St. George - Women's Retreat

One of the highlights of each year for the last 5 years has been our women's retreat with my wonderful friends from Ohio!   I look forward to it and am so grateful for each year that I'm able to go.   It's a lot of work for Jon and others for me to leave for a few days and I am so grateful for their willingness to let me go.

 

This year, Kirsten & I were in charge and we held it in St. George, Utah.  I love planning, scheming, talking, preparing and hosting events with Kirsten.  She is definitely the creative, fun, thorough one and it was a blast to do something together again. 

 

A couple of months before September, my brother Mike announced that he was getting married and getting married on the day of the reunion starting.   I was so excited for Mike, but sad about missing the first day of the reunion.  Kirsten was so understanding, especially because it meant more of the work would be on her - getting into the house, buying groceries, etc.

 

Circumstances worked out just fine to not only be at Mike & Mandy's wedding, but my sister-in-law Beth came into town for a couple of days and we were able to travel to St. George together early the morning after the wedding.  The drive went so fast - we just talked and talked the whole way down and got there around 8:30 that Friday morning.

 

We were able to find a house that worked perfect!  It was gorgeous, easy to get to, and we had plenty of room!

(The following pictures were all taken by Kirsten - thank goodness for her!)

 

 The first night - Ali, Holly, Angie, Melinda, Sarah, Lisa, Becky & Kirsten

 

 Kirsten brought these little goody bags for the first night - lotion, nail polish & silver flip flops.  The second night, we gave the girls Utah Truffles and the 3rd night, we had delicious cupcakes from a local bakery.

 

 The first night was apparently spent on somewhat of a secret mission - these cute girls headed out to find 40 bottles of Diet Coke!   Keep reading to find out what they did with them!

 

 Friday morning was spent going to the St. George Temple Visitor's Center and the Brigham Young Winter Home.  I sure love all these women - they are incredible!

Me, Sarah, Lisa, Angie, Andrea & Holly

 

 Anne (holding Becky's baby Sarah), Melinda, Becky, Beth, Kirsten & Ali

 

 The 3 of us have been to all the reunions:  Me, Lonica & Kirsten

 

 What a beautiful Temple!

 

This was our awesome group this year!

 



 Brigham Young home - we had a fabulous tour guide, who got emotional several times on the tour.

 

After our tours, we stopped for lunch at 25 Main.  They had delicious soups, sandwiches and cupcakes!

 

 

 

That afternoon, we relaxed, shopped, napped, etc.  Kirsten, Becky & I were able to slip away and go to a couple of quilt stores - seriously heaven!    That night, we had delicious BBQ chicken salad and bread at the house.  Then we played a fun game of things that happened to us over the past year - we laughed and laughed!  

 

The next morning, was the morning of our hike!  AnnDee had found the perfect hiking place.  As she was describing it, I had the thoughts that for Becky & Lonica, it would be really hard to take their little babies on the hike.  In talking to Becky the night before, she decided that she didn't want to go and I was more than happy to stay with her and offer to watch Lonica's baby.

 

We ended up doing that!  I think I messed up some fun surprises that were planned and I felt terrible about that, but I was so happy for Lonica to be able to go and have a good time and I was so happy to stay and visit with Becky.  We held babies and just talked and talked.  I miss our early morning walks and I loved hearing about her cute family and their lives in Las Vegas.

 

After everyone got back, Becky & I slipped away for some Chick-Fil-A (they don't have any in Vegas and it sounded yummy to both of us).  Again, I think I messed up more fun surprises, but we were able to hook up with the group again at Tai Pan.

 



 That morning, as everyone was getting ready to leave on the hike, I noticed the birthday banner on the wall and thought "Hmmm....I wonder who's birthday it is today?"   Then, I saw the 40 Diet Cokes, arranged in a 40 and I immediately knew!

Yes - I am the old lady in the group and was the first to enter into the 40's.  I'm happy to pave the trail for all the youngsters coming after me.  My friends know me well - seriously, I didn't need anything else for my birthday after getting all that Diet Coke!

 

After shopping, we got home and found these 2 amazing posters!   The night that I wasn't there, they had come up with a "Veggie Gram."  Holy creativity!   I laughed and laughed!   I am seriously like a kid and just don't have the palate for most vegetables.  I simply don't like them.  I reassure myself that I think there's still a chance to get into heaven without liking vegetables. :)

 

And, then, to help satisfy my sweet tooth and to have something to use that Diet Coke to wash down, they also gave me a Candy Gram.

 

 

 When I went up to my room, it was splattered with all sorts of cute post-it notes with kind words about what they like about me.  I got choked up and really, really appreciated all of their kind words.  These are women that I look up to and strive to be like!

 

After eating a delicious dinner at a pizza place, we came home and had delicious cupcakes and a wonderful discussion from Andrea about the Power of Moms.  Again, another wonderful evening with incredible people!

