Kingdom Twindom +1

I finally met my sweet friend Jennifer this afternoon! In honor of the occasion, and because I’m at my mom’s and completely high on chocolate cake, I think it’s as good a time as any to set my typing fingers to a Stream of Consciousness post. First off, I discovered that I can’t spell consciousness…or that I can, but it looks so wrong that I think my Google spell checker is broken. I love MckMama’s Stream of Consciousness posts because they remind me of the free-writing initiation that I used to put my kiddos through when I was tutoring. I wrote a creative writing curriculim right out of high school and tutored homeschoolers online for a year or two…and now that I’m thinking of it, I think I should do that again.

Anyhoo…I met MckMama today and I have not one single photo to show for it! But never fear, we’re also going to the Focus on the Family Marriage Simulcast on Saturday…and I’m going to put much more effort into the photos then.

We decided to leave from Red River this morning. We were originally going to leave last night, but Cuddle Bug had been a little sick, and so had I, and we weren’t one-hundred percent sure that we were going to make it until this morning. I woke up at six a.m., not a single stitch of packing done, and told myself, “If we can get on the road by ten, we’ll make it there just in time.”

So, of course, we left at ten-thirty. And we drove through an unexpected (to us) blizzard. But we still made it ten minutes under the buzzer. And I’m convinced that God actually made the drive shorter because we even stopped at a drive-through for lunch (and then parked outside the same restaurant to take the kids in to pee). I told Papa Bear I didn’t want anything because I really just wanted to get there. So, he ordered me an enormous guacamole and bacon burger. I opened the lid of the box and said, “Oh, great. Can you say fat?”

Papa Bear responded, “You don’t have to eat the whole thing.”

To which I returned a dumbfounded stare and said, “Ummmm…yes I do.”

As soon as we walked through the door, Jennifer and I spotted each other. It made my whole week to see that she knew my face just as well as I knew hers. One-sided friendships really aren’t much fun, but under the circumstances of this crazy blogging world, I certainly would have understood (after all, thousands of people are not clamoring to be my friends and I can’t even imagine what that must feel like). But Jennifer and I have shared many of each other’s ups and downs over the past several months, and it was enormously fun to solidify that friendship with a face to face meeting (Love you, J).

What’s MckMama like in person? Real. Which is exactly what I expected. The only thing that was different from what I expected was that I pictured her slightly taller than she is in real life. For some reason, I thought she was pretty tall. Now I’m really not sure why I thought that. Maybe because she seems “larger than life”. Prince Charming was spot on, though, and he really is very charming. I thought before, and now I’m convinced of it, that he and Papa Bear would be fast friends if we lived closer (it seems a little harder for men to connect via the internet, doesn’t it?). I was like a neurotic mom on a play-date, “Hey, honey, Israel ice fishes. Isn’t that awesome?!” And actually, he did think that was awesome. Maybe they’ll discuss ice fishing during the session breaks on Saturday.

For the first half (or so) of the MckGathering, MckMama and Prince Charming answered questions from the pretty good-sized audience. Papa Bear asked her is she’d felt called by God to start her blog or if the calling had come later. I thought it was an awesome question (which she answered honestly and beautifully). He’s so smart like that (and so is she)!

Cuddle Bug was sitting on Papa Bear’s lap, and in the middle of Q&A I saw her whisper something to him. He nodded in agreement, and then she jumped off his lap and headed to the stage. Before I knew what was happening, she sneaked in between Jennifer and Israel and hugged Jennifer’s legs. After squeezing tightly, she climbed off the stage and headed back to her seat. As she passed me she blinked (because she can’t wink) and said, “I’m not shy.”

After the Q&A, we all took a group photo. I cannot wait to see the picture. There were soooo many small children in it! After the group photo, three women approached me and said they had read my blog. We live in a fairly remote area (and because I have a pretty small audience), so I have never had anyone recognize me from my blog. Even in a group of bloggers and blog readers, that was still pretty fun.

Now I feel like this is getting ridiculously long, so I’m just going to stop it short. I’ll say more, and with pictures, after Saturday.