California

Last week Kraig had the opportunity to spend his continuing ed time at Saddleback's worship conference in southern LA - Orange County. Yes, he's been to this conference the past two summers, but it's the best one he's found and who can beat the location?
Thanks to a monetary gift from Kraig's parents, I joined him again, too.
I was most looking forward to sitting by the pool for 3 days while Kraig was at the conference, but after we checked in we discovered that I'd booked a hotel without a pool! Oops! The full kitchen was nice for groceries and leftover meals, but I couldn't get my suntan (as if I ever really get a tan). So I spent the mornings working out, reading, and watching way too much tv, then spent lunch at Saddleback with him and sat outside under the palm trees in the afternoons and walked around with him during breaks. We explored the new youth building that is just being completed called the refinery. I think it's bigger than our whole church!
One of the breaks we stopped at the expo tent and talked to the guys from the Gospel Channel. I noticed his "newworldson" cd on the table and commented that we'd seen them with the Newsboys and thought they were great, and then the guy gave me a free autographed cd! How cool is that? While talking to him I mentioned that we don't get their channel with our cable (they said we will hopefully soon) and was disappointed we'd missed the dove awards, so he gave me a dvd of that too!
The highlights of the week for me were attending the evening concerts (I went all 3 nights with Kraig for $20)....leeland....meredith andrews....jadon lavik....big daddy weave...and seeing an advance screening of the movie Fireproof. I'll write another post about that later!
Of course, we stayed an extra day and made time for Laguna Beach, Hermosa Beach, downtown LA, and then the last 1/2 day we enjoyed our hotel near the airport. I'd found a great deal online and that hotel had a wonderful pool!
-Kristin