My daughter, Hope, and I returned last night from a whirl-wind trip to beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the F-C Learning Conference. We headed out Friday morning and arrived at our hotel about three hours before the Family Picnic at a local park. After taking a quick tour of the area, we arrived about 10 minutes early at the park. For those of you that know me in real life, you know that I am an early bird. What a thrill it was to have Michele Quigley, the organizer of this extraordinary conference, pull up in her SUV and give me a great big hug!!! Meeting Michele after getting to “know” her on-line was such a thrill!!!
Michele and I
Maggie Quigley blowing bubbles – it was quite a test of my poor photographic skills to finally capture a bubble on film
Other thrills included meeting some of the bloggers that I “know” through their blogs. However, I came home and added some new blogs to my Bloglines subscriptions after having met those bloggers in person. Here are some more picnic pictures:
Margaret (Minnesota mom) and Maryellen (Tales from the Bonny Blue House)
Michele and Tim Quigley
Michele with a beautiful St. Anne’s chaplet (made by Kimberlee of Beads of Mercy), given to her by Alice Gunther (Cottage Blessings)
Margaret, Karen Edmisten (Karen Edmisten), Meredith (Sweetness and Light), and Diane (Journey of a Mother’s Heart)
The next morning we arrived early (of course!!!) at the Liberty Place Conference Center for an inspiring day of talks. The day just flew by as I participated in the opening mass, listened to so much wisdom, shopped at the vendor tables, visited with old and new friends, and of course ATE!!!
Maryellen (one of the wonderful speakers) with her very best friend, Chris Volpe (and my friend IRL)
Alice Gunther (Cottage Blessings and featured speaker), Meredith (another of the gifted speakers) , and Kimberlee (Pondered in My Heart and Beads of Mercy)
Hope and I
Sweet Erica Sanchez from CA – not a blogger YET!!!
So at 8 p.m. we hit the road to head back to Long Island. We arrived home at midnight after experiencing heavy traffic in NYC, stopping at a most hideous gas station bathroom (I didn’t take a picture of that!!! Ugh!!!), and listening to the Mets lose a heart-breaking game in 14 innings. But most of all, Hope and I arrived home happy that we had gone and looking forward to our next trip to PA to visit the Quigleys and next year’s Family-Centered Learning Conference (hint, hint, Michele!!! 
).
What great photos! You really captured a lot of the weekend in pictures. It was so nice to meet you and your lovely daughter!
Ohh I am so jealous!! I would have loved to go to that conference! Were there vendors there? My husband’s company, Arx Publishing, went to Catholic Family Expo to vend this weekend instead. I just discovered Cottage Blessings and I would have LOVED to meet Alice Gunther!!
Jamie
What beautiful photos!!!!
It was great seeing you and Hope! See you when we get home!
What a beautiful recap of a beautiful weekend, Heather! I really enjoyed meeting you and Hope and somehow felt as if I had already known you for a thousand years. God bless you.
Oh my goodness! I didn’t expect to see that photo of myself there at the end! Eating no less.
I’d eat with you any day, Heather.
Like Diane said, I feel like I’ve known you forever, an instant connection. I have no doubt we’ll be seeing each other again someday either on your coast or mine. I so wish I would have been able to bring my Emily to meet your sweet Hope.
It was a pleasure meeting you and Hope. God bless!
It was a real treat to meet you too, Heather!
Heather, it was so nice to meet you this weekend. Glad to hear you had a safe trip home.
Thank you sweet lady, it was awesome meeting you and your darling daughter, West coast next year
Heather,
It was SO great to meet you. Come back and visit anytime!!!
What lovely pictures and looks like so much fun too.
Thank you for sharing, Heather.
It was great to meet you Heather!
Heather it was nice to meet you. I wish I had more time to get to know you. I got home and looked up Doodles Spaces by mistake, so I’m glad you visited me online so I could find you!
[...] Looking at all the beautiful pictures from the FCL Conference gave me such a smile, because talk about a study in contrasts! Here’s what their weekend looked like. [...]
Well, I appear to be two months late with this comment, but I could have sworn I left one here when I first came to look at all these great pictures! It must have gotten lost in cyberspace (or I clicked away pre-verification, or something!) I’m finally finishing blogging about our summer trip, and am stopping back to reminisce.
It was such fun to meet you and all the other wonderful women at the conference, as well as your beautiful Hope. God bless!
Thank you for your website
[...] be announced. Start making plans to join us –it’s going to be great. Last year we had a [...]
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.