Mother/Daughter Retreat

This weekend was the our big event: the 4th and 5th grade mother/daughter retreat. We had 5 moms and 6 daughters there, which is all of the 4th and 5th graders at HCC, so Shanna and I were excited. We had a speaker fly in from Memphis, Suzanne Grisby, who is a friend of Jeff and Cherie's. Shanna and I picked her up at the airport, but we didn't know exactly what she looked like, so we wore these sparkly tiaras while we waited. She figured it out immediately but we sure did get some laughs! Our theme for the weekend was Beautiful for Thee: a Daughter of the King. On Friday night we decorated everything with the princess theme and had tiaras, and princess items for the girls and moms. We ate pizza and played games (we were supposed to watch Princess Diaries, but our tv didn't work) and the girls played dress up all night long. It was alot of fun and very laid back, but I think the moms really enjoyed that it was so relaxed. Saturday morning we cooked breakfast (pancakes and fruit), cleaned up from sleeping, sung some songs, played crazy bonding games (and boy did we bond haha), and then listened to Suzanne share some from Psalm 139. Our activity for the first session was pedicure spa for the moms, which included their gift of a decorated metal pail filled with lotions, scrubs, and pedicure tools. We happened to have a foot pool and a pariffin wax machine so we used that as well. During the pedicure time, Suzanne answered (used loosely) various parenting questions the ladies had. While moms were downstairs, we took the girls upstairs and did a little character quiz and wrote letters to the moms. They seemed to enjoy it, and had fun bringing the letters to their mom. For lunch we just had sandwiches and had some freetime to just play games, run around, take a nap or shower, whatever. We wanted there to be time to build relationships not just follow a schedule and it seemed to really work. =) I think Dayna, T, Shanna and I played a game called Sequence for the 3 hours. Team blue won!! =) We did songs and listen to Suzanne teach for our second session -- she finished psalm 139. Our second activity we divided up again and made bracelet/keychains with beads and stretchy string. We had pearls that represented the Fruits of the Spirit and then the vairous colored beads represented different sins we wanted to work on. Each person wrote the fruits of the spirit and then what their sins were and what color represented them on an index card. Then the girls and moms sat down for reflection time and talked about what they learned during the weekend; this was also the time when they shared what their beads meant with each other and asked to be held accountable if they wanted to. As they left, we gave the girls their gifts: a mirror with a ribbon to hang it, decorated with their name and the theme, and they had cute flowers glued to them. Also each person recieved a tshirt. We all wore them to church this morning!! Just like we do at our church after camp =)! Anyways. All in all, I am very tired, but despite some things not going as planned, we had an amazing weekend. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, the girls spent time together as a group (which is needed as they go into middle school), the moms as a church became friends outside of Sunday morning, and we got to just not be around boys for 24 hours. =)