ANWA Report -- Friday, February 29th, Morning and Afternoon

For those of you not familiar with ANWA, it's an organization for LDS women who write. It stands for American Night Writers Association, and it was started over twenty years ago by Marsha Ward. I was invited to come down and be a presenter at this year's conference, and I was delighted to go.

I flew out on Friday morning, bidding my cute little ones farewell with much sadness and angst. It was made worse when Benjamin, my three-year-old, grabbed my hand and tried to pull me back into the car. I was trying to hide the sniffles and forgot to tip the sky cap, for which I'm truly sorry. Sky cap, if you're out there, I didn't mean to short change you!

The flight down was pretty good, a little turbulence but nothing terrible. The landing was a bit rocky, but this person who hates flying survived just fine.

I was collected along with my baggage by the lovely ANWA vice-president Janette Rallison, who braved miles of traffic in order to fetch me. She narrowly missed getting stuck in a huge jam caused by a semi catching fire on the freeway, and we saw the aftermath and the clean-up as we left the airport.

We wended our way to Chili's, where we met up with the rest of the ANWA presidency and other guests for lunch.

Janette, looking lovely, and me, looking somewhat worse for wear

Joan, Connie, and Lorna - ANWA members and presidency

Kerry, Marsha, and Kathy





After a delightful lunch during which I ate a bacon cheeseburger that was so tall, I had to smash it down to get it into my mouth, I moved my stuff from Janette's car into Kerry's and she and Kathy and I drove off to the apartment where we were staying. Kerry is one of Covenant's bestselling authors, and Kathy is the managing editor at Covenant, so I was surrounded by the creme de la creme of the publishing world.

After unloading our stuff, we grabbed cameras and headed off to the Phoenix Zoo, which has been rated the third best in the nation. Space doesn't permit me to post every single picture I took, and believe me, I took a passel, but here are some of the highlights:

Kathy and Kerry on the zoo train.

A sleeping lion. Okay, so it's from the back, but it's still a pretty good picture, right?

What's black and white and red all over? A zebra in Arizona!

We went into a huge cage where the monkeys ran around loose right in front of us. I've never gotten so close to monkeys before -- it was awesome.

Me and the hippo, feeling like long lost cousins . . .

Attempting to kiss the frog, although I already have a handsome prince. He took the day off work to stay home and take care of the little tadpoles so I could go on this wonderful weekend.

Tristi by the flowers on the way out of the zoo.

This was such a fun experience. We saw all kinds of animals we'd never seen before, saw the caterers set up for a wedding reception to be held there in the zoo, and chatted like magpies ourselves. Kerry and Kathy were so much fun to hang out with. The weather was warm and the breezes were delightful. It was a great afternoon.

More later . . .