After the brunch and gifting, we returned to the hotel and said goodbye to many of the dear ladies who returned home via plane or car.

Looking at the scrapbooks with Dody…

Headed for dinner in cold and drizzly weather…

Waiting for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe.  Little did we know what awaited us but a cacophany of charging elephants, screeching birds and bouncing baboons every 15 minutes! LOL  

When we left the mall after dinner, we approached the sliding doors that appeared to be locked. Dody asked a young girl next to her how to open them. She was told to pull them apart, forcing them open. Once again, Dody made that a grand moment! LOL  The girl said, "Wow, she's cool!"

The hotel shuttle came and rescued us from having to walk across the parking lot to the hotel in the windy, cold, rainy weather. These guys who drove us around were absolute gentlemen. They were always more than willing to drive us anywhere, well within a 5 mile radius I think is the hotel limit. Even with the weather getting colder, wetter, windier and more dangerous (we had a tornado watch that night) the driver was more than happy to drive some of the ladies to get a movie and odds and ends at various places.

Before the movie, I was calling home so my son could give me every single detail of his weekend. =)  He was so funny.  Each day he'd say, "Oh I can't wait until she gets surprised!!!!"  Then this night he enthusiastically asked, "So what happened?!"  I saved the details for when I came home; instead, he gave me the details of his weekend.  Then he'd stop and ask, "Mom, are you still there?"  "Yes, I am listening to every detail."  LOL 

Settling down to watch Elf. That was a funny movie, one of Dody’s favorites. Maybe it is her favorite. I had not seen it before and it was funny! Sadly, I started drifting at the end. I didn’t really sleep, but my eyes were getting heavy. Two nights of no sleep and my body was finally succombing to some zzzzzzzzzzz’s.

That night I had a new room to sleep in, since most of the ladies had gone. I had a great night's sleep, even though it was very late to bed and very early to rise, to see the next group of ladies off to the airport.

Finally, we were down to 5. Dallas would be expecting snow by evening. The temps were down in the lower 40’s. You could just feel the snow in the air. In the drizzly, windy cold I helped Corrine load up the car. Turning around I found our luggage cart headed out of the parking lot. Corrine was so exhausted from a cold and lack of sleep, but I could hear her laughter as I ran after that cart! Where were the cameras then?

Dody had been trying to pack. She wasn’t sure where she was going to put everything. She grabbed all of her socks, dumped them into the partially filled suitcase, and that was filled up! LOL She was talking about shopping for another suitcase.

Corrine and I hugged Kat, Dody and Melanie one last time and back to San Antonio we went!My family met me at Corrine’s house and we had a great reunion! My family was full of hundreds of questions, because I never went into great detail on the phone. So we drove to a Mexican restaurant and I told them every single thing that happened.

By this time, all of my fatigue came over me like a dark blanket. I was ready for bed. And how did kitty do? She spent the entire weekend, looking for me, meowing.  She can't hear anymore, so she never heard me come home.  And we don't see much of her any more, since she takes terrific deep slumbers during the day hidden under furniture.  Nothing wakes her up anymore.  After we had settled down for the movie, I had the soft chenille blanket covering me (her favorite, and yes she is picky, she'll look at me and meow until I get the right blanket on my lap and I stretch out).  She finally made her way down the stairs and saw me and...the blanket on my lap!  Guess where she hung out during the movie? 

And me...I didn't make it all the way through the movie. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

My previous blog entry describes our arrival Friday.  To top it off, many of the ladies went to a Mexican restaurant around 9pm.  boo hoo!  I LOVE Mexican food but I wasn't feeling well.  I had a growing headache and I couldn't have anymore carbs with my blood sugar.  I stayed behind with 4 others in the Cookie Corner and had a cup of hot tea.  That helped immensely, as the cold ac had been settling into my bones.  Tami arrived with her son and Suzie came too!  Earlier that evening I had met Gail!  Am I forgetting anyone!  I don't want to!  It was so nifty to meet these ladies I've been e-mailing for the last year!  What a delight, but I had to go to bed.      

Saturday morning we gathered for breakfast and I finally met Cathy!  I had had no sleep the night before, and my growing headache last night became splitting by the time I woke up.  While chit chatting I kept an eye on the front door.

Dody and her on-line co-op were to leave for Starbucks so that the rest of us could take care of unfinished business! LOL Finally they left and we all headed to my room. The ladies wanted to see the quilt. Suddenly, everyone started taking pictures of us looking at the front and back of the quilt. Then someone decided we should take a group photo! One person took the same shot with many different cameras. (Remember this, there are many photos of this on may cameras!)

