Young Women New Beginnings

I thought I would post what we did for New Beginnings in case anyone wants any ideas since that season is coming up and I'm constantly searching blogs for something that hits me as the right idea for our group at a particular time.  When I got put in as the Young Women President I felt very strongly that I needed to focus on family relationships, parent-daughter relationships.  We really had the goal of drawing the children to their parents and the parents to us - since parental support for the YW program is minimal at best here. (We live in Miami and so the needs and types of families may be different from the norm).  Anyhow, we were trying to think of how to channel that idea into a nice and meaningful New Beginnings.

So we came up with the theme of "In the Beginning...."  leaving it somewhat open as to peak interest.

With sort of the subtitle that "Every good story started somewhere,"  meaning the story of them. So to prepare for the evening, we had secretly contacted all the parents and asked them for a few pictures of each of their girls - a few from each covering a span of years - baby, child... up to a current photo of each of them.  We had also asked each parent to write a letter to their daughters - starting with thoughts back from when they were born - their hopes and dreams for each of them, the excitement they had for them to be born - along with any other feelings they wanted to share and expressing their love for them - but to keep it strictly positive and uplifting (not I wish you would.... kind of stuff - we had quite a few having some big battles with their parents at the time).  We collected those all ahead of time without the girls knowing.

The night of the program we had everyone start by taking a questionnaire as they came in to be working on with their parents while everyone was arriving.

We did the usual stuff at the beginning of the program, and then when we got to our presentation, we started off with the slide show of the pictures of each of them from baby-teenager set to some great music.  It was a huge hit.  We had their photos go from their earliest to the most current and told them they could try to guess out loud who each girl was as her pictures came up.  We also threw pictures of the leaders in there from their childhood, which was fun for them to get to know us too since our presidency was all new. They all loved seeing themselves and seeing each other.  It was really fun.

When it was over, I started off my talk telling that our theme was "In the Beginning," and as they could see, we really wanted to go back to the beginning... to the beginning of them.  And even before that, (with the questionnaire) to their parents who raised them (couldn't say gave birth to them in our ward since some don't live with their mothers and fathers). Because every good story started somewhere. 

Then I talked about how much their parents must have loved them, sang them to sleep, rocked them, held them when they cried.  Then we told them we had something for each of them from their parents, and we gave them their letters that each of their parents had written for them.  We played some soft music while we gave them a few minutes to read through them.  

Then I talked a lot about parent-child relationships, how we all have the need for emotional connection but how sometimes it's hard to let parents in, and sometimes parents are too busy or preoccupied to let the children in.  It's hard for us to risk feelings and emotions if they're not well-received or if we're brushed off.  I talked about the challenges of teenage years and how it's easy to want to push parents away.  Then I told in detail about my relationship with my dad growing up.  I showed slides as I told about how I was the baby of the family, a real daddy's girl, but as a teenager I pushed away more, was a typical somewhat cranky and sullen teenager, and tried to be more distant the more he tried to be there. Even though he was always there and so supportive, I never appreciated it. When I graduated and went away to college, that strained relationship from the teen years finally started to lighten up - and then in an instant, he passed away.  I tried to really draw them into the story and kind of hit them with the shock that as an 18 year-old girl - not too far off for many of them, my dad was suddenly gone.  I wanted them to realize the time I'd wasted giving stink-face to my dad when we could have been laughing together and making happy memories.  I wanted to get across the point that we shouldn't waste the time we have with our parents and we should try to let them into our lives.  I also tried to get across to the parents that they should go easy on the kids as well, respect the things that are important to them rather than trivializing them, that sometimes they need to suspend judgement and accusations and just be a listening ear to protect their child from clamming up and not being willing to go to them the next time.  I also read a quote from Maya Angelou that says, "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty," trying to remind parents of how tough the teenage years can be. 

After that we had some fun games just to get the parents and kids to have some fun together - we did something like the dating game where we had a few parent-child couples come up at a time and they all had to answer questions about each other like, "If your daughter were to steal one item from your closet what would it be?" and see if the parent and child put the same answers.  It was fun.  I think we had a few more fun games prepared, maybe even some minute-to-win-it type games?  But I think we felt time was up and we just did the one.  

At the end we had cupcakes for everyone and had made some little butterflies - relating to the earlier Maya Angelou quote, and also tying into a poem we stuck on each of them. (The butterflies were painted clothes pins pinned around the small snack size ziplock bags full of candy.)

We decorated everything in pink and black, had some cute black and white polka-dot paper we used to cover tables for our games or as a table runner down the food table over a pink tablecloth.  We used pink and black balloons across the ceiling as decorations and we had a little backdrop for them to take pictures together with their parents.

