Girls' Retreat 2017

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 ;).

• Caption from instagram because I want all the emojis haha: Girls retreat teamwork: one of us brought the wigs, another provided the hats, and yet another pointed out my blonde wigged-resemblance to PAULA DEEN 😳🤔🥐🍞🍰🥛🍽🍶🥓😂.

• At this point I sought to recruit Kara as the first pupil of "Jana's School of Brooding, Mysterious, Highly Attractive Selfies" but it became obvious right away that I was in no way accredited and I had to refund her tuition hahahahahaha:

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.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

April: pretty much everything else

I know everyone has been on the edge of their seats, so here are some promised tulip pictures:

Aren't they so so so pretty? They randomly changed colors sometimes which was fun; I was obviously thrilled when the yellows turned orange.

Sometimes our children were conveniently next to the tulips and made it into the pictures too haha ;).

 Ahhhhhhh I love spring!

Easter came along. I am the least consistent person when it comes to Easter, so I wish the best to my children's future therapists in figuring that out. This year I pulled out the Easter books and decorations and then each kid got a couple coloring books for church, hand sanitizer, and a new pillowcase because I found one at Target that I couldn't not buy for Clyde, so the whole gang got one. Our kids blessedly understand that the Easter Bunny doesn't come to our house because of their mom's VERY RATIONAL fear of rabbits. 

Chuck worked most of the day, so the wee children and I went to church and then over to my mama's for a while.

Grandma Pam put together a fun Easter egg hunt for the crazies:

My favorite is just staring at hard to find eggs and laughing at my kids as they can't find them. I might be a terrible person. Also enjoy the duplicate picture of Carma in her little Easter dress and hat and purse!

Grammy and the gang! 

I got jury duty!!!!!! Which was funny because Chuck just had jury duty last fall, and we have both been registered voters in this county for almost nine years, so it's random that we both finally got called - and that we both served! I'm a dork, so I obviously loved (almost) the whole experience. Our bailiff was Matt, meaning we were in the "cherry" aka PINK group. Jury selection was super interesting -- not to brag tooo much but I definitely made the entire courtroom laugh when the defense attorney asked me if I owned my home and I responded, "Yes... well, us and the bank...". Pretty sure it was that quick wit that earned me a spot in the top 13 ;). Once the jury was selected, we jumped right into the case, which was a drug possession/paraphernalia case. I took copious notes because you know, it's me. We headed home for the day with STRICT instructions not to research on own, talk to people, facebookstalk (I don't think they added that one just for me, but possibly...), etc. Day 2 we headed back in to DONUTS because Matt is a rockstar. There were a few tense moments when one jury member hadn't arrived yet and it looked like our alternate was going to earn his keep, but then he rolled in haha. There were tons of dorky funny moments, like when we lined up in the hall every time before entering the courtroom - we needed to be in the exact order we were selected, so we had a running joke about how long it took us to get into formation, etc. We listened to closing arguments and headed in to deliberate - each figuring that it was all pretty open and shut. BOY WERE WE WRONG. We deliberated for like four hours! Praise the heavens for the pizza break in the middle. Finally we kind of started over and cleared our heads and went through and finally came to a consensus on all four counts. I refrained from asking for a group photo of our jury because I was QUITE sure they would all say hey'll no but Matt was a champ and totally down for a selfie:

Here's the official instagram caption for posterity: "Spent the last two days at jury duty 👨🏼‍⚖️🤔⚖️. Shocking lack of photo ops (phone was locked in the jury room during court and confiscated during our FOUR hours of deliberation 👍🏼👎🏼 but I got one with our bailiff Matt because he was awesome and hilarious and put up with me 😂. Definitely a sobering experience but also loads interesting and horizon-broadening to work so closely with eleven complete strangers and have to agree unanimously four separate times 😳😜😭😑. But we did it! Yay America and rights and justice!! 🇺🇸"

 Chuck had to work the second day, so Grandma Pam came to the rescue and took care of Carma and Jack, including taking Jack to kindergarten orientation. It literally was just walking into the building and saying, "Yes, Jack is going to kindergarten here in the fall. Yes, Jana will register him online and upload all his shot records and proof of address." but Jack was REALLY excited about it - he legit wore a Park Ridge t-shirt for it. Thanks for taking him Mama! (the pansies have nothing to do with kindergarten and everything to do with my mom's flower and gardening addiction...)

