"What happens at Myrtle Beach stays at Myrtle Beach"

...except for the photos.

We had a great time at the Women of Joy conference in Myrtle Beach earlier this month, and I am so thankful for having the opportunity to go...

especially since we had a surprise guest:  Kim, who moved with her family back to Pennsylvania earlier this year!  She flew down to meet us at the conference.

We had, for the most part, rainy, dreary weather

 

but it was still a wonderful weekend of refreshment with godly (and wonderfully goofy) friends...

godly teaching at the Women of Joy conference...

Disclaimer:  Photo taken in 2011; hence, the beautiful sky

Disclaimer:  Photo taken in 2011

good food...

Bimini's was a great local seafood restaurant

Another great local restaurant:  River City Cafe
(And another disclaimer:  Photo taken in 2011)

and good music.

The guitarist with "the hair"

Works For Me Wednesday

I haven't participated in WFMW in a really long time, and the one week I decide to participate, they have a theme.

One that I'm not following.

Oh, well. I'm not going to link up with them since I'm not following the theme, but if you want to check out boredom busters for this summer, head over to We are THAT Family for the "Mom, I'm Bored!" Summer Edition of WFMW. There are already 140+ bloggers with great ideas for keeping busy (keeping the kids busy) over the summer break, and you can even check out the last two years' "Mom, I'm Bored" editions.


But back to my non-theme Works For Me Wednesday...These are the things I am very excited about finding online that I can't wait another week to share:

Free fonts to download at FontSpace! (If you are looking for Western fonts for this year's LifeWay VBS, go here. You will see additional categories on the left sidebar. In fact, that's a good place to start even if you're not looking for Western fonts.) There is even a link with instructions on how to install the fonts, or you can go here for a more detailed explanation.

Free virtual printer from PDF Forge! Once downloaded, the PDFCreator will show up in your drop-down list of printers on your computer, and you can save as a PDF, JPG, PNG, BMP, and other file types.

Reading the Bible in one year! At the Women of Joy conference, Becky Tirabassi challenged us to read through the entire Bible, and to do this every year. Rather than beginning with January 1st (Because...hello? It's not January when you decide to do this, right? And who wants to be that behind, or try to figure out the date you should be on?), you can begin with the 1st or 15th of any month, and you pick the sequence (chronological, historical [by the approximate date each book was written], from beginning to end, and more). You can pick your translation if you want to do you daily reading online through their site, or copy and paste the reading list to keep it in your Bible as you follow your one-year plan.

And, yes, I still need to finish my Women of Joy recap...Thanks for the reminder...

Women of Joy 2010 recap...Part One

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating...I don't know when I've laughed so hard. I was telling one of my friends that I had more fun on this last Women of Joy trip than I did on the first Women of Joy trip last year. The reason? Last year was the first time I had been away from my kids where I didn't wear a hospital gown and come back with a baby.

My husband's parting words that year? "Don't wear a hospital gown, and don't come back with a baby!"

So, yeah, last year I was nervous about being away from my kids, missing them, and, yes, missing my husband, too, of course...This year, I missed them a little and had a whole bunch more fun.

Friday afternoon we arrived in Charleston and checked into our hotel rooms


before meeting up with the rest of our group just in time for supper. From there, we headed over to the coliseum and found some seats.


Travis Cottrell led us in our time of worship.


And then it was time for Anita Renfroe...and time to laugh...and laugh...and laugh. Anita said that her two ministry goals were (1) to bring joy where there is none and (2) to ruin every song you've ever loved.

I think she accomplished that.

If you're not familiar with Anita Renfroe--or even if you are--check her out on YouTube at these links: The Mom Song (William Tell Overture), A (More Real) Love Story, You Raise Me Up, Big Ol' Sweet Iced Tea, Don't Breathe, and Wrinkled Ladies. She performed all of these plus more.

If you only watch one, you have to watch The Mom Song. She followed that one up with The Grandmother Song, which had a big intro and then, "Whatever you want." ;)

The next morning, Travis Cottrell told how he was sitting in the audience watching Anita perform on Saturday night, texting someone about what he was having to endure among a few thousand women and praying, "Lord, come quickly" as she sang You Raise Me Up. So, yes, you need to watch that one, too.

