women's retreat

Two of my friends and I organized a women's retreat for the Friday before mother's day.

The idea to have a women's retreat had been floating around for awhile, but after I listened at the General Women's meeting and I heard this from Sister Oscarson I knew we had to make it happen. She said

"We must stop concentrating on our differences and look for what we have in common; then we can begin to realize our greatest potential and achieve the greatest good in this world. Sister Marjorie P. Hinckley once said, “Oh, how we need each other. Those of us who are old need you who are young. And, hopefully, you who are young need some of us who are old. It is a sociological fact that women need women. We need deep and satisfying and loyal friendships with each other.”⁶ Sister Hinckley was right; oh, how we need each other! "

I think it's true. We need friendships that will strengthen and uplift us. We have so much we can learn from each other. And sometimes we need a chance to be ourselves without the busyness of to do's and motherhood and life.

When we were up at Ensign Ranch during Spring break we realized that the lodge would also be a perfect place to gather some ladies for a night to relax and have fun and get to know each other. It just so happened that the only weekend opened for the rest of the year was Mother's day weekend. When we heard that we thought it wouldn't work out because our stake has always held their fathers and sons campout the weekend of mother's day. And then when we got home I found out that, for whatever reason, the stake campout was actually scheduled to be the following week. It was a sign! It was meant to be!! So we got the lodge reserved and made our retreat happen.

There were 11 of us (and one adorable baby). We kept things as simple as we could, especially the food. Cooking was kept to a minimum thanks to costco.

We ate dinner while we played a really fun game. We each drew a piece of paper that had an If, Then statement on it. For example, mine said "If anyone laughs, Then raise your glass and say "this deserves a toast." You have to do whatever your paper says until someone figures out what yours was. It was an entertaining meal.

After dinner, some of us went on a walk around the water. We came back to the lodge and played a get to know you game. We each wrote down our answers to 5 questions about ourselves. We split into two teams and took turns reading someone's answers out loud. The other team would guess who's paper it was. You got 5 points for getting it right on the first question, four points on the second etc.

I led a discussion on motherhood when we finished the game. I loved hearing these ladies experiences, ideas, and thoughts. It gave me much to think about.

We spent the rest of the night playing games and talking.

In the morning, I led some of us in doing yoga. Even though I'm not an instructor or anything. I like to pretend. ;)

We spent the rest of the morning canoeing or walking or talking or whatever else we wanted to do.

We ate lunch together and cleaned up the lodge before heading home.

It was such a nice break and I'm looking forward to when we do it again!