Girls' Retreat 2018

Ohhh man, it's time for one of my favorite posts of the year: girls' retreat recap! 

This year's theme became 'better together' thanks to Kara and her worth-the-wait Christmas gifts. One of my favorite things about this group of girls is how they help me become better. We share ideas and inspiration and frustrations and solutions and compliments and SO much love and we are all better because of the time we spend together. 

We did a repeat destination trip this year of Boise, Idaho (don't worry, I promise for 2019 we're leaving the Treasure Valley haha). Availability times on Thursday were staggered, but Kara and Nicole and I all had time to fit in a quick temple trip which was lovely:

And then it was time to meet up with everyone for dinner! We went to... Louie and Lings? Louie Ling? LL Cool Bean? Basically a fancy restaurant with fancy exotic food that Nycole had to plate for me ;). It was all delicious, even the sushi! Don't I look like a natural with the chopsticks and sushi and very sophisticated facial expression? 

After dinner we headed home to settle in to our new digs. And by 'settle in' I mean talk and talk and puzzle it up and talk and compare hair wands and pass Kaitlyn around and talk some more and also figure out room arrangements! 

I'm not going to lie, room arrangements this year seemed slightly more complex but eventually everyone had a place to lay their head. Paulina and Melinda - coming off two years in a row sharing the master room - insisted on taking the futon and couch in the open upstairs area. By default Emily was given her own room... aka her own room to share with Kaitlyn ;). Kara and Nycole both had their own rooms last year so they buddied up for the other smaller room and gifted Nicole and I the master suite to share:

Ahhh, here's where the magic happened. And by magic, I mean STAYING UP UNTIL 4AM EVERY FREAKING NIGHT TALKING. Nicole and I have lots to say and very little self-control about zipping our lips and going to sleep. We've been bedmates for three years running and every year we get less and less sleep. It's a problem. With a solution: mandatory nap times in the afternoons. Imma start that tradition this year at girls' retreat. Or die (of sleep deprivation) trying.

Friday morning got off to a sporty start as we availed ourselves of the neighborhood tennis court. A few of us adorably jogged over because #showoffs while the rest of us drove because #smart. I'll let you deduce which group I was part of ;).  

Um tennis was SO SO fun. I've literally never been superior to any of these six girls at anything remotely athletic so it was most excellent to finally have my chance to shine haha. We ran around and played and laughed and Kaitlyn slept like a doll and it was the best! I love watching people realize what a fun sport tennis is!!

Definitely missed having the selfie stick this year, ahhhhh.

Okay, our goal was brunch somewhere but after tennis and getting ready for the day... yeah, lunch it was! Def don't remember the name of the place where we ate, but it was super downtown Boise trendy and cool and we clearly fit in like regulars... stroller and all! 

Don't we just give off a very obvious 'trendy, edgy, hip' vibe? Ten bucks says no one would guess we were seven moms in our thirties with twenty-eight kids between us. (ALSO, TWENTY EIGHT? That's like the size of an elementary school class where they're scrambling to fit a couple extra desks in the room to fit everyone... yiiiiikes....)

At this point the rain started up a bit so we made a dash for cars and opted to push our 'Boise scavenger hunt' back a day and devote the rest of Friday to shopping and eating... always a solid choice. 

First stop was D.I., where as we walked in Nycole had me attempt to narrate the joy the fills my heart upon entering that blessed space... and also where I bought more than anyone else ;). Next up was Ross, which is more everyone else's speed. There was a lot of pillow talk going on there - LIKE ACTUAL TALK ABOUT THROW PILLOWS, sheesh. We wandered out of the store into darkness and everyone was hungry and indecisive (this miiiight be a recurring issue when the seven of us are together... we're looking into possible solutions/professional help) but we made it across the street to the village and ate street tacos and other assorted items generally featured on foodie instagram posts. #cool #hipster #ameating #amjoking #amnotactuallycool

We rolled in back at home circa ten-ish which is generally a solid time to hit the hay but in girls' retreat time actually means the party is just starting haha! We delved a bit into hair, finished our St. Francis puzzle:

and then piled back onto couches and futons and the floor upstairs for our nightly therapy session/girl talk. Ohhh man, things got real. Everyone always laughs at me when I say that I wish counseling was socially acceptable and affordable and just like a regular thing that people did - but I honestly think it would change the world. But in the meantime, I'm grateful for six friends who are willing to be a sounding board for me. It's brilliant because we're all pretty different (as in, we've taken a couple different personality tests with minimal overlapping) - so we approach things differently and have different experiences and insights... but with a binding connection of love and trust and vulnerability and genuinely wanting the best for each other.

Kara figured since we were already crying, she might as well keep the tears a-flowin' by pulling out our belated Christmas gifts:

these incredible keychains, which she put SO much work and effort and time into. My instagram caption: “It has a secret and a surprise...” so grateful that life is better when we open up and talk and serve and love and I’m just so enamored with the beautiful souls that make up my ‘together’💗💓💞

Quick reminder that Kaitlyn is the sweetest and snuggling with her made my night. 

