Sisterhood of the Traveling Bimbo Shirt

As promised, here are some of our summer highlights from our time in the U.S.

First of all, did I ever tell you about the Sisterhood of the Traveling Bimbo Shirt? It's kind of a long silly story, but basically a group of cyber friends I met on a home school support forum decided to send several Bimbo soccer shirts around the world to our various international forum buddies. Some are being signed and then passed on to other countries. Bimbo is nothing more than a bread company, exactly like Wonder Bread with the same kind of twinkies and other products, only with different names.

So, when we first arrived in Dallas, one of my e-maginary friends, as my family refers to my Sonlight forum friends, picked us up at DFW airport and drove us to my mom's house. Pretty sweet for a virtual stranger, don't you think? I made sure she donned the infamous Bimbo shirt, even 8 months pregnant, to be added to the collage of honorary international bimbos. Here we are posed together where the limosines usually pick up their VIPs.


My family really should believe that my e-friends are real by this time. Before we ever left, one of them sent me a care package all the way to Mexico with my favorite candy, Hot Tamales. Then Hannah ended up going to the Philippines to help out the sister of one of my e-friends, Bethany, who later sent her care packages from the U.S. These ladies are real, and they are amazing!

Once I got to Ohio, several of the ladies in the Akron area arranged a meet-up at a local park. Here we are with the infamous Bimbo shirt.

One of my friend's husband is posing in the shirt, but it wasn't that the others were too embarrassed to be seen wearing it. Each one took a turn for a photo op. I shrunk the photos a bit as I hope anyone would do for me, considering how unflattering this particular shirt is.






Later in the summer, I attended a retreat for missionaries from all over the world. Rather than take pot-luck on a roommate, I mentioned on the Sonlight international home schooling forum that I was looking for a roomie. One of the ladies actually signed up to attend this Women of the Harvest retreat so we could meet and room together. It was a great conference at a gorgeous castle in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here we are in front of Glen Eyrie Castle.





Here's a video of the retreat in Colorado:
Did you see me?


This is the whole group of ladies, missionaries and volunteers at Women of the Harvest

One notable thing that happened at the retreat is that I ended up sharing about my most embarrassing moment of 2009. Earlier I had posted it on the Sonlight forum, and within a few days my thread had received 1500 "hits" meaning LOTS of people had read my story. All those ladies in the photo above came from 50 countries around the world, so now even more people know of my humiliation. I'm famous. Since everyone got such a kick out of it, I decided to submit it to the Women of the Harvest Magazine for their humor section. Yep, you guessed it. My story will be published for a wider international audience yet. I'm blushing on the outside, but secretly thrilled to think of so many people getting a good laugh at my expense. Ironically the magazine just came out today after I wrote this. It's cute. There's a photo of a lady with a bag covering her head. Haha.

And no, I'm not going to write the story on my own blog. Are you crazy? My mother reads this blog. Her friends read this blog. Heavens, even my children sometimes read this blog. No way!