Then we headed upstairs to where the scrapbooks were hidden.

Marsha had made these gorgeous scrapbooks. More cameras came out to take more pictures.  (Remember this!) The one scrapbook was of memories of hilarious threads and momentous occasions on the Loose Threads yahoo group. The other was the signature blocks that were too big to use in the quilt. A week before Dallas, Marsha had asked if I could get 8x10’s of the quilt front and quilt back. I finally gave them to Marsha and she was mentally planning to crop them and put them on scrapbook pages as if they were hanging on a wall. She wanted the picture of the quilt front to go in front of the scrapbook of quilt blocks. The picture of the back of the quilt was to be the last page in the scrapbook.  How clever! But she had not brought cardstock. So we started researching the phone book for a scrapbook store and finally Tami and I found out that Michael’s was around the corner. Woo hoo! In addition, a lot of the ladies wanted bottles of water, so we would swing by a WalMart and get some cases. Because we’d need to work on the scrapbooks later, adding late pages (like mine and many others) and getting the 8x10’s into the book, we decided to move the scrapbooks to my room. Currently they had been in the room across from Dody’s and that is just too dangerous! LOL A few of us took off in Suzie’s van while the rest stayed behind.

For 30 minutes we drove around looking for Michael’s. Tami was using her palm pilot (or whatever that doohicky was-lol) and we were driving around and around. Then she made a phone call and Michael’s was no more. Ohhhhhhhh, maybe it used to be in that building that was going under major renovations. So now the search was on for a Wal Mart. They are on every corner of America, right? Not in this place. Tami was pulling up info from her PDA (or whatever that is…I had wanted to learn about those gadgets while I was there but I was too busy looking for water and cardstock and hiding presents from Dody!  LOL) Finally we pulled into an AutoZone and Tami popped out to get directions. Before the clerk could write them down, a customer said he’d lead us there! Hooray for him! I don’t think we would have ever found it if it weren’t for him! And on the way we found a Michael’s! LOL We had realized by now that WalMart sells scrapbook supplies (duh-lol) and it was getting close to lunch and I was not doing too well with my blood sugar. We all decided to do one stop shopping at Wal Mart. As we pulled in to the parking lot, the guy in the car waved to us as he drove on! Goodbye Mr. Hero!

Somewhere along the way one of the ladies got a phone call from someone in the other group, who was going to Gaylords for lunch. We had driven by Gaylords on the way and we knew that was the lunch plan. (Yea, at least we knew where Gaylords was!) I think it was Dody on the phone asking where in the world were we! The lady on the phone said we were looking for water. I could just imagine Dody asking a million questions on how difficult could it be to find water? (I know I ask a million questions; that is why I constantly fretted Dody would ask a million questions.) So I had a back up plan. You know the cowboy song, where you sing in agony, "water…water…water." I was going to do that little goofy routine if I needed to and make a joke that Texas is in a drought right now. Thankfully I never had to go that route.

We got our scrapbook paper

and water and we were off to Gaylords! Wow! Gaylords was something else! Everything in San Antonio is big. But everything in Dallas is HUGE! And there was a lake around it! I was exclaiming about that and someone was teasing me that it must be merely a Texas tank! Yes, it probably was. Texas is in such a drought that all the water of Texas must be in that tank!

We finally met up with everyone and there were more wonderful ladies to meet!  I finally got to meet Beth!  She lives only 3 hours from me!  And she brought her friend Tonya!  And Guinever arrived!  Woo hoo!  We had a terrific lunch!

This guy came and did hand tricks for us! 

I was glad when he came to our table!

Dollar bills and apples came out of nowhere!

Then we walked around.  

Here's the cute little guy looking at one of our Longhorns! 

This was a model train track...

A cool western town!

This is a replica of Palo Duro Canyon...

Here's the fascade of the Alamo...

The Six Flags of Texas...

The humongous lobby...

Then back to the hotel to work on the scrapbook pages.

Then Marsha got a phone call from Corrine. Dody was on the loose! She was going room to room collecting memory cards from our cameras to download all the pictures of the weekend onto her laptop! Uh oh! We were on the third floor, so it could take her a while to get through all the memory cards on the fourth floor, where everyone else was staying. In the meantime we put out the "Do Not Disturb" sign. Whenever anyone knocked to come in, we always looked out the peephole first to be sure it wasn’t Dody. I said if it is Dody, we’d ignore her! LOL We would just tell her later we were all exhausted and were resting. The ladies didn’t believe we’d get by with that. I assured them that Dody already knew that morning that I had gotten no sleep the night before and had a splitting headache, so she might actually believe us! Also we had the cute little 14 month old in our room and he WAS taking a nap!

