ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2022

 Hello, friends!  Hope you had a great Tuesday.  So hard to believe it is May already.  But I am glad and I hope that it doesn't rush by the way April did.

I want to tell you about our Annual Conference.  It's so hard to believe that it was a week ago already.  It seems as if it just happened yesterday.  But let me show you lots of pictures.  This is going to be a chatty post.

The Conference began on Tuesday morning so Joe and I got a hotel room for Monday night and started off on Monday afternoon.  We had to travel through the Delaware Water Gap and go to the Pocono Mountains.  Such beautiful scenery!  I was wishing that Joe was driving so that I could take pictures of all this beauty.  Joe did a pretty good job getting shots for me, though.

We stayed at the Super 8 motel where we always go when we are at Conference.  We stayed in the handicapped room.  Apparently there is only one because we get the same room each year.  One year I forgot to ask for it when I made the reservations and they put us in another room.  It was very nice, but I really need the hand rails in the tub.

After we got settled, we went out to get dinner because we were very hungry.  I wanted to go to Friendly's because I knew I could get something easy to eat there.  Friendly's is about 5 minutes from the hotel in a shopping center.  When we drove in, Joe saw a Walmart and wanted to stop to get a couple of pillows to use at the hotel and the Conference Center.  We are both allergic to feathers and the hotel had feather pillows.  My legs were really hurting, so I stayed in the car while he went into the store.  Where I was parked were these beautiful trees.  I wasn't sure, but thought they were cherry trees.  It looked like cherries on them.  But are they?  When I looked again, I thought they might just be flower buds.  I'm not sure.  What do you think?

We drove over to Friendly's.  It was pretty empty but it took us a while to get seated.  We couldn't find any wait staff.  Joe ordered a turkey dinner (his favorite) and I got fish and chips.  I thought that would be soft and easy to eat.  I got hot tea to drink, but Joe got a big diet soda.

I was so full that I couldn't finish my dinner.  I took some of it back to the hotel for breakfast the next day.  But Joe got a "Jim Dandy" for dessert.  I don't know how he ate it.

Tuesday morning we grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then headed over to the Conference.  Joe checked us in and headed in to the first meeting while I drove around and around looking for where our room was.  We were in Meadowbrook and I had never been there.

I finally found it and started taking things in.  Our room was beautiful.  They had just renovated the entire center.  I forgot to take pictures of the room, but if you head over to my YouTube channel "Kathy's Happy Home" you can see it there.  This was the view out of the window in the room.

There was a very long handicapped ramp which I used instead of the 11 steps out front.  At the top of the ramp was a little deck where I would sit down to catch my breath before I went into the room.  This ramp was long!  About half of a city block.

Here is a picture of Joe at the Conference on Tuesday.  I didn't go to the entire thing.  I spent a bit of time in the room making phone calls and keeping my legs elevated.

It rained quite hard on Tuesday night but by Wednesday morning the sun had come out and it was a pretty day.

I always love the singing at Conference.  The worship band was great and the songs were wonderful.

There was a message each day and they were really good.  Here is Joe and Pastor Ralph during one of the messages.

We left at lunch time on Wednesday.  I didn't want to drive in the dark and it's a 3 hour drive each way.  We stopped at a diner about a mile from where we were staying and got sandwiches.  Then we stopped to visit my sister.  It was her day off and we had to pass her house on our way home.  That was fun to see her on a week day in the middle of the day.

We got home around dinner time.  It was a long day and I was really tired but it was also a good time.  And lots better than it was last year when I was injured and got lost on the way home.

I'll end showing you a picture of the place where we stayed in Pinebrook.  It was so far from the dining hall and Fellowship Hall that we had to drive back and forth each time.  But that was OK.  Not sure what next year will bring, but hope I can go.  It's harder and harder for me each year.  But so enjoyable.

Thanks for reading my ramblings and I will see you later.

Kathy