yw on the brain

And I'm back to slacking on family history friday!

To make up for it, I thought I would at least tell you what I've been so busy with.  :)  I have spent the last month-2 months fine tuning our first (hopefully annual) yw retreat for our ward, which I got home from earlier today.  I wont go as far to say that it resembled a fine tuned retreat, but we had a fabulous time!!

A few things that I felt were successful:
•devotionals, spread throughout the weekend (and all started with hymns to get the sillies out and the spirit in)  Most of these were taught by yw, who did a pretty amazing job
•value workshops: we had workshops for each value that could be an optional personal progress experience.  We didn't bill them as "personal progress experiences" because we have several girls that are very hesitant to do anything personal progress related.  They were all excited and pleasantly surprised when they got to sign off 7 experiences at the end!
•crafts: we had a few crafts here and there for the girls to play with, included braided headbands, heart rocks and adorable jewelry.
•t-shirts: we ordered some stinking cute t-shirts for the girls that say "I'm a mormon.  I know it.  I live it.  I love it."  Our first devotional was talking about this talk by Ann M. Dibbs and it was pretty downright inspirational to see all of the yw proudly wearing this bold testimony throughout the weekend AND  to the cheese factory.
•the girls were spectacular, as always.  they were sweet to each other, sweet to us leaders and 100% awesome.  I *love* my calling.

We had a healthy dose of free time, late night giggling and saran wrapping random objects around the house, but we also had spiritual moments throughout the weekend.    There was also a lot of serious chic bonding, which I tend to think is pretty dang vital to our yw program.  All in all, all of that planning paid off and I sure do hope that we get to do this retreat next year, too.  We couldn't have done it without a very generous ward member that let us use their beach house, a very generous ward member that brought his camper out for our priesthood holders AND a very generous mom and dad that came to watch the kiddoes while we were retreating.   (ooh....I forgot to tell you the best part!  That generous ward member that let us use his beach house?  Yep, he gave us a couple of extra days for the hubby and me to relax before the retreat.  amazing, right?)