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what.a.weekend.

We woke up Saturday morning about 3am to the sound of swooshing wings right outside our window. I got up, and could only see one guinea. Seeing as they roost on Bobby's ramp (which is right outside our window), we debated whether or not they were attempting to fly up to the roof. Later the next day Bobby would discover two of the birds were gone. An owl perhaps?  Or did a raccoon pull them down while they slept and the swoosh was them trying to get back up? The birds themselves made no noise at all, which is incredible. They have to be the noisiest animals we've ever had. So I'm thinking if an animal pulled them down, we would have heard it. But we'll never know. We lost another two last night, but were both so dead tired we didn't hear anything.

But all that to say, we woke up an hour before our alarm went off. Yes, that's correct. We got up at 4am on a Saturday morning so we could be at McDonald's by 6am for breakfast.  Yep, you read that right! We wanted to be the first in line. (And those of you who know how much I'm NOT a morning person recognizes the severe sarcasm in that.) We hit McDonalds for breakfast to save me a little time, as I had to board a bus in Raleigh at 6:30am.

Bernina World of Sewing chartered a bus for the day to take a group of women to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, Virginia. We entered the show about 10:30am, and other than a brief respite for lunch and something to soothe my throat later in the afternoon, it took me until 4:15pm to go through all the exhibits and vendors. Had I not been so tired I might have used my remaining time to revisit some of the places I liked, but since I had spent all my allotted money (and a little bit more), I decided to head on out to the place where the bus would pick us up at 5pm to being the journey home. Except the bus didn't pick us up. It was stuck in the parking lot with a poorly juiced battery. An hour later the exhibits have closed, the convention center security is locking down, and the 55 of us ladies are still sitting in the lobby. The convention center graciously allowed their shuttle bus (a charter bus that connects the nearby hotel to the convention center), to take us all to a restaurant so we could have supper while we waited. And while we were eating, their shuttle went back to the convention center and gave our bus a jumpstart. So by the time we finished up, we were ready to hit the road. Thankfully the organizers had allotted supper time to be at a buffet-style restaurant which takes longer, as well as potential traffic delays. So even though we left two hours late, we arrived back in Raleigh only an hour after they had planned. I was home by midnight.

So this morning I am still very sleepy. But I'm excited, and full of ideas and things I want to do. Unfortunately, this month is full of things that I must do, like taxes, costumes, laundry, and other such mundane tasks. But don't despair. I took a TON of pictures, a little over 100 to be exact.  So this week is going to be a highlight of the good, the challenging, and the ugly of the 2011 Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival.
And boy are you going to be surprised!

Comments

Lydia said…
I can't wait to see the photos- especially the ones you consider to be ugly:)

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