Katie's Trip to Atlanta

I have just returned from a delightful long weekend in Atlanta. Last year at our regional SCBWI conference I was overjoyed to win the big door prize of a free website design by Bilan Inc. marketing in Atlanta. I know - cool, huh?! So This past Friday I cruised over and met with the delightful and brilliant Shelli Johannes Wells. She also happens to write YA like me, so I was especially excited to talk shop with her. After our website meeting, we met another writer, Jessica DeHart for dinner and talked more shop and some politics. Then, I went and spent the night with Jessica and her adorable family which consists of four boys, or rather men. (I always think this is odd, since I live with only one man, and two girly girls!) So there was a bunch of sports equipment laying around, not to mention - paintball planning, late night flashlight tagging, and early a.m basketball gaming. Quite different from my usual experience with toenail painting, late night dancing, early a.m. costume dressing, and art project doing. anywho, I digress.

From there I went on to my dear old friend Fleming and Shawn McCrystal's house for a couple of days where we talked no shop, but just hung out, ate and shopped. And joy of joys, at their church Sunday there was a "Blessing of the Pets." This meant that almost the entire congregation brought loads of dogs, cats, birds and even a hamster to be blessed at the altar. It was the cutest thing ever! I took a zillion pictures. Dogs were sitting in pews, and howling during songs, and walking in the aisles and just being their lovable selves. Too fun!