Thimble Thoughts: Still Sweeter

Here are a "few" pics of our ladies trip. We had two vans that went. One left early Friday morning and the other left late Friday afternoon so those ladies that work could go when they got off.
We had a really good time and the Lord dealt with my heart on some things. It was a blessing to be with my Sisters! I love you all!!

Mrs. Janet drove the early van. We pulled out around 9:00 and drove to Bojangles for breakfast. Not my favorite chicken joint, but their breakfast biscuit was pretty good.

Since we left early, we stopped to do a little shopping. There were nine of us on the early van. Mrs. Janet and I were up front and here you see Amy and Pam. Cammi is in the back. We were waiting for Missy, Sharon, and Kelly T to finish their shopping. They were always the last ones in the van when shopping.

Here's Kelly R. Can't remember why she's giving me this look, but I thought it was funny.

April and Liz, along with sweet little "J" drove by themselves and met up with us at the shopping center.

Olive Garden was across the street so we had lunch there. I know Pam from Midnight Musings is going to kick me for this, but y'all know that's not on my top ten favorite restaurants. I promise I'm not one of those picky people when it comes to restaurants, but you know I prefer a good steak and tater! HOWEVER! I had the lasagna and it was very good.

The theme for the conference was Still Sweeter. Everything was decorated in candy. They even had their teenagers dressed in candy costumes. They were called Sweetie Girls. If we needed assistance, we could ask the Sweeties.

Mrs. Janet registered us and gathered our books, lunch tickets, and game tickets for the drawings. There were eight bathrooms decorated with different candy themes. You would fill out your ticket with your name and church name and drop it in a basket in each bathroom. At the end of the meeting Saturday there was a drawing for those prize baskets for each of those bathrooms.

This was the platform setting. It was like jumping into Candy Land.

Liz and April with baby "J" in front of the gingerbread house.

There were several vendors set up down the hallways. Here is Amy in the jewelry and purse vendor's shop. There were three tables of jewelry and purses galore. They were cute purses too!

The Music shop was filled with all the Hutson sister CDs and other good music and preaching CDs.

The fellowship hall was set up for the opening reception. They served egg rolls, meatballs, cheeses and crackers, desserts (mostly candy), water and tea. It was goody-good!

Down the vendor's hall

See the giraffe print purse? I bought it! How cute is that?

They showed a Friday night movie which was a five minute edited clip of the Lucy show where she and Ethel took a job at the candy factory. Y'all know the one! It was hilarious. Our Saturday movie was Shirley Temple on the plane singing Good Ship Lollipop.

They had the Sweeties choose several people during our song time to come up and play a game. Missy was the first one chosen from our church. Well, actually, not enough people were chosen so when they opened it up to whoever got up there first, got to play, Missy ran like a....well....kid to a candy store! She knocked down three elderly ladies and someone on crutches, but she got up there. HA! JUST KIDDING about her knocking those people down. ANYWAY! The game was to name the candy bar that was cut in half and pictured on the wall. You can see it on the wall to the left.

Missy guessed correctly and won this basket of candy. I'm sure her children went bananas when she came home with it.

Mrs. Ava, Janet, and Liz

Kim, Taylor, Jennifer, and Susan. Susan drove the late van.

Mander, Sharon, Missy, and Kelly T.

Saturday's lunch was a box with a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, chips, brownie, and mint, with your choice of soda or water. It was really good.

It was a pretty day and since the fellowship building was full, we decided to eat on the playground. Cammi was just getting ready to dig in!

Pam was trying to decide if she wanted to swing or get up in the club house with the rest of us. She HATES to miss a good time so eventually she came up to our club house....hurt foot and all!

Here' Mander, Kelly R, and Janet in the club house.

To get into the club house we climbed the ladder. I suppose we could have gotten down the same way, but what fun is there in that when there's a perfectly good slide to go down on? There goes Amy!

Mrs. Marlett didn't join us in the club house, but she and I had fun on the teeter-totter later. Now, THAT was funny!

There goes Kelly!

I was the last one down.

Here's Mander and Pam on the teeter-totter.

Susan had fun on the jungle gym. Figures she'd choose something a monkey would like to do. HA!!! LOVE YA, SUSAN!

Susan was chosen for a game where the contestants had to guess the candy bar described in a riddle.

SHE WON this delish basket of Reece's goodies.

Amy was chosen for this game too.

SHE WON this basket of Reece's goodies.

Mander raced to be a contestant because they didn't choose enough the first time. But she ended up being our only loser. Poor Mander. She had to do the "walk of shame" in front of 400 women. What a bummer!

BUT!!! There was another game that was played where they had several different jars of candy in the foyer and you could guess how many candies were in each jar. Mander ended up winning the Skittles jar. YAY, MANDER!

When the conference was over, we did a little more shopping at the Burlington Coat Factory, a wide shoe store, and ended up eating supper at Cracker Barrell. I had their grilled chicken salad and a side of potato casserole. The salad was HUGE! But it was so tasty! And the potato casserole was well.......yumsy as always.

I think we all had a great time on this trip. I wish I could have gotten a group picture with all of us in it. I think there were about 17 - 20 of us that went. But there just didn't seem to be a good time for that. Oh well...maybe next time.