Then I had a horrific thought! There were pictures of the quilt and scrapbooks on those memory cards that had been taken earlier that morning! When I told everyone, all of our eyes got really big. We found out later, most of the ladies were good at refusing to give Dody their memory cards. Except for one sweetie who made me laugh all weekend. She had been in the room with us that morning, taken pictures of the gifts, had been hanging out with Dody in the Cookie Corner in the afternoon, and did give her her memory card! There were over 800 pictures on it. While Dody was downloading the pictures, this lady had a revelation of what she had just done!!!! So she managed to non-chalantly direct Dody to look at only a certain set of safe pictures of the weekend. So yes, Dody had THE pictures on her laptop the whole time and the ladies managed to divert her attention so that she never saw them! Whew!

Finally the scrapbooks were done! We hid them. Whew! I can breathe again! We prepared to meet the ladies to take the shuttle to the restaurant. This is where we’d meet a lot of other ladies who live in Dallas. As soon as I hopped off the shuttle I saw a lady standing there and she cried, "Laurie!" "Gilda!" She is one of my fellow moderators! We hugged and hugged. We had lots of new friends to meet, Di, Lori, Susan, and Rebecca! I didn’t know them very well, because they don’t post much, but we hit it off instantly and had a wonderful time.

While standing around and waiting, Melanie from Hawaii walked around putting leis around our necks in the traditional Hawaiin style. Here I am getting mine!

She and her family had handmade a vast assortment of these gorgeous leis. She had each one tagged and it was amazing how each one perfectly coordinated with what we wore and who we were.  Mine was my favorite color, pink!

There Melanie goes, handing out more!

We had a marvelous dinner! I got to sit with Wendy, my secret sister. We split a steak and it was perfect! Wendy and I had a terrific time talking just about everything and one of her stories really sent me into stitches at lunch and dinner.

Finally, the lady we had all been praying for, Pam, arrived! She had been on standby all day long. Bad weather had bumped some flights and therefore her position on the stand by list.

Then we went back to the hotel. On the way, Guinever had asked to see the scrapbooks because her sister had done the pages for her and had sent them directly to Marsha. So while Becca and Guinever were hanging out in that room, I was with the others in the lobby. Dody had wanted to do a picture of all the moderators and Becca was missing. So I went up to get her and Becca was already in her pajamas. Becca was laughing at the idea that she would have to dress again when she was ready to be comfortable. I had noticed Guinever still looking at the scrapbook on my bed. Without thinking, I went back to the lobby and told Dody and Dody said, "I’ll go up to get Becca. What’s your room number?" I was in major paralysis. To have come so far. Then Corrine piped up and said she’d go to my room. I liked that idea better so I looked at Corrine and said that sounded great. Then Dody increduously looked at me and said, "I cannot come to your room?" I was speechless. I melted. "Of course you can." What else do I say? They left and I whipped out my cell phone in a major panic and tried calling Becca but the number wouldn’t go through. Corrine told me later that she flat out told Dody she could not walk into that room. Anyway, Guinever and Becca had already made their way downstairs and had joined us in the lobby after they had left. As I’ve been typing this, I realize what a fool I was. Guinever is a moderator too! Duh! She helps me moderate the year 1 list and has been doing that pretty much full time as I’ve handled the receiving of the fabrics, sewing the quilt, etc. All I had to do was go to the room and tell both of them about the photo op for the mods, put the scrapbook away and we could have all walked down with Becca. Sigh. Why did I not think of this? Nerves from keeping secrets, lack of sleep, splitting headaches…can I claim that? I am simply kicking myself now. But it all worked out. Dody never saw anything. I just feel bad because I had offended Dody when she thought I wouldn’t let her go to my room. That bothered me all night long. I just had this pit in my stomach all night. Sigh.

We got the moderator picture!

Then we talked about how special our yahoo group was. Different ladies gave their testimonies of what a difference our support group has made in their lives. Some ladies were new to Tapestry and this geTOGether cemented the deal on continuing on. They knew they had a great support group. Other ladies had been able to meet face to face with users and get practical questions answered on how to implement Tapestry.

