For Starters

Fasten your seatbelt, readers reader, I'm about to do something quite out of character. I'm going to tell about the conference in a timely manner! I know I have a tendency to publish a big ol' hurrah post - "WooHOO, baby, we're off to Willow!" - and then never post a follow-up. (The Willow photos are all queued up, but I'm passive aggressive.)

So today, I'm going out on a limb. I'm going to begin to chronicle our time at the Live and Learn Conference. The story will run in fits and starts, because I get twitchy about sharing it before I'm even done processing it. There will be gaps in the story, too, because for once in my camera-addicted existence, I didn't take oodles of photos. I was very much in-the-moment at all times and couldn't be bothered to interrupt the flow with a "Say Cheese!"

I didn't even get pictures of our van before we left. And all the mid-road trip photos were taken with my cellphone and you do know I haven't a clue how to get those off there, don't you? It's true.

So we'll start with our arrival. It's funny how the family picks up on patterns I didn't know existed, or I didn't know were so transparent. I was a bit nervous to jump into the swirl. I'd only met most of these people in the blogosphere, and all those "do these jeans make my butt look fat?" kinds of worries were plaguing my consciousness. "No, silly, your BUTT makes your butt look fat." *snort*

What if we don't hit it off in real life? What if I'm not what they expected? What if they find out they filled in the blanks with much better fodder than what I'm really all about? What if the kids don't have fun? What if Rob hates the whole thing? It must've showed, because I was getting a bit impatient with things like, oh, Rob's driving up the mountainside, and Rob alerted the boys that "Mom gets a bit wiggy at this point."

At this point? Are you suggesting....?

Nevermind, he's right. Score 1 for Rob.

Our room was in a Family Lodge. This is the only photo we have of it:

We found our room and hauled in our things. I was eager to get the initial meet-up over with, but first things first, said Brady: Who claimed the window nook for his guitar and laptop area, and Rob:Who had to see if we could get a wi-fi signal from our room (we could), and Jonathan: Who had to test each mattress for its comfort factor.

'Twas time to enter the swirl... somebody on the planning committee (where planning committee equals Kelly Lovejoy) was thinking, because the first funshops were tattoos and body art! Oh yes, it was time to be adorned. And if you know me well at all, you'll know that adornment is a must-do rite of passage for me. (Teabag headdress, Joanieji? :-)

A peace-and-love tatt for my shoulder, and another for my, ahem, chest...

And a lovely bit of mendhi...
And it was time.