And who wouldn't want to attend Park Ridge? Behold, the amazing Literacy Night they put on in April:

Got pictures of Clyde and Will with their respective teachers, Mrs. Keene and Mrs. Wallin. Ohhh we love those two! Also a picture of Jack with the Park Ridge Falcon, sooo cute. And a picture of Carma with Snow White, aka Mrs. Koeppen! Carma was so star struck haha.

The Harry Potter hallway was pretty dang amazing:

 Seriously so impressed with all the fun details and doorways!!

We also headed up to the school for the jog a thon! This is the yearly kick off to the spring walk/run club:

We took a hit with Jack having preschool on walk/run club days; he was our top family contributor. Carma was unpredictable - sometimes she walked, sometimes she ran, sometimes she played on the playground.... and sometimes she made me carry her haha. But it's cool, I workout. Speaking of which, Nicole came back! She was in town so she sneaked in and surprised everyone at Zumba and led a couple songs. So fun.

Remember a couple years ago for Chuck's birthday when I blogged about all the stuff he had to talk me into and then turn out to be awesome? Well, get ready because here's another addition to the ever-growing list:

a balance bike! Chuck was prettttty sure that Carma needed one and I was pretttttty sure she didn't, and then Chuck's craigslist addiction paid off and he found one for an amazing price and 

CARMA LOVES IT. It really is way cool; it's super lightweight so she can hop on and off and move it around easily. She was pretty tentative at the beginning as she scooted around on it, but got the hang of it wayyyy quicker than I would have and became a force to be reckoned with:

And it has been amazing not to kill my back by bending over here and helping her sit on Jack's bike alll the time, as was our previous tradition every. single. time. we were outside.

Our beloved van has been having some slight issues, you know, starting all the time so jumping it and charging it is a frequent occurrence at our house. I sat pondering it one day while gazing upon the millions of bikes in our garage and was reassured that at least we always have one form of transportation ready!

We send the boys to and from school and scouts on their bikes, and sometimes to church for other activities.

We also love living close to a couple different bike parks - the 'dirt' one is prob our fave, over by Lakeview Park:

And it has a handy playground right there too for when Carma is done biking and running up and down the little hills haha.

April Girls Night! It actually came a week early since Nicole was in town, hooray.

I think our great intention was to spend the evening hammering out specifics for our girls retreat later in the month but I'm 99% sure that didn't happen haha. It's all good, our retreat was a-mazing! And will get its own post! Next! With a million pictures!

Okay, say a box with like eight cans of Shasta black cherry pop showed up on your grass one morning... would you let it sit there a few days and then eventually pop some tops and drink it? Asking for a friend. Named us. Other front yard adventures: Clyde and Andrew playing nerf, admiring the tulips from afar, a random April dusting of snow, and some cute little flowers on our peach and apple trees! We haven't given up on them quite yet!

 Insta caption: "When you need to burn some energy on the trampoline but also want to discuss Minecraft strategy... you grab each other's shoulders and jump together in a circle so you can talk 😂🙌🏼👬."

Chuck and I went on a date! A date that didn't involve Costco or the temple! We went and had dinner at the little Chinese restaurant where we had our first date and it was really nice. Chuck's a rockstar for putting up with me and doing it mostly with a smile ;).