Then we talked about the agenda for Sunday. We made sure we had enough cars to drive us to Gilda’s house. We were to have an icebreaker. LOL Then a brunch. Then praise and worship. Then a devotion. After that…games! Dody couldn’t wait! She loves games! And she wanted to win! She couldn’t wait to see what the prizes were! Now for those of you who don’t know, the games were merely a hidden agenda. In reality, that is when we were going to gift Dody. But she didn’t know that and she went on and on, getting excited about playing games. We were all playing along with her, laughing (at our private joke) and encouraging her along! It was a hoot!

She is so much fun! And throughout the day she’d get more socks from new ladies who arrived. She’d make a big deal out of each one, still. (I wonder how many pairs she actually got!) She’d yell out, "Everyone, look, more socks! Imagine that!" Yes, just imagine what would be coming just around the corner! LOL

After arriving at Corrine’s house, her husband prayed over our driving and weekend TOGether. That helped to calm my anxious nerves, because I hated to leave my family. Then we were off! First was a stop to meet up with Brianne and JoJo. On the way Corrine had gotten a phone call but didn’t recognize the number, so she ignored it. As we drove up to our meeting place, I called the ladies up and Brianne answered, "Is this 2 ladies looking for 2 ladies?"LOL So began our crazy, yet wonderful weekend! We met, hugged, laughed and chit chatted. They had called Corrine (the unidentified phone number) and they had each called me. But there was no indication of that on my cell. Nevertheless we headed for Dallas, arriving by 2pm.

The hotel Tami had arranged for us was lovely! While Corrine checked in, I called my husband. He had left a message. "Oh honey, I love you.  We really miss you.  There were two ladies who called.  I miss you!  (he was getting choked up) I hope those ladies found you.  (That was Brianne and JoJo.) I miss you.  I love you.  sniffle"   When I called him that’s all he talked about! He said when he left the message he said he was getting teary-eyed and choked up! Then he told me that when he got home there were messages on the phone from two ladies looking for us! That is when I figured out that the phone number for me in our mini bio book was not my cell but my home phone number! After that, I started calling my husband, Mr. Secretary! LOL That was appropriate because Tami talked to him later that evening and got my cell phone number from him. He was so nervous giving out my cell number to a stranger, but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about! LOL

Then it was time to see the rooms. The room I was to share with Tami, her son, Becca, and Brianne stunk of cigarette smoke. We took our luggage out of there and put it in the Cookie Corner room where Dody and a few other ladies would be staying. I was a little nervous leaving the quilt and scrapbook pages in Dody’s room, but surely they were safe, right? =)

Then the first group of ladies arrived from the airport! Dody engulfed me in a bear hug! Becca nearly knocked me over in gracious love and enthusiasm. I got to meet Karla and Tish, quiet ladies on the list and totally fun in person, whom I learned are really special...as all the ladies are!

Someone on the list summed it up well. Basically we hugged first and asked who we were hugging after! LOL We did this quite often in front of the hotel desk and the hotel staff and guests were flabbergasted by our friendly group. ;) By Monday morning, a motherly desk worker from Hawaii started coming out to hug everyone goodbye! Marsha and Lori arrived! 

In the meantime, we got another room, which was too small. Then we got a third room which was great! I was hauling my luggage all over the fourth floor and finally from the fourth floor to the third. I was wiped out!  I was carrying more than I needed, due to my extra food and water to control my pre-diabetes between meals.  Also, I came bearing secret gifts for Sunday! My husband usually does all of luggage lugging!  I've always appreciated, but I really could have used him Friday!  LOL In fact, while I was trying to get the last my luggage into the door, I couldn’t get the key to work, my phone rang, and I couldn’t get to the phone fast enough. I found another key that did work. Whew! I was trying not to feel rumpled in spirit! I beat a path to the lobby to see all the friendly ladies of our group! =) While I was getting all new keys made for our room (having only one new key made, I learned, deactivates all the old keys), Melanie arrived!   

Then we all walked over to Bennigans and I called my husband, who had been the one trying to call me on the phone.

He still had the meat in the freezer. It was 4pm. He wanted to know how to make lasagne from scratch and have it ready to eat in one hour! It was so funny talking to him on the phone. The ladies who overheard my part of the conversation were laughing too!  It takes my husband 3x as long to do anything I'm going to do.  So I told him to just make spaghetti with the little bit of sauce I had in the freezer.  (I wanted my children to have their dinner before 10pm! LOL)  Later that night he called again (about 10pm) to tell me he had the lasagne made and on the table by 730pm!  He had even packed up extra in quart size freezer bags for a lady in our Sunday School class who has been needing meals to freeze!

