I can be right, or I can be happy: Great Girls + Great Moms = Great Weekend

To say that I am a pragmatic, not touchy feely, type A, kind of person would kind of be somewhat of an understatement. But I put all my insecurities aside, okay I didn't put them aside they were right out in the open for everyone to see, and planned a mother/daughter weekend for Jenna's friends and their moms.

I turned out to be a great experience. The group was made up of girls going into the 7th grade at the same Middle school and their moms. Some of us also have other connections but that was the one common thread for all of us. We would loved to have escaped to some exotic place for our little retreat but you know $$, schedules, $$, etc.. So we retreated to our little town that most us spend all of our time in. We were able to escape a bit of our "normal," even though we stayed in town. We were able to rent out the Alumni House at the campus where I work which allowed us to all stay together with the moms having beds to sleep on the girls getting to have a sleep over in the living room. This worked out really well and it was really inexpensive.

We spent our activity and meal time in one of the classrooms in the building where I work which also has a kitchen. This room was free--so again expenses kept to a minimum. One of the other moms and myself set down and put together a schedule and a menu for the weekend and then each mom took a session and presented it. We had some great learning activities with some object lessons, we had fun craft times, games, door prizes, karaoke, laughter, tears and lots of food.

This whole weekend was a huge leap for me. I don't stretch well, I don't share well, I freak out about how everyone is going to respond to any activity planned, so this was a big deal for me. I hope that I can take it as a lesson learned because I'm not sure (other that my daughter not puking her guts out) how the weekend could gone any better. Everyone seemed happy to be there and enjoyed themselves, the activities and lessons were well received by all, the door prizes were a hit, (okay only the fold up butterfly chairs were a hit but the others were graciously accepted), the food was well planned and delicious. It was as if we had done a thousand of these little retreats.

We were hoping to give our girls a sense of who they are and how they can live their best life. It was good for us moms too, to know that we all are going through the same issues. We had a great mixture of learning and fun and really the moms just used their gifts and talents to show the girls the things that they love and it went remarkably well. I would recommend this type of activity to any group of girls and moms and would be glad to share some of our itinerary ideas.

The best pictures will be yet to come from some of the other moms who did a great job documenting the weekend through photos...but here a few that I took when I had a minute to remember to grab my camera.

This is where we stayed.