We Are Getting Pretty Good At This

This has been a busy week. I have been trying to get the kids ready for an essay contest and then the district writing test. There was a BLT (building leadership team) meeting to attend, tutoring to help with. a lockdown drill to practice, a family reading night to help host, and visiting teaching to finish.

Oh, and then there was the little matter of our stake Relief Society dinner and program.

This was our fifth meeting, and we are just starting to get the hang of putting these spiritual shin-digs together. My mom came over to help out with our first meeting and, thanks to a school board function in Boise, my dad was able to stop by to help out this this one. Thanks Homely!

Last year's meeting was over the top elegant and since we couldn't top that, we decided to go with more of a cute, bright, cheerful look.

These center pieces were much easier to put together than last year's, and as a bonus...we are going to swap out the pictures on the sides of the bags so we can use the same things for next month's stake High Priests dinner. The pioneers would be so proud of our thriftiness!

 But even though the decorations for the 40 tables was less intricate this year...

...don't think for a moment that Sister Woodhouse let us slack off on any of the other decorations. This lighted tree of life was just one of the amazing pieces that she arranged to have brought in to make the hall look as beautiful as possible.

We had so much help putting things together. Sisters helped ups set up and clean up. They sang in the choir and narrated the program. Our awesome young women helped in the kitchen and ran the nursery. A restaurant owned by a family in the stake did the catering, and when the night was over another family took all 40 table cloths to wash in their giant hotel washing machine.Talk about blessings!

  Brother Kloepfer was just assigned to the Relief Society around the holiday season and, even though he has plenty of Relief Society meeting experience, this was his first time at a Sister Woodhouse-planned meeting. He not only served as an inspired speaker, but he also helped set-up chairs and tables and almost single-handedly took down all of the chairs and tables...only weeks after having heat surgery!

One of the things we have learned over the years is that, if we want to keep the meeting at 90 minutes and still have time to be spiritually fed, we need to have the food on the table when the meeting starts.

No waiting in lines to dish up at these meetings. The sisters did have to wait a bit to dig in while we tried to work out some microphone issues, but since that was the worst hiccup of the night, we can't really complain.

We were a little worried about attendance because there was a concert and a pretty important basketball game that night, but almost three hundred sisters were still able to come.

Our wonderful president, Jolene, wrote the program. There beautiful music, heart-warming stories, heart-breaking videos, and some uplifting remarks by the high counselor who councils with our presidency.

It was a beautiful night.

 And we got to spend it with a lot of beautiful sisters.

 And we went through a lot of Kleenexes. Like, a whole lot. After our run-though two nights before, we realized we were going to have to issue tissues at the door to the chapel along with the programs.

If you would like to know WHY we went through so many tissues, check out the three videos that were shown as part of the program.

Click HERE (Evil Did Not Win)

Here...  (Mountains to Climb)

And Here  (Courage)

 Aside from a couple of boxes of tissues, the only casualties were Jolene and I's shoes. We each had a strap that broke shortly before the meeting began. Opposition in all things, right?

After it was over, the whole gang posed for our traditional, "We Survived!" photo.

We were missing our dearest darling Sue, and our secretary Jalene is moving across the river, so we will have to take a new presidency photo someone soon. I wonder if we can borrow the light-up tree of life for that photo too?

Since part of the plan of reusing the center pieces was to reduce our workload, it seemed silly to unstuff all of the bags just to store them for a couple of weeks. Instead, we loaded them into my car...

 ...I mean we REALLY loaded them in.

 Driving home was a bit tricky...

 And now all 40 centerpieces are patiently awaiting their change of signage while hanging out in my guest room. So for the next few weeks, they will be a wonderful reminder of a beautiful evening...

...unless my niblets come to visit before then. Trying to explain how none of those bags are gifts for them could get tricky.