The last weekend in April found our girls' group heading for the Big City (Boise!) for our annual retreat. Also, can I just say that one benefit of blogging about things sooo long after they occur is that instead of reliving this and being sad that I have to wait another year for the next retreat, I'm reliving it and waiting like a month and a half for the next one. Yayyyy!!!
The gang: Nycole, Jana, Paulina, Emily, Kara, Nicole, Melinda, and the darling back of darling Carly's head.
Our destination was a beautiful house in the foothills north of Boise. I think we were all sold when we saw the purple door, but the fannnncy furniture definitely sealed the deal. It's like they decorated just for our classy selves.
We arrived one by one, which allowed us to do the 'tour of the house' multiple times, eliciting hilarity and shock and amusement each and every time. We weren't sure the retreat location could live up to last year's adventure with Harry in McCall, but we were quickly proved wrong ;).
We also made divvied up the rooms. The beautiful master bedroom went by default to the lady with a baby - Melinda. We stuck Paulina in there too, sisters stick together. Emily and Nycole got the short stick last retreat, aka they were on a couch and futon I think? in an open living space... so this round they each scored their own bedroom upstairs. Let the record show that as a group we are nothing if not fair. Kara also got her own bedroom. NOT because we anticipated her getting tired early and needing to hit the hay before the rest of us were ready because she's a lightweight. That absolutely wasn't the reasoning. I think it was because... she won a raffle. Yessss, that's how she got her own room. Let the record also show that as a historian I am nothing if not honest ;). And finally, Nicole and I opted to bunk together on the nice big bed that was definitely in like the living room haha. Nic and I were bedmates last year too and we jive pretty well, ya know?
Once we were all orientated in the house and had our spots, we proceeded to jump right in to one of the main attractions of any good girls' retreat: eating. (ps in that sentence, the adjective 'good' is describing the retreat... not the girls hahahaha).
My favorite thing is Emily always knowing when I'm taking nonchalant candid selfies of the group. She's so good! Enjoy my double chin!
We found ourselves at a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Boise which was called Pho Nouveau and has at least seven different possible pronunciations, so pick one you like and go with it!
The advantage of being the main historian/photographer in a group is that you are in charge of what pictures are taken and posted. It's amazing.
Sometimes it doesn't work out quite as you hoped because it turns out your inability to eat gracefully or in any kind of dignified manner inspire people to pull out their phones and record it for posterity:
I think this set of pictures came about because everyone was worried I hadn't eaten enough? and kept pushing over their leftovers... which means that they were all done eating and all attention could be focused me on me attempting to eat and laugh and dip and dribble. Basically you can't take me anywhere.
Okay, this is why I love girls' retreats: any other time, a super aggressive closing elevator door would be funny. On girls' retreat, it's HILARIOUS. Like, we were all doubled over laughing in a legit giddy manner:
Okay, I honestly can't remember why the Rite Aid stop was necessary, but it obviously was.
The first night of girls' retreat is always way fun - we all get to go home together! Emily brought her Kinect for dance central and after some finagling we made it work. For the record, I was way ready to knock on doors around the neighborhood to borrow an xbox one controller but for some reason that idea was discouraged ;).
I'm not saying that Nycole and I had amazing synchronization... the pictures are saying that.
It's not a girls' retreat without some hair gettin' did. I love that Kara appears to have been the main stylist this time!
Okay, this is clearly a mashup of pictures from both nights but we busted out the puzzles and games for the weekend... and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.
Saturday dawned bright and early and we headed downtown! After Kara did my hair and makeup, that is. Once again, we tested the limits of Emily's Honda Pilot (fun fact: at first I just wrote 'Emily's Pilot' and then that awkwardly sounded like I was talking about K hahahaha) and managed to fit all seven of us plus a baby inside. My brothers both have Pilots and whenever we talk about squeezing kids inside, I literally always remind them that seven women and a baby carseat can fit juuuuuust fine ;).
Em is a rockstar for always being our chauffeur - and I love how we always pile in a little differently each time so we're always sitting by different people!
We slowly meandered around a bit in downtown Boise to build up our appetites. Nicole was in a modeling mood: her gorgeous new hair, how to flip coffee creamers, and the best way to hold hands hahahahaha:
Then it was time for brunch. Yeah, no big deal, we're brunch people. Brunchers. Ladies Who Brunch. We ended up at our second choice which clearly should have been our first choice because it was ammmmazing. We all ordered different stuff and passed it around and it was heavenly. AND apparently we weren't the first group to have this idea because they had a beautifully innovative system to charge each of us for 1/7 of each dish! Total game changer; we're used to randomly passing three bucks back and forth to each other when we split food haha.
Okay, I'm vain, so enjoy that shot of me in the bottom right. Really it's to catalogue Kara's makeover skills. She texted it to Chuck anonymously to create some intrigue and show him my look... except it came up from Kara because I forgot that Chuck and I share phone contacts haha!
We set off from there to walk off brunch a bit and explore the Boise farmer's market - because that's what you do after brunch, fyi. #classy #buylocal #fancy #homegrown 
We stumbled upon a little out-of-the-way random thrift store, complete with alll sorts of dolls - including we think Lloydia's long lost Dutch cousin? Nicole bought a bunch of glassware because, you know, she's Nicole and cool like that. Paulina and I did some reading, because, you know, we're me and Paulina.
