SOL 17/31 & Celebrate This Week: Book Club Retreat!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the March Slice of Life Story Challenge community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Melanie, and Lanny

 for hosting this meeting place each day in March

and for nurturing our writing lives.

Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.

When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

 

   A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember.

Bobbi calls and arranges to pick me up at 8:30 am on Friday morning. Then we'll head to Jen's house where we'll transfer my many bags (that's a post for another day) to Jen's car and head to our yearly book club retreat. 

I love a trip that begins with a ferry ride. This one is short, but we decide to head for the deck where I convince a fellow traveler to snap a pic of us.

After arriving at Debora's lovely home and pitching in a bit with a few last minute preparations, the five early arrivals pile into the car and we're off for fun! It's hard to describe the giddy excitement as we gather each year, but it's palpable and we all drink it in. 

Bobbi blurts out, "Hey, that sign mentioned chocolate!" (*)

Debora, who used to live here, replies that she doesn't know anything about a chocolate shop. Nevertheless, we can check it out. We're thinking that it's something we'll look for on our next run into town. But Debora pulls into town, turns around, and we head back, looking for the "chocolate" sign with craned heads. Once we've spotted the rustic sign, we turn around and head back to town. We laugh with glee when the rustic sign that Bobbi had noticed has no mention whatsoever of chocolate, but instead has the words "Co-op housing."

We park in front of the highly recommended Snapdragon cafe. As we start to get out of the car for lunch, we realize that's it's only 11:15. But we're all hungry, having started the day at an early hour, and we decide it's okay to eat lunch before noon. 

After lunch stops include a walk to the "bike in a tree," a stop by a quilt show (not planned, but noticed on the marquee of the local arts center), and slow meandering through the small shops in town. With nothing on schedule until our evening dinner, we savor every moment of shopping, browsing, and chatting together. We stop by the local Thriftway to pick up a few last minute items before heading back to Debora's place to await the arrival of the rest of our baker's dozen. 

Here's the pic of our group taken just before dinner. Thanks, Karl, for taking this pic of our group before you left. 

I'm thinking that this once a year event will provide several more blog posts for the upcoming week. Stay tuned. 

*Note about the two colors used on this post:  Okay, I usually do my celebrate posts in blue, but Blogger and I are fighting tonight. It refuses to do the rest of the post in blue and also refuses to make the entire post black. I surrender! 

Blogger: 1 Ramona: 0.