Tampa Bay Homeschool Conference

We traveled to Tampa, FL for the last of my conventions. This was a new convention for me. I used to live in Tampa so I was looking forward to seeing old friends and my old stomping grounds. The convention was held in a new building (since I lived here).

 We were packed to the gills! The space to the right was for my assistant's bags, etc. We filled that up in no time!

 Here we are! The Fountains and me. Stopped at a red light of course.

 The booth is all set up. The tables were not 8 foot long like I expected so the tablecloths drooped. At least it wasn't the other way around! But that meant that I had 6 less feet of display space so I had to tweak the display set up.  Instead of having a sign-in table, I used that 4 foot table to display the Science rack. That's what's on the right side.

Another shot of the full booth. The booth space was small so instead of setting up the other front table in front and crowding our booth, I had it on the side which helped to define our space.  It worked.

Once we had our booth set up on Friday afternoon, I went to my friend's house where several old youth group kids (I used to be a youth minister when I lived in Tampa) came over to visit and catch up. We had a lovely pot luck cook out.

I hadn't seen Phil since he was in college in Atlanta. I got to meet his son. It was fun to think back to when I had two children and doing youth ministry. When I left I was pregnant with my third. It's crazy to think that Kathryn is at that same stage in life with three children, one about to start kindergarten. I left her a Sonlight catalog :)

The sweet, sweet Lopez girls! I missed seeing the two Victors but they were both occupied and couldn't come.

Shawn's daughter looked just like him but his son must look like his mama. Emily doesn't live in town so I didn't get to see her but the Waltrips filled me in. Jen, Wes's wife of almost one year, was very sweet!

 A room full of kids's kids! How crazy it is to see your youth group "kids" with kids. I'm getting old, no doubt about it!

Wes and Jen with Wes's jeep. He followed in Michael's footsteps!

Thank you Rodebushes for hosting us! I had a blast!!!!!