All in all we felt it was a really meaningful evening, a little change of pace from trying to get creative with re-introducing the values over and over again (although one of the early talks did hit those basics of the YW program more to introduce it to all the new girls), and a valuable way to try to just get positive feelings between the parents and their daughters and about the YW program in general and from the parents to us - also emphasizing that all those dreams and goals the parents had for their little girls are exactly what we have for them and what the YW program is here to help make a reality.

I'm sure others could make way more professional handouts, but I'd be happy to pass on files if anyone is interested.  But email, don't comment (comments don't come to my email) jen_isom@hotmail.com .

1Year!

Poor blog

Poor neglected little blog.  Life has been crazy. After getting back from Christmas I got called as the Young Women President in our ward here at church. I'm pretty sure I spent more time on that than sleeping the first few weeks.

In the last week alone, I herniated or re-injured a herniated disc and would have to take Cash into school with tears streaming down my face, so I've dealt with that, got some injections and been heavily medicated.  Coinciding with that, within a 10-day period of time I had seen Ryan twice for a couple hours in the evening due to call, travel and conferences.

Last Friday night I had to call him out of a conference to come home and give Cash stitches. (It really went down like this - Cash crying. Me, not really paying attention: You get hurt? Ok, it'll get better. Because seriously, someone is hurt like 30 times a day in this house and that's about all the sympathy they get. I get on the phone, busy, busy. Get off, he starts crying again. What now??? I say.  My head hurts, he says. Cash, seriously that was like 20 minutes ago. At which point I actually look and see his shirt is soaked in blood, the couch is covered in blood, the floor, his hand and arms and legs.... Oh I am such a good mom!) So Ryan takes him in and sews him up.  Check.

Up late that night and then have to get up at 5am Saturday  to run a Super Saturday yard sale, car wash and bake sale to help the young women raise money for camp. We had realized last minute that Ryan would be in conference all that day too and had to call our good friend to the rescue to come watch the kids all day. Ryan and the neighbor have to get up early that morning too and completely disassemble the minivan to get in a couch and all this other stuff going to the garage sale.  Run that whole thing, get home exhausted late that day, just in time to try to pretty-up for a Bascom Palmer Eye Institute 50th Anniversary celebration at the Biltmore Hotel that night.

30 minutes in to the party our babysitter goes into labor.  Spend some time on the phone coordinating to make sure we get someone to come watch our kids and that her's are taken care of, and we have to call our trusty friend to the rescue at the last minute once again.  Get home from that and Ryan goes over to stay with the neighbor's kids and relieve the interim babysitter while they are off having their baby.  (I have seriously been waiting with baited breath and checking in every day for that I'm-going-into-labor phone call and of course it happens the night we're busy and I make it way more complicated for her!)

Sunday morning we wake up and try to get the six kids under age 5 (ours and the neighbor's) fed, dressed and ready for church, then realize the van is still completely dismantled from the yard sale the day before. Ryan hauls all the seats back out to the car, loads 5 car seats back in on top of those and we take off for church - where the baby cries the entire time and Ashton throws multiple tantrums on the floor in the middle of the hallway while I try to take care of young women and Ryan has to do clerk business. We have to stay after to take care of more details that seem to keep dragging on while trying to keep track of the 6 kids, and we're dying to get out of there. Finally make the drive home and then try to get everyone fed again. No one wants the drink they've been given, this person wants a different cup, this one doesn't like this sandwich, everyone is in and out of their chairs, this one won't eat, this one is crying.... at which point Ryan declares he's getting a vasectomy and hides himself in our room to take a nap.

You get the idea.  :)   It's been a wild ride.

Reason #567 why I have learned not to be critical of other people's parenting

We (especially Ryan) used to spend a good deal of time making fun of my sister's kids for running around in pajamas that were far too small.  (Ok, seriously though people, these kids were in footed pajamas hunched over because they couldn't stand up straight.)

Anyhow, I have eaten my words. We seem to go from bad....

....to worse around here....

I think at this point in life you realize you're just happy if they have clothes on.

Christmas

Such a photogenic bunch.

I'm getting pretty good at making a mean-looking Christmas pie.

Here we are having a little fun with Siri (the virtual assistant you can talk to on my new iPhone). If you happen to get a random and inexplicable call from me I'll just apologize ahead of time. The boys are always trying to say stuff to her on my phone and apparently she doesn't speak 3 year-old. (Me either, Siri.)  I'm usually across the room when I hear her mistakenly repeat that she's going to call Dr. so-and-so or whoever and I'm trying to run over to stop her.

Resolutions....what?