Saturday morning. Ohhh man I've never been hungover but I was achy and groggy and grumpy and refused to get dressed in real clothes and kept my sunglasses on for brunch soooo I feel like I'd be a natural ;). 

Okay, I'm NOT a natural at photographing my food in a way that conveys how delicious it was but this food was SO GOOD. We went to Terri's Cafe over on Fairview and that stuffed French toast cured allll my ails. 

Next it was back to the homestead to actually get ready for the day... we may have fit in a spot of karaoke as well (thanks to Em for bringing the karaoke machine... reminiscent of her hooking us up with Just Dance and her XBOX last year... have we officially designated her our tech sugar mama?)

Um this is random and vague and an inside joke (as is basically this entire post...) but Nycole came through once again as our own personal MacGyver (albeit a more casually dressed version), thus saving Nicole's life/earring and no one actually threw up and we all feel confident in our choices to pursue careers outside the plumbing industry. 

Quick pit stop at Shopko on our way to our next adventure... which turned into a lengthy stop at Shopko because purses! Umbrellas! Fake succulents! (that was my purchase haha - which required me sitting on the floor?) 

And then it was time to get our adventure on with a downtown Boise scavenger hunt - too bad there weren't extra points awarded for being smokkkkkkin' hot because I'm pretty sure we'd have nailed that one.

There were points awarded for creativity, so instead of just submitting a picture of a beige building, we leapt in front of it instead. In a VERY synchronized manner, no less.

The scavenger hunt was pretty fun - I think we had the app running on three phones, so it was a bit of a frenzy as we all scrolled through and yelled out things to look for and threw together random poses and uploaded pictures as quickly as we could.

Um yeah, our team name was St. Francis and the Animals. It's also the name of our band. And possibly the documentary that will be made someday about our epic friendships. 

Felt cute, took a picture with an orange flower. Alllll the thanks to Kara for my hair/makeup during the retreat!!!

Um, Nicole pretending to be a dinosaur (AKA ANCIENT LIZARD, IT COUNTS) is the best. 

I'm not going to lie, after an hour or so we all started to slow down a bit... also hunger rolled in... sleep deprivation... etc. We abandoned our hopes of beating the sketchily-named teams on the leaderboard and started heading back to the car.

.... but randomly Nycole and I were the hold outs who kept nonchalantly glancing around for things to count haha. Nycole makes sense because she's competitive and used to winning... I think I just wanted an excuse to see if I could still do a bridge from my gymnastics days. Fun fact: I got stuck like that; I think it ended with me awkwardly collapsing into a heap on the concrete. A heap in need of ibuprofen.

buuuuuut it was worth it because we ended with over TWO THOUSANDS POINTS which earned us that impressive trophy... and literally nothing else. 

Kaitlyn was pretty psyched to be done with the stroller and heading home, as she communicated via these killer smiles to Nicole.

We sneaked in some adorable visitors - normally we try to shield our husbands and children from the madness that is a girls' retreat, but these two weren't fazed at all by our craziness - and watching Bailey's happiness at being reunited with Kaitlyn after a 48 hour absence was pretty sweet...

as was Alayna's excitement at matching Paulina with their adorable blonde haircuts!

Before they headed out we recruited KR (see what I did there?) to get some formal portraits of the seven of us:

Allllllll the feels.

Our visitors departed juuuust in the nick of time: the homestead living room went full karaoke bar at this point! (I mean, not "full" karaoke bar.... it was still alcohol free... most clothes stayed on... we all went home with the one we came with...)

The kitchen remained full beauty shop haha. 

And Kaitlyn squirmed and smiled and fussed and got rocked and squeezed and loved! Kaitlyn is the fourth baby to tag along on a girls' retreat (previous stowaways were Myla, Gideon, and Carly) and I'm have so much love and admiration and gratitude for those four mamas for making the retreat work even with their little additions. Traveling with babies can be stressful and tricky and the opposite of relaxing but they all have done it so that we could all be together each year and I love them for it! (Also I'm so grateful I got out of it; our retreat the year that Carma was nursing was a day trip that I could ditch her for, wooo!)

A few final shots from Saturday night - one last puzzle, one last comfy nap, one last minute Relief Society lesson prep haha.

Sunday morning was a whirlwind of packing and cleaning - Nicole and Nycole both had to split early, but these five of us found a random sacrament meeting to crash before saying our (snowy!) goodbyes.

And then it was back home to a beautiful welcome home sign.

....and laundry. and cute kids! who were also somewhat whiny. and regular life. and stress. which is why that night we were all back on our text thread, sharing pictures, reliving the good times and commiserating how exhausted we all were:

Girls' retreat 2018: in the books.