My favorite quotes from Anita:

• I read somewhere that a rocket burns up 80% of its energy just trying to break free from the earth's atmosphere...You moms out there know what that feels like as you were coming here.
• On being over 40: I call it 39.95 plus shipping and handling.
• Any day you try on swimsuits is a two Prozac day.
• Is anyone here from the North? (applause) Yeah, you hold onto that pride for just another minute. (Part of her intro to Big Ol' Sweet Iced Tea.)
• I figure nobody's rocked the ukulele in South Carolina in a day or two. (Another part of her intro to Big Ol' Sweet Iced Tea.)
• Take God seriously; don't take yourself seriously at all.

~~~~~

Saturday morning, Liz Curtis Higgs brought us more laughter.

My favorite quotes from Liz:

• I was chemically dependent for many years (on hair color, that is).
  
• Why color it when you can polish it. (Talking about silver hair.)
• Bless their hearts, they have a gap between their thighs. (Talking about skinny models.)
• You are God's definition of beautiful for you.
• Ta Da!
  
• When Howard Stern tells you that you need to clean up your life...(She didn't finish this sentence, but Liz used to work in radio with Howard Stern, and he actually told her she needed to clean up her life.)
  

More to come soon!

For those of you who went to Women of Joy, what did you take away from that weekend?

Wordless Wednesday: Worship

Worship, led by Travis Cottrell and his team, with a few thousand ladies in Charleston, S.C. during the recent Women of Joy conference...

My chains are gone--I've been set free!
My God, My Savior has ransomed me.

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesday participants.

~~~~~

Check out my giveaway for a customized 24x36 inch vinyl banner! This giveaway ends May 26th.

Overheard: Women of Joy (The Anonymous Edition)

So my friends won't hate me for posting this For the sake of anonymity, I have omitted my friends' names. For the sake of hilarity and to give you a tiny reference point, I have left my own name. There was a lot of laughter this weekend, y'all. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard or laughed so often. And although some of this won't make much sense at all, I'm sharing it anyway for my Women of Joy bloggy friends. ;)

There were a total of 16 of us in our group. To simplify things (for me), I'm sticking to WOJ (Women of Joy) #1, #2, etc., as the names of my joyful buddies. And to simplify things (for me), the designation of #1, #2, etc., changes with each new item.

~~~~~

We stopped for lunch along the way and one person was a little slower than the rest when it came to eating...one of the ladies was, um, urging her to finish quickly....repeatedly. This was the tail-end of the heckling urging.

WOJ #1: You're still eating? Are you going to finish today or tomorrow?

Everyone stops talking and looks at WOJ #1.

WOJ #1: Why is everyone looking at me?

Me: To see what you'll say next!

For the record, WOJ #1 said she was just joking around with the slow eater.

~~~~~

WOJ #1 drifted off to sleep in the car and woke to find me handing the GPS back up front to our wonderful driver; she thought it was a camera in my hand...

WOJ #1: Did you take a picture of me sleeping?!

Me: No, but if I did, I still wouldn't tell you. ;)

I can't promise that there were no photos taken of sleeping people, but I didn't take any.

~~~~~

WOJ #1 [apologetically, to our waiter]: We're heavy drinkers.

This is what she was referring to, since there were three of us seated together who were drinking Diet Coke--not whatever you had in mind:


~~~~~

What happens in Charleston stays in Charleston.

Well...if you don't count this.

~~~~~

Posted on Facebook:


Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith tonight! Can't wait!

Immediately followed by:

uuhh concert that is.

~~~~~

After the concert, we headed over to IHOP. Our trip to IHOP could be a post by itself...Keep in mind all of this happened around midnight and we were wired from the awesome concert and tired all at the same time. Plus, there was a parade of ants who had found the syrup stand on the table to be an excellent dining area, and laughter helped keep our minds off of this...

WOJ #1 laughed about something and snorted. WOJ #2 immediately laughed and snorted, except she snorted on purpose to get WOJ #1 to snort again. They kept laughing and snorting, and snorting and laughing, and I was laughing so hard I couldn't speak (but I was not joining in on the snorting).

WOJ #2 [trying to get me and the rest of our table to snort]: C'mon, snort! Try it! It's fun!

WOJ #2 is a trouble maker began rolling up all of our straw wrappers and tossing them over to the next table where the rest of our group was seated. This may or may not have resulted in more paper balls, as well as one coffee creamer, flying through IHOP.

WOJ #2 also tried to start "the wave" going in IHOP (see "troublemaker" remark above)...

WOJ #1: You're going to get kicked out of IHOP!

WOJ #2: Like it'll be the first time that's happened...

Not surprisingly, WOJ #2 also tossed wadded up pieces of toilet paper into the bathroom stall of another lady in our group in a separate incident. Once this was discovered, and it was discovered who was doing the tossing, the victim had a question:

WOJ #3: It is clean, isn't it?

~~~~~

WOJ #1: What's something fun we can talk about...? [Considers this for a moment, and immediately turns to me] Amy, are you gonna have any more babies?

Nothing like putting me on the spot, huh? I think she had just been wanting to ask the question and needed an opening!

~~~~~

A part two to this post will (hopefully) be coming soon. If you'd like to add anything about the trip...anonymously, of course...feel free to leave it in the comments! :)

~~~~~

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