Girls Retreat, and back to sketching.

This past weekend I got to attend a girls retreat with some friends. We met at a friend's home, which was good because it was close enough that those of us with kids and other responsibilities could come and go at our availability. Her husband had taken her kids down to Utah for the weekend, and her mother and a couple of sisters came up from Utah to attend the retreat as well.  I was able to go after Dean got home from work on Friday, spent the night there, spent all day Saturday there, and came home late Saturday night, then after church on Sunday I was able to go back over for a few hours. The retreat continued through Tuesday, but I was grateful to have been able to go for as long as I did. 

She was calling it a 'scrap retreat,' ideally for everyone to come and hang out together while they did their scrap booking, but so many people came with so many different projects. Many were scrapbooking, but some were sewing, painting, and a variety of other projects. I used my time sketching. We each took responsibility for a meal, and we just hung out together. It was really a lot of fun. On Saturday we watched the general women's broadcast. A couple of those that came have been told all their lives that they have horrible singing voices and have been asked not to sing at church and forbidden to sing along to the radio. One friend was able to give them a voice lesson, and it turns out they're not horrible at all, they've just been trying to sing in the wrong range.  It was really a lot of fun. We talked, we laughed, we ate candy, and we all got some work done. It was great!

I was able to finish a sketch that I had been slowly working on for the past couple of weeks. I am thrilled with how it turned out! I am so often amazed by what I am able to accomplish. I am just blown away, that this was actually done by me. Now I'm just trying to figure out how I can use this new found talent to do some good in this world. One great thing that I loved about this retreat was how many talents everyone had. Everyone was helping everyone else. Voice lessons were given, someone fixed someone else's computer, I was able to get some feedback from my friend who is an amazing artist.

 

Also this Sunday we had our ward Easter program. Dean and I both got to participate in the ward choir, which sang two songs, and I also sang a duet. Singing in a choir doesn't make me nervous at all, but when I am at the microphone with just one other person, I was so nervous, I was shaking during our rehearsal immediately before the meeting. Somehow during the meeting I was able to sing without shaking, and without crying, and more than one person told me that it went well.

While I was gone on Friday and Saturday, Dean turned into Superdad. He took the boys to the park, he got all of the dishes and laundry done, he got the kids to do their least favorite chore (putting their clean laundry in their drawers), he went to Walmart to buy more diapers (because the diapers we had were hidden in a box next to the changing table) and he pulled up all of the dead flowers that had been sitting there over the winter and planted new ones. :)