I decided to bag New Years Resolutions this year. Instead of beating myself up about all the things I'm doing or not doing that are going to mess up my kids someday, I'm just going to give them all one of these this year and call it good -     :)

Pre-Christmas pics

This year I made an attempt at some festive holiday gifts.  Here's one we gave to Cash's teacher:

A home-made snow globe featuring a picture of her in elf form. I'll admit, these are not the quickest little gifts you can give, but she almost cried when we gave it to her, so it was worth it.  We made them for a lot of people over the season.

Home-made white chocolate popcorn. (I've never done neighbor gifts before - thank heavens we don't live in Utah!  Those neighbors go CRAZY! I'm not ready for that kind of pressure.)

We even made some friends join us in re-enacting the nativity.

I got together stuff for some Minute-to-Win-it games back at Thanksgiving that we've used a couple times over the holiday season. Seriously, check out the game faces, people:

And you gotta love this one (holiday kiss - move ornaments from one string to another using only your mouths...how romantic is that?!):

  

Jingle Box was probably the favorite though. Watching people shake their bootie to try to get ping pong balls out of a kleenex box set to Christmas music never gets old.

Cash's Christmas program:

Lookin' good

First, does anyone else have a problem using Blogger with Firefox as their web browser? I use Chrome, but when I post it and then view in Firefox, half the pictures are missing. So if you care about seeing my pictures, I guess use Chrome or Internet Explorer as your web browser. I'm too lazy to fix it otherwise.

How cute are these two?  They were so matchy after church one day I couldn't resist some pictures. And then couldn't pick just one favorite.

Every time our kids are born, people say, "Oh, he looks just like Ryan!"  This time they say, "Oh, now this one really looks like Ryan." 

  

  

  

And the frequent view we get as the baby comes in for attack:

The little guy is finally crawling. Such exciting freedom.  I'm pretty sure he's eaten something by now that he shouldn't have, but I really only have so much control in this house....

And while not quite as cute, I guess we're not too bad either, on occasion.

Mishap

In November, Ryan took a lot of call. A LOT.  This means in the hospital, sleeping there (all by himself in his nice cozy little hospital room... all to himself...getting a full night of uninterrupted sleep most of the time...all by himself...), ahem, I digress. Anyhow, one night I was getting a little beyond crazy with the kids and the mess and the teething and the fighting and the bedtime madness, and I flopped down on the couch once they were all asleep to survey the damage and muster the energy to face it when I thought, I just want to be in a room, by myself, all ALONE.

The next day I woke up to an email saying the Groupon for the day was a package for spray tanning.  Perfect, I thought to myself. Slightly selfish, and very alone.

So Ryan came home, I made my appointment and I was out the door. Now, I had done a spray tan at one place before. It was a nice machine in a nice room with a bathrobe and bottled water, a cap to put over your hair, and a nice gay Swedish man to tell you exactly how to do it and show you how to put the lotion on your fingernails and your toenails and the soles of your feet to block the spray so you didn't go out looking freakish. And then you were left alone with the soothing voice prompts embedded within the machine for the 46-second miracle to work it's magic.

Well, this groupon was for a place where it was done by hand.  Alright, the awkwardness factor goes up by a bazillion right there, but hey, it was a really good deal, and I'm sure they do this all the time so it's no big deal for them, right?. Plus, I know that's how the celebs and stuff do it - their own personalized spray tan artist. I guess you can get those hard to reach places better? Plus I thought they were better at matching it to your skin tone and making it look natural, so I thought it was probably going to be a higher-end service and I was probably lucking out to get to try it.

And then I got there and she stuck me in the corner of a very small, and very dimly lit bathroom.

Suddenly it was awkward, and ghetto.

As I was relating this to Ryan later he was saying maybe that should be some kind of red-flag when this kind of place is looking to do a groupon. Point noted.

So once I was down to my skivvies (the minimum I felt like letting her stare at for the 15 minutes we were in there) the lady, who spoke very little English and had used mostly gestures and an isolated word here and there, picks up her nozzle, nods, and says ok like she's ready to go. I'm thinking, um, wait, shouldn't we discuss anything?  Like my desired outcome here, for starters? So instead I say, "Do you have a cap or anything I could put over my hair?" "Mmm, good idea," she nods.  She walks out for a minute while I try to grapple with what to say next to prolong the start of this episode into the unknown.

She comes back in and I'm still worried that she's given me nothing to put on my nails or the soles of my feet and she hadn't seemed to remember the idea of covering your hair either...but I don't want to annoy her too much when she's obviously ready to go, and maybe the way they do it makes that unnecessary?  So instead as she's ready to hose me down once again, I blurt out, "So is there like more than one color to choose from or anything?" "No. Just one color," and she proceeds to blast.

Ah the internal panic.  I have had no sort of conversation about what I'm hoping to look like when this is done, and there is only one color...and she is Hispanic as were most of the people I saw on my way through the salon.  And that same color they all use is currently coating my body in copious quantities. Gulp.

