Our 'Pancakes and Pajamas' birthday party for the Relief Society!

So, Relief Society is the women's organization within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it's fabulous. It was founded in March of 1842, and every year that 'birthday' is marked or celebrated by individual RS units - such as the Nampa 2nd Ward! 

       

 Last year the ladies in charge went above and beyond to host an amazing tea party... so naturally, this year I felt quite overwhelmed with the idea of trying to live up to that. Always-wise Emily encouraged me to forget about last year and just have our committee do its own thing, so we did and it turned out to be its own kind of awesomeness :).

We chose kind of a 'slumber party' theme and combined the RS motto: 'Charity Never Faileth' with a line from a service-centered church hymn, "Have I Done Any Good?": 'So wake up and do something more!'                        

I love this hymn, and it was really the aspect of Relief Society that I wanted to highlight and emphasize and celebrate: the sisterhood of charity and helping and serving each other.

To go along with our pajama theme, we did 'breakfast for dinner' featuring pancakes with fruit/whipped cream/syrup toppings, since a) pancakes are delicious, b) pancakes fit our (tight!) budget well, and c) we have two fantastic pancake chefs in the ward, Bishop Fleshman and Brother Murphy:

(oh, and their sous-chef Jared!). These gentlemen were amazing - Brother Murphy brought all of his equipment and they got right to work and produced perfect pancakes for all of the ladies to eat. They were so sweet every step of the way, and I really, really appreciated how much stress that took off of me. Knowing that they had this under control was such a blessing!

Here are some shots of our ward sisters during dinner; we invited the older primary girls and the young women and it was so fun to see them there! (thanks to Sister Wendy Law for some of these pictures!!)

Cute decorations courtesy of Cassandra and her cricut :)

Our ward is one of the oldest in Nampa (the second oldest, in fact, haha!) and we have a great collection of ward histories from the past century. Sister Murphy set them all out for sisters to peruse throughout the evening.

The entertainment for the evening was a video that I made... a labor of a LOT of love, I'll tell ya!

Chuck was a sweetheart and not only helped set up that afternoon, but also came in with me that evening to get the laptop/projector/speakers/microphone up and running. I'm usually the more technologically inclined between us, but I was soo nervous and couldn't remember a thing from when we did this a few months ago at one of his Scout events.

And here's the video! It's a lengthy 14 minutes, so no worries if you fast forward here and there or just take my word for it that it's Oscar-worthy :).  

(Minus the couple rushed transitions to and from video clips; those get me every time!!)

After the video, we played 'Answer with TRUTH or DARE to serve', a Jana Izatt-original game where I asked each table a RS-trivia question. If they got it right, we moved on to the next table. If they answered incorrectly, they had to choose a 'service project' from the board - things like "refill another tables' water cups", "give the closing prayer tonight", "write a group letter to the missionaries serving from our ward", etc. It was SO funny! Also enjoy the shot of my pregnant, pajama-clad self:

And finally, each sister got to take home a delicious 'happy birthday' cupcake as a favor. Thanks to the fabulous women who donated their skills and time and ingredients to make those!!

I was so, so happy with how well everything turned out, despite the always-present bumps in the road whenever you plan a big event. Poor Emily put so much into all of the planning and then was waylaid by a million different things and couldn't be there that night. Blessedly our fantastic committee stepped up and helped so much and women outside the committee helped and as always, Chuck was a rockstar and helped a ton. I'm grateful for the Relief Society program and hopefully the sisters left that evening feeling loved and valued and inspired to serve others!