Barb Dittrich, Laurie Hetherington, and Jolene Philo at the 2013 Accessibility Summit

My head’s still spinning and my feet are still hurting from standing a lot during the whirlwind weekend at the 2013 Accessibility Summit at McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Virginia.

The Best Thing About the Accessibility Summit

The absolutely best part of the Summit is meeting online friends like Laurie Hetherington in person. Connecting face to face, sharing information and pictures of our kids, and learning together is a little bit of heaven right here on earth. To hear these dear friends describe how DifferentDream.com posts have encouraged them or how resources featured here made life easier for them…well, all I can say is that the Summit should come with its own tissue warning!

The Second Best Thing About the Summit

The second-best thing about the Summit is meeting people who run organizations that serve the special needs community. People like:

Emily Colson who spoke about raising her son Max, who experiences autism. She’s also author of Dancing with Max, her memoir about life with her sweet son,

Front Row: Barb Dittrich, Katie Wetherbee
Back Row: Jolene Philo, Cindi Ferrini, Rebecah Hamilton

Barb Dittrich of Snappin’ Ministries,
Joe and Cindi Ferrini, authors of Unexpected Journey: When Special Needs Change our Course, Katie Wetherbee and Rebecca Hamilton of Key Ministry,

Matt Mooney of 99 Balloons,
and those are only the people I was able to photograph!

The Third Best Thing About the Summit

The third best thing about the 2013 Summit was having fun with friends made there over the years doing things like:

having my photo taken with the earplugs given by my roomy, Barb Dittrich, who says she snores,

taking preliminary photo pictures with co-author, Katie Wetherbee, in case our book proposal gets accepted by the publishing house discussing it this week,

and going to supper at the Cheesecake Factory Saturday night with friends, laughing until our sides ached.

The Best Thing About Next Year’s Summit

And that brings us to the best thing about next year’s summit. For me, it will be seeing you there and then posting a photo of us in the highlights of the Accessibility Summit, 2014. If you attended this year’s summit, what were the highlights for you? If you didn’t attend, what needs to happen to get you there next year? Leave a comment!

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