Anticipation...

Hmmmm....so I haven't posted anything in a reeeeally long time.  Guess I haven't had a lot to say.  Or more likely just haven't taken the time to type it.  Anyway...I am just about giddy with anticipation.  Today is laundry and errands in prep for the coming week.  Tomorrow is church and then we have a fragile X awareness event at the local minor league baseball game.  Hoping to meet a few more families from our area there and spread a little awareness also. 
Monday, Lindsey and I, and I think my friend Beth and her daughter are going for mother daughter mani-pedis - Beth and I have to have cute toes for Miami, right?  Monday afternoon Tim and I take the kids to the family that will be taking care of them while we head to Miami for the fragile X conference on Tuesday.  And the conference is the reason I am giddy.  More accurately, the people who will be at the conference are the reason.  At our first conference in 2006 in Atlanta, we met Matt and Beth, who live very nearby, have kids close to our kids ages, and have become like family.  Also in Atlanta, Tim and I were walking to a Ruth's Chris one night during the conference and met Kristie, Eric, Kelly, and Tony. They kindly invited us to share a table with them, and they became instant friends of ours who we wish we could see more than once every two years.  We meet new people every time we go, and so we look forward to seeing many old friends, and we know that we will meet new ones also on this trip.  I look forward to the time with friends even more than the sessions - and I really do look forward to the sessions. 
Like many in the FX world, social anxiety is a challenge, but at conference, at least for me, that becomes so much easier. Surrounded by people who know and understand and live fragile X, I feel like I'm home.  Not having to explain "fragile what?" to anybody is wonderful.  And as somebody (Arlene maybe?) said on the getting ready for conference podcast said - I can take off my armor.  That is such a wonderful description of how conference feels to me.  Surrounded by people who understand me, understand my kids, who aren't shocked by stories of the bizarreness that sometimes happens in my world, who have stories equally bizarre and uncannily similar - people who "get it" - it's just one of my favorite things.  And so I look forward to that feeling, and I know I will meet lots of new friends, and I will want to take them all home with me.  Ok, maybe most of them.  ;)