 

A super, huge thank you to all these great women (and their husbands and babysitters back home)!  It was a wonderful weekend and full of more great memories!  Next year......Nashville, TN!  I can't wait!

After Christmas Trip to Arizona & Vegas

For the past several years, we have left the day after Christmas to go visit Jon's mom in Oregon.  We love seeing her, but we are always (okay, instead of "we" I should say "I") worried about weather.  We've had some nasty fog and slow driving conditions that absolutely stress me out to the max.

 

So, this year, we decided to go south to enjoy some "warm" weather and not have the stress about driving conditions.

 

Uh huh!  So, an unusual snow storm hit central and southern Utah on Christmas and continued into the next day.  We decided to still try it and had some snow and slower driving for a little while, but rather than turning and heading over the mountain pass right after Nephi, we decided to stay on the Interstate and go across on I-70.   It was a great decision and with the faith our prayers and my mother's prayers, as soon as we crossed, we had dry roads and blue skies the rest of the way to the Grand Canyon.

 

We got to a little town called Tusayan at the base of the southern rim of the Grand Canyon around 7:00 that night.  We checked into our hotel and then went and got pizza - really expensive pizza.  $30 for a large pizza!  Geez!  It was okay - not great, but okay.  It was freezing, so after dinner, we were happy to just go to bed.

 

The next morning, we got up and went to an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon.  Then, we drove into the canyon to find look-out spots to see it.   We stopped at our first one and the parking lot was packed so Jon let us out and waited for a spot.  It was pretty cold, but gorgeous! 

 

 

While we were there, Hailey got really sleepy and I could tell she was really, really cold.  We got back in the car with the intent of driving to the next lookout, but Hailey started to dry heave and looked awful.  I think between the windy roads and the IMAX movie, we made her sick.

 

Plus, it was starting to get really, really crowded, so we just decided to head towards Phoenix. 

 

The kids were great in the car and we got to Becky's house about 4:30 in the afternoon or so.  My parents have flown there on Christmas Day, so it was fun to overlap with them for a couple of days.   From this point on, I was terrible about taking pictures!

 

Most of us stayed in a La Quinta Inn (we had Emily and Kate sleep at Becky's so that we only needed to get 1 hotel room).   It was great!  We played games and hung out with the Mortensen's and my parents.  The kids played outside (even though it was probably the coldest week of the year in PHX).

 

On Sunday, we went to church with the Mortensen's, went and saw the new Phoenix, AZ temple and had a yummy Sunday dinner together.

 

On Monday, Jon, John, Emily & Jack went golfing (even though it was quite cold).  My parents left around lunch time to fly home.  We went back to the hotel and let the kids swim.  They spent most of the time in the hot tub and a little time in the heated pool.   The Mortensen's came over and Brooklyn & Jake swam too.   The only bad thing was that there was so much chlorine in the water that it literally took most of the color out of several swimming suits :(



 

 

After swimming, we got the kids dressed and walked across the parking lot to Red Robin for dinner.  We all love that place and it was fun to all have one last meal together!  The kids were really, really good! 

 

We hated to say goodbye to the Mortensen's the next morning, but we left about 8:30 or so and headed towards Las Vegas.  Again, there was an unusual snow storm expected in Las Vegas and Southern Utah, so we debated on the best, safest way to get home.  We ultimately decided to stick with our original plan and drive to Vegas to spend the afternoon and night with our friends, the Larson's. 

 

We were so excited to see the Larson's!  The kids and Jon hadn't seen them for quite awhile.  I had got to see Becky and their cute baby Sarah in September, but what a treat to see the rest of the kids and Doug too!   The Larson kids are so fun and sooo friendly and made the kids feel so welcome.  They had a great time playing together while we visited with Becky.  Their home is beautiful and it's just always such a treat to be with them!

 

After a little while, we took all our kids (except Lindsey), down to the Las Vegas strip to see M&M world.  We attempted to see the fountains at the Bellagio, but they must not have been turned on.   The strip is not an uplifting place at all - obviously, so we had to keep telling the kids not to look up, but yet not too look down! 

We got back to the Larson's house just in time to leave with them for a Las Vegas Buffet dinner.  The Larson's treated us to dinner (which is such a rare treat for us).   It was really perfect!!  There are 11 kids among us so the fact that they could get up and get whatever they wanted was absolutely perfect!  (Again, I was just an idiot and didn't get one single picture with them)!  We had a great time and the kids were fantastic! 

We came home and put the kids to bed, visited more and then went to bed.  We were supposed to hit bad weather on the way home, but we were so blessed with perfect roads and blue skies.  I literally kept tearing up because of how calm the drive was.   The Lord answers prayers!

 

We had a wonderful time.  As always, it was so nice to get home.  The house was a disaster from Christmas day, gifts, preparing for Christmas, etc., but thankfully over the next couple of days, we got it all back to normal.

Thank you to the Mortensen's and Larson's for letting the Clampett's come and crash at their houses!