Finally Sam arrived! We ate! I was sitting between Dody and Corrine. While I was looking at my menu, Dody started posing for a picture!

I'm actually wondering, when is the best time to give Dody some socks? 

Apparently, Corrine had given Dody the first pair of socks before we came. They were actually Corrine's dd's and there were oreo cookies on the socks. 

When I came back from the restroom, I heard Dody ask Corrine, "Why in the world would your dd give me her socks?" Corrine gave hints. "It’s a theme." This banter went on back and forth. For those of you who have seen Marsha’s video, this is what is being discussed! Finally Dody said she was going to call Corrine’s family and get the scoop. You should have seen Corrine’s eyes pop out! Dody never called. Whew!   I tell you, Dody did and said a lot of things that weekend that kept us hopping, in order to keep the secret under wraps! LOL

Then Dody left for a few minutes. I told Corrine I had Donna’s socks. So Corrine grabbed them, put them in Dody’s purse, but didn’t close it all the way. Then we acted innocent. Dody came back, chatted with some ladies, then we headed back to the hotel. Dody came over, got her purse, and I heard her exclaim, "What’s in my purse?"

I beat a path around the table, away from Dody, because I didn’t know how to answer any questions! LOL Then someone asked, "What do you have, Dody?" Increduously Dody said, "I have socks from Donna in Washington! But I can’t imagine how she got them in my purse! (Donna could not come to Dallas.  When she mailed her quilt fabric contributions to me, she also sent chocolate for me and Corrine to eat while we worked on the quilt.  She also wrote a funny letter to me on an old legal sized envelope. She had split it open and I had a 4 page letter.  I just thought she was a frugal type of lady.  However midway through the letter, she asked how I liked her stationary. The pretty letter she meant to send was on her desk. So she grabbed the envelope out of the recylce bin at the post office and wrote on that at the last minute!  LOL She also sent the first pair of socks.  I wrote "Donna in WA" on the tag.  I am so glad Dody read that.  What a hoot!) So began the sock gifting to Dody! It was a riot!

After arriving at the hotel, Becca had told me she wanted to see the quilt. So while everyone else went to the Cookie Corner on the fourth floor, Becca and I went to our room on the third floor. We looked at the quilt and talked for a long time. Finally Becca got a phone call, I think from Corrine, asking what we were doing. "Talking." (snicker) I guess Corrine asked if we were having more fun than they were. (snicker) So Becca hung up and we showed the socks that we were gifting Dody to each other. THEN we joined the others in the Cookie Corner. LOL 

When we walked in, Dody enthusiastically said, "Look what I got! Socks!!! More of them!" I went over to admire them. Then I walked over to my purse, pulled out mine, and presented them to Dody. Innocently I asked, "Would you like to add to your collection?"

I’m not sure when Becca gave Dody hers. They were so soft and pink and white! Dody started giving the socks turns on her feet. Each pair got about 15 minutes of foot time.

Throughout the evening more ladies arrived and more socks arrived! Here's Wendy, my Secret Sister!

At one point I was sitting next to Dody when she got yet another pair of socks!

She made a big deal out of every one. She was so funny that I was laughing. Then she loudly exclaimed, "Laurie, how am I going to get to Sunday? How am I going to get through all these socks?  I have to sing Sunday.  How will I get past the socks!" I died laughing. My side hurt I was laughing so hard. The plan was to gift her with the big presents on Sunday. Does she know anything?  She was making me nervous as well as making me laugh!!!!

I can’t remember specific comments now, but almost from the minute I met her on Friday afternoon, Dody made comments like this, as if she KNEW what was going to happen! She was making me neurotic! LOL For weeks we had kept secrets from her and tried to make sure we were careful with what we said. But there had been slips. What did Dody know? That was the big question we kept asking each other! Even in front of her, we would make comments, or stop making comments, so too much would not be said. When Dody met Brianne, it came up that she shows up on doorsteps. She did that with her Secret Sister, JoJo, last December. Then Brianne did that with me, when delivering her fabric for the quilt. I almost mentioned Brianne coming to my house and I stopped just in time. Then Becca went on and on about my house, when she realized the only house pictures she had ever seen were when I had posted the progress of the quilt on the Bless Socks list. I assured Becca that I’m always talking about my husband remodeling and posting pictures of our unit celebrations in our house. But poor Becca panicked! Well, I panicked more than once too! I will share more of that in my next blog entry! Stay tuned for the rest of...Operation Bless Dody's Socks Off!