You know those facebook articles reminding men to grab the camera and take pictures of their wives/partners so they're in the scrapbook too? a) It's fine, I just take a million selfies, and b) here's the secret: agree to play Battlefront with your sons. Chuck couldn't record the moment for posterity fast enough ;). Spoiler alert: I sucked. I kept accidentally changing the viewpoint (like helmet view, then aerial, then I think I was looking at myself from behind?) and there's too many buttons and I'm not grrrreat at telling the good guys from the bad guys so I generally just shoot all the time - when I press the right buttons, that is. The boys were thrilled I made the attempt though!

Carma and Jack and I headed over to find out if Carma can't hear... turns out she can, so that is not what's behind her speech delay. They did find some pretty large adenoids (not to brag, but we're four for four on kids with those) so we made plans for those to be evicted.

 Carma and Jack and I also hit up the library a few times during the month - including once where we bumped right into my lovely cousin Amanda and her lovely daughter Cecily! They had moved to Nampa a few weeks earlier and we are so happy to have them out here! And share a library for fun impromptu family reunions!!

Jack and Carma managed to have three preschools between the two of them during April. One, Jack's legit preschool which he continued to LOVE. The tree painting comes from there, as does the drawing in the top left that he was given by a female classmate. Allegedly she made one for each of the students, but I'm sure she made Jack's extra special ;). Two, Carma headed over to the developmental preschool for a couple days of observation! Does that backpack all the way down to her knees just kill you?? Three, the playroom at plasma haha. I totally count it as preschool! That's where Carma made that darling handprint flower picture!!

Speaking of preschool, via instagram... "Jack was the VIP at preschool last week and he and I had a rock solid plan for him to take his stuffed animal monkey for show and tell 🐒☺️. Chuck was the one to drop him off and somehow Jack instead took an xbox controller and Battlefront - rated T for Teen, not Tiny Five Year Old 😳. Still looking into how the show and tell mix-up occurred 🤔🕵🏻‍♀️🙄😱👀🤦🏻‍♀️😂"

Random Carma Junie pictures, mostly how she spends her quiet time around the house. You can usually find her coloring or reading or playing with dollies or eating a Nutella sandwich or in some hidey hole with the iPad haha:

Ahhh, more of the many faces of Carma. She highly enjoys having a living, breathing human underneath her while she sleeps (have I mentioned I prefer sleeping completely devoid of any human touch?). She sported her Easter hat to Fred Meyer one day and got several compliments haha.

Carma and Grandma = bffs!

Random sibling bonding and cuddling. These four legit warm my heart.

Random pictures - Chuck advised as Will created an egg drop container, sleepy kiddos, hats were on clearance at Target!, dentist, Clyde got beamed in the face with a ball during P.E., my kids like to sit on me, my kids like to sit on Chuck, and snuggling with my Clyde. For a while there we had a pretty regular tradition of reading our own books in his bed at night. Might need to bring that one back.

Oh, my blog! I enjoy providing anyone with some nonsensical, rambling entertainment but I LOVE when Chuck and the boys read it. It's seriously so fun to find Clyde and Will (and Jack!) re-reading old posts on the computer or in the blog books (I have the first couple years printed out so far...). And of course I laughed so hard at Chuck's cousin Rachel's post on fb about her blog ;). 

Okay, almost done! Couple funny screenshots for April: 

Oh my gosh, I love the Obamas. I follow Pete Souza, who was the official White House photographer during their tenure, on twitter and instagram and I looooove his throwback pictures. 

 Quick confession: I don't know for sure if this text was from April, but that's when I took the screenshot, so there ya go. 

Isn't Courtney the cutest? And Mallory so perfectly observant? I'm not saying I like have a corner on the market of hoodies, athletic shorts, and winter boots but I do sport that look a lot. A LOT.

Although possibly less so since I discovered the black leggings at Costco....

This is literally me. Right now I have six pairs, although two are still brand new in the packaging - you know, for a rainy day. I have four pair that I wear every single day of the chillier months and they bring me incredible joy haha.

Okay, that's pretty much everything else in April! All that's left is the amazing retreat and then Mayyyyyyyyyyy.