… but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I sat around one too many campfires as a kid. Just singing that song, I can almost smell the fire in my hair. Oh wait, that’s just because I didn’t wash my hair this morning.

That’s because instead of getting ready for work today, I had to spend that time running around the house like a madwoman to clean for the cleaning lady since I was out late last night meeting these lovely ladies for dinner (such a first world problem, I know! Don’t worry, I hate myself a little bit for typing that sentence, too).

Starting on the left side of the table, and moving clockwise, these awesome ladies are:

— Claudia of Sanford 365 (and thanks for the picture above Claudia!)

— Roz of RozPearcy.com

— Yours truly, with my oversized head that’s blocking …

— Carolina of Peas in a Blog

— Andrea of Run, Eat, Date, Sleep

— Michelle of Crazy*Running*Legs

— Dina of DinaRuns.com

— Katherina of Zephyr Runs

— and Kristina of Love and Zest (how adorable is that name? Kristina herself is even lovelier than her name!)

We missed some of our regulars last night and I think the rain may have made some people bail at the last minute (hence all the empty chairs) but it was so fun to meet some new friends, too. We met at El Bodegon in Winter Park. It’s a Spanish-style tapas restaurant that I’ve been wanting to try for years and it did not disappoint! Any place with sangria is always tops in my book.

Since I’ve only been at this blogging thing for about a year now, I can’t tell you how valuable meet-ups like this are to help me grow and learn from this community. I feel so lucky that Orlando has such a vibrant, exciting blogging community. And it’s so diverse! From food bloggers to healthy living bloggers to travel blogging to tech bloggers to mommy/lifecasting bloggers like me, there are so many different voices to learn from and enjoy.

If you don’t live in Central Florida (and I know you wish you did), I urge you to use Twitter or Facebook to find bloggers in your area. It can be a little scary at first (I’m so glad I had my pal Katy Widrick to introduce me to the blogging world) but you’ll be go glad you made the effort to make these connections.

And it’s not all blog talk. Even though we did discuss ad networks, blogging frequency and privacy concerns last night, we also discussed boys, babies, juicing, yoga and unusual, sweaty job interviews!

And sometimes I even kept my head out of the way for pictures.

Even if it meant ducking and hunching down at times …

And no evening is ever complete without a pic with my blogmate Michelle (thanks for letting me borrow all these pictures!).

Have you ever been to a blogger meet-up? Or, better yet, what’s your favorite drink? I’m always a sucker for a restaurant’s “specialty drink,” even though it’s usually not very special.