!!!

I spent a beautiful afternoon at Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountain National Park, relaxing and taking photos of the family, landscape, and assorted insects and creepy crawlies along the way.

Toward the end of the loop, however, we came across this:

and not 30 minutes later there was this:

Maybe I took the “get the shot” mentality a little too far when pursuing the bear, but I certainly wasn’t the only one. The camera-toting crowd seemed to feel safety in numbers, or maybe we bought into some group mentality that those wild bears wouldn’t think of us as afternoon snacks. Whatever the case, I got the shots (although they’re really not very good, which means I didn’t go too crazy chasing the bears, right?).

Please leave a comment and say hello on my bloggiversary, and check out this beautiful shot from today on my photoblog!!!