Next up was some more walking around downtown Boise. We stumbled upon two different protests, which naturally we joined for the duration of how long it took us to walk by ;). If anyone asks, we are all passionate about BSU so abruptly and unceremoniously dumping the wrestling program, grrr. There was also a go science! boo current president/administration! gathering on the front steps of the capitol building to which Nycole and I were probably the only ones really drawn ;).
Our girls group is all about history and civics and learning, so we were happy to avail ourselves of a self guided tour of the Idaho State Capitol building. Orrr maybe we availed ourselves of the lovely clean public restrooms and took selfies and pictures of our feet in the main dome area. Who knows for sure...
Our next adventure was an escape room! My first time! We did the pirate room and it was SO stressful haha and so fun. I'm 98% sure I was the least helpful person but I'm okay with that - my ability to open combination locks peaked in about 10th grade ;). The guy working there was super nice and either they put everyone on their instagram and facebook pages or we just made their pirate garb look so cool that they couldn't keep it to themselves... I mean, it's definitely that one.
I'm not gonna lie, at this point we started to slow down a little... so we found some random thrift stores to wander around in and possibly availed ourselves of any seating opportunities in each shoppe haha.
We all perked up in time for our early dinner, though! We chose fork or Fork or maybe FORK? which is a local, organic, farm to table, locally grown, kid tasted, mother approved, way cool and trendy hot spot in the downtown area. Totally my vibe ;). And hOly mOly, the food was SO good. Those desserts?? Heavenly! Also, Carly was suuuuch a trooper all day! She loved the soup here, so cute!
After dinner we girded our loins for a few more outings - starting with Trader Joe's (my first time!) to grab some breakfast stuff and take a selfie with Paulina outside the bathroom because our respective high schools were repped on the wall haha. Then we hit up Ross. This was about the time things got prettttty heated - turns out people have STRONG opinions about bathroom wall cabinets. Namely me. And how they're not worth $30 ;). We also knew it was time to head home because the poor Pilot was about filled to capacity with our assorted purchases from throughout the day - you know things are serious when you can't open the whole back door, you just have to open the window part and shove new bags in hahahahaha.
We rolled in at home and things took a turn for the crazier as we busted out the wigs and hats and hiked up the hill out back for a photo shoot. Totallllly normal girls' retreat stuff ;).
We did love the area we stayed in out in North Boise - the view from those foothills is amazing as we discovered on our hikes AND we were treated to local wildlife, aka a terrifying rabbit AND the yard was perfect for some sports-related fun, aka Kara throwing a ball over the fence for some (possibly non-existent) neighbor children.
We headed back in for a quiet night of girl talk and... gymnastics? I think someone found a video of like partner sit ups?? and we all nominated Nycole and Nicole to attempt the re-creation: 
Nicole also treated us to a one woman show/dramatic portrayal/performance that will absolutely go down in the girls' retreat history books. And that's literally all I can say.
I can say LOTS and LOTS about our cute Girls' Retreat 2017 mascot, Carly!! Oh my heck, she did so great the whole weekend! Such a doll baby. And Melinda was a freaking superstar, no wonder she has the most kids out of all of us! She can handle it! At one point on Saturday night, we all just sat around and watched Carly crawl haha:
Random other stuff. Bottom right = Sunday morning breakfast. Almond croissant with something inside that was amazing? We got them at Trader Joe's and daaaang they were good.
Sunday morning came way too soon (insert alllll the crying emojis). I was too busy getting dolled up to be sad though, hooray! Paulina did my hair and Kara did my make-up and I love them both SO much!!
Have I mentioned that doing my hair and/or makeup requires infinite patience. I move, I flinch, I open/close the wrong facial body parts (eyes vs. mouth haha). But they stuck with me and daaaang if the final product wasn't worth it:
Also, don't we all love my dress? $5 at D.I. a few weeks prior. Slip extender via downeast. Sandals via Savers.
So, at Girls' Retreat 2016 we adopted our little... Belgian? girl Lloydia. She was the, uh, prize awarded to whomever went to sleep first on Saturday night last year. SO, she spent a year with Kara and came back this year for the tradition to carry on. During our thrift store wanderings, Nycole found a horse to commemorate this year's retreat... I can't really go into details, but the horse, uh, connected to our accommodations. Saturday night we all sat around blearily blinking our eyes as the clock ticked and our mascots creepily peered down on us from the top of the kitchen counter until I finally cried uncle and went to bed -meaning that Lloydia and her noble steed came home with me for the year!
Don't worry, I've been prepping to avoid a repeat walk of shame to bed. I pretty much never drink caffeine, so I'm hoping that Dr. Pepper will be REAL effective and jolt my system this year haha...
Our final activity of girls' retreat 2017 was hitting up Nampa 2nd Ward for sacrament meeting all together. After some initial confusion re: seating (spoiler alert: if Emily says she's not sitting in the front row, she means it. Don't try her hahahaha), we all cozied in and enjoyed the meeting and especially enjoyed all the reunions afterwards as ward members came over to greet the girls. So fun.
And I was thrilled to be welcomed home so nicely by my bike-riding-to-church family. The way to my heart is absolutely a sign welcoming me home and they killed it. Love them tons.
A couple days after the retreat I found this on fb and I'm so grateful to have found this amazing group of girls who build me up and get excited with me and pray for me and love me. It remains my best advice to other women: find a group! Make a group! It doesn't have to be super official or look just like this one, just reach out to women and find opportunities to be together and benefit from each other's strength and love and service and wisdom and sense of humor. Build them up and let them build you up.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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