The spray goes on and on. Really on. Like I'm used to 46 seconds and am rather concerned what the result of this prolonged dousing will be. Finally it's over and she tells me she's going to go get a fan to dry me off. So now I'm in a tiny dark bathroom facing a fan that is sitting on the toilet, freezing my wet, colored bootie off. So ghetto. Yeah, I guess this isn't what I envisioned when I bought this package.

After 10 minutes or so she comes in and pulls back the curtain and I look in the mirror.

Gasp. All I see are teeth and eyes.

Everything else is a mass of dark that blends into the shadows of the poorly lit bathroom.  Instant panic sets in. I try to act composed in front of her, but as soon as the door is shut I'm silently screaming and darting in random, agitated movements around the room.  Do I really have to walk back out in front of all those people that just saw me walk in here a pasty white lady just a few minutes ago???  Do I really have to take Cash to school tomorrow?  Why can't it be one of those rare days Ryan goes in late?!?  And if I try wearing a hat it will just shadow my face and make me look even darker!!  There is seriously no escaping this....


I walk out with my face turned away from as many people as possible, mysteriously fascinated by something in my purse, and I walk up to the lady at the front desk - the one white person in there.  "Is this the real color this is going to stay?" I ask in a hushed but intense voice.  "Or is this going to wash off when I shower and fade into something lighter?"  The one I'd done before had an instant color that while strong (yet nothing like I was now experiencing), would wash off the next morning and leave a nicer color developing underneath.

"No," she says, "This is what it will be." Aaahhhh!  "But it looks nice on you." Are you kidding me? "Um, I look like a different nationality," I blurt out.  She keeps trying to reassure me, "But this color is good - it won't be orange on you like other kinds."

Oh the horror. I get in the car and send Ryan a text:

"I look like Pocahontas."


As I pull into our garage I'm a little mortified to see how busy the parking lot is with so many people coming in and out. They all know me here. We're notorious.  So I'm darting through the parking lot hiding behind cars as people pass and hoping the coast is clear when I make the final dash. Thank heavens I'm the first apartment inside the building.

I walk in the house and Ryan turns around.  "Oh, wow," he says. "Um, that looks really bad."  Awesome.

Well, one thing for sure, she was right about it not looking orange.  I had remembered a friend before telling me that St. Tropez (the kind this salon had) was the best kind of self-tanner because it was green-based rather than orange based. I looked down at the bottoms of my feet - they were a solid mass of greenish-black. Perhaps the effect was magnified by the black towel she had me standing on?  Whatever they case, they were putrid. Ryan made a gagging face seeing me look at them and said, "I am not getting in bed with you." I could only imagine myself at playgroup kicking my feet up on someone's ottoman with those. Note to self: wear boots and ignore the take-your-shoes-off-in-my-house rule.

You're not supposed to shower for 12 hours after getting your spray tan. I paced in an agitated panic at home for 40 minutes and after turning myself away from it multiple times, I finally freaked out and stuck my face under the sink and scrubbed and scrubbed.  I hated to wash money down the drain...but I couldn't take it anymore.  (I left the rest though figuring at least I had to be able to look at my face.) When I've done the other spray tan before, I still look a little unnatural being so tan (this happens when I'm even tan just from the sun)....like I sort of border on looking homeless.  You know, that worn leathery look.  This wasn't even that this time though. I was like this green/dark creature from another country. Or planet.  It looked so off.  And of course, my nails and feet were heinous.

So what do you know, the next day when I showered I did look much improved (I'm sure washing it off my face helped immensely), and as it faded, it turned out to be my favorite spray tan. (Ok, even though it took 3 days and about 17 layers of exfoliated skin for my feet to be able to greet the world again.) Anyhow, it really wasn't orange at all, and did look like I do when I've had time in the sun. Who knows, maybe I will even get my moneys worth and finish my sessions, when originally I had been certain I would never be walking back in that salon again.  Just have to figure out how to go into hiding for that first day or two....

Seriously. I'm such a dork. Sometimes I sit and imagine people that lived like thousands of years ago that had to battle like mastadons and starvation for survival, and picture them looking down on me and the ridiculous things we do nowadays and just shaking their heads in disgust.

I seriously love this video!

Why have I been wearing a scarf such boring ways all these years?  Besides this girl is just so darn cute you just want to watch this video. I want to be in bed but I can't stop watching it (even with the strangling hazards I keep running into trying to keep up with her while trying some of these styles).  If you wear scarves or contemplate it, you should watch. Heaven knows I love me some scarves...especially with the chilly temps now...you know how weak we Floridians get when it's in the 70s.