Wednesday, May 27, 2009

For once we were all in one room!

Lisa is in town this week. She's transitioning from the six month stay in the Netherlands to the next six months with her family in Oregon. She and her family stopped by Central Virginia to collect some of their stuff and catch up with friends.

By chance, last night was our usual critique night. Finally, Lisa could be there in person! We've been planning this meeting for a while. I recently bought the SCBWI Master Class DVD with Richard Peck, and had put off watching it until we could see it together. And we should do a writing exercise...and maybe a tutorial about the blog for the Slushies who aren't contributing yet...and so on.

There was no way all this was going to happen in two and a half hours, which is the amount of time we usually have for our meetings before Panera kicks us out. So Steph suggested we meet at her house, and maybe have a sleepover.

We all brought snacks, and for once everyone was in the same room. There was a lot of hugging. Sarah brought a camera. Bridget caught us up on the progress of her students. Lisa shared her insights into why the residents of the Netherlands are some of the happiest people on earth. We watched the DVD, and we all thought Richard Peck was funny and engaging. With all the catching up we had to do, we decided to skip critiques for the evening. No one even mentioned the writing exercise.

The Slushies who had to be up early for work or their kids left around ten. Sarah, Lisa and I stayed until almost midnight. No one ended up sleeping over, but that's okay. The best part of a sleepover is staying up late chatting, which is exactly what we did.

It was only on the way home that I realized we forgot to take pictures!

5 comments:

Tess said...

How very fun! We have a group like yours....we call ourselves 'The Wad'. We all write for children, too. I can't wait till we all get together next time and this post makes me look forward to it even more :)

Sarah said...

I had such a good time!

Yeah, I remembered the camera driving home. Forgetting to take pictures was a fine way to end my gloat about remembering to bring the camera.

Michelle said...

I didn't perceive it as a gloat. I was obviously off on my state of perpetual preparedness.

Apparently, there is a limit, and I reached it on the camping trip. (Matt was duly impressed by all that I remembered to bring.)

Lisa said...

dNow that I got to see you all again, going back to skype will be so hard!

Angela Ackerman said...

Oh I have done this so many times. I think I need post its in every room, reminding me to use the dang camera when people are over!