General Young Women Tea Party

Last Saturday, February 16th, the General Young Women Presidency and Board has the most amazing Tea Party for all of their daughters and granddaughters.  It was so amazing and such a fun experience.  Not only was it so fun to be with all those amazing people and great examples, but every detail of the whole day was incredible!

We started out the day by all meeting together to go over the schedule, hand out our notebooks and folder, and Sister Dalton talked to us!

The theme of the day was based off of President Uchtdorf's talk, Your Happily Ever After. (You MUST read it if you haven't already.) The whole day we learned about the Plan of Salvation and made our own timeline of our lives and how we can reach our Happily Ever After. 

Sister Dalton talked about how our "Tea Party" is really a "Temple Party" - The temple is our castle and the way to our Happily Ever After. 

We went to four classes that morning - the first one was taught by Ann Dibb and was all about President Monson since he is her dad! We learned about his life lots of fun facts about him.  The three other classes were about the temple, the Creation and about Lehi's Dream and holding to the rod. 

After the classes we had our Tea Party! It was sooo amazing.  Everything was so perfect and I couldn't believe all of the detail they went to.  These pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.  

The food was incredible!  

Sandwiches of all kinds, fruit, cookies, bruschetta, cupcakes, fruit tarts and so much more. 

I could have eaten 50 of those crown cookies!

The candy bar was the hit of course,

they wouldn't "open" it until after lunch and the little girls were going crazy!

My mom is the most amazing person I know and such an example to me.  I have loved that she has been able to be on the General Young Women Board for the last 4.5 years because I have had so many amazing experiences because of it!  I will be so sad when she gets released in a few months! :)  Thanks for the invite to the Tea Party, mama!

released :(

This week has been such a sad week for me. I got released from being in Young Women's for 3 1/2 years! I never thought I would be this emotional about getting released but I guess I am just realizing how much I really loved it! I am tearing up just thinking about it!

I went to YW today for one final time and the girls and leaders were so cute and got me a flower, treats and a cute card. I will miss them all so much! The girls are amazing and the leaders truly are five of my very best friends! Im going to be so sad not spending a few hours with them each week!

I was also able to go to one last Fireside tonight where our Stake YW showed this video they made of our girls, I was bawling during the whole thing of course! We truly do have the best girls and the most amazing neighborhood, the entire thing was filmed in Daybreak and I am so grateful to live in such a beautiful neighborhood!

These last few years have been so much fun and I have learned sooo much about myself and about the YW program. The Bishop knows that Im not too happy with him right now but I am excited about the next adventure they have in store for me.........nursery here I come!

Good Things to Come

I am the only one that cries every time I watch a Mormon Message? I seriously love watching them, they are so inspiring and uplifting. Watch them all HERE.

This one is one of my favorites right now, Elder Holland is an amazing speaker and I feel like this message is directed right at me to help me through the trials I am going through.

I also love the newest one, Continue in Patience.

If you haven't watched these watch them all, you wont be disappointed!

update

Even though I have only taken like four pictures this entire year it is driving me nuts that they are not posted yet. So here they are:

In March we went to a surprise birthday for Kim and it was so much fun. We went to Biaggi's at Gateway which was so good, we got the room decorated all cute, and she was totally surprised. Love ya Kim!
The end of March was the General Young Women's meeting which is even more fun to go to now because of my amazing mom!
The morning of the conference my parents woke up to a heart-attack on their front porch! My mom's friend Ashley did it wishing her good luck. I thought it was so cute and thoughtful!Almost all of the girls in my family went, along with my cute dad. We went to a devotional before it started where Elder Anderson spoke and then we had great seats to the amazing conference, I am still thinking about how awesome President Uchtdorf's talk was...if you did not get a chance to see it, please read it here-you wont regret it!
Finally Al and I went to the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference with my parents. We watched the first session in the Relief Society building so we could help with the General Board luncheon, then we ate lunch with the Young Women, Relief Society and Primary presidencies, board members and their families. Thanks for inviting us, mother!

So there you have it...our 2010 so far. Not too exciting! Hopefully our spring and summer will bring a few more blogging opportunities.

christmas time

Wow I seriously cant believe Christmas is this week! Where has this month gone? When the month started out I was SO excited for Christmas, and then last week happened. Not that being busy isn't fun, but sometimes working all day and then being out until at least 10pm every night isn't the most fun, especially since I'm a grandma and love to be in bed early. Not to mention the fact that work was horrible last week. Trying to get out 6500 Christmas cards last minute while having to do my normal work and being the designated driver for co-workers = emotionally draining. But its over, done with, and now I cant wait for Christmas!

This month has been BUSY, in a good way most of the time.

First, ALL of our high school girls FINALLY got together! It was so much fun and long overdue! We talk about doing it all the time but finally a few girls got together and planned it.

All of us {almost}
Love all you girls, thanks for planning it Megs, Al, Trina, Abs, etc. We missed all of you who weren't there!

Then we were able to go to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional which was awesome.

The conference center looked amazing

After it ended we were able to go to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for hot chocolate, wassail and dessert with the General YW and YM Boards and their families. Its a tradition that they do every year and its so fun being with everyone.

Sister Dalton and my mom

Next we went to the Bagley Family party at Marty and Dee's. We all used to do the Nativity when we were little and then we stopped it for a while because we were all old and too cool, but now its so fun to have so many little kids in the family that are willing {and some older kids too!}

Bud and Lize introduced us to Hatch's hot chocolate {aka the Little Chocolateires if you saw TLC tonight} after the Bagley party, yum! We went there to celebrate my little sis's college graduation! Yay Meg, way to go!

Finally we had another party with my girlfriends. It took awhile to nail down a date that would work for all of us but we made it happen and it was so fun!

We made gingerbread houses which we hadn't done this year and I must say we did pretty good, well Al did good I should say, I just held together the pieces. Brando and Annie totally beat everyone thanks to Brando's mad construction skills.

Thanks Meg for finding the perfect date and thanks Dan for putting it all together, love ya girls!

On another note, Happy Birthday {yesterday} to my gorgeous mother! Love ya momma!

Merry Christmas everyone, have a good week!!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Youth Celebration

After months and months of going to {long} practices each week--sometimes a few times a week, practicing dancing and singing, making costumes, rehearsing at the conference center, tweaking the dance and songs, meetings and more...the day finally came for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Youth Celebration on May 30th, and it was well worth all of the hard work. I feel like I worked hard on it but I did nothing compared to my awesome young women! Not only did they all have school at 7:30 am, homework, tests, friends, dances, etc. but on top of that they came to each practice so positive, happy, and excited to be there. They worked incredibly hard for months to make sure it was perfect. I shared my responsibilities with 5 other leaders but each young woman/young man had to be at every practice, sometimes a few times a week until 9pm or later.

Their hard work definitely paid off...the show was AMAZING! Words cannot describe the performance. Only the people who were there can understand how special the night was. 7,000 youth participated in our show, and 7,000 more participated in the show for the Draper Temple on May 29th. There were dances and songs from throughout Utah's history, a military tribute, slideshows and more. It was so inspiring and such a neat experience, the spirit was so strong. It was so neat to have the Prophet and other church leaders there.

Our group put on a 50's number and they were awesome! They looked so good in their poodle skirts, roller skates, and dancing around awesome vintage cars. They really did such a good job and got the biggest cheer of the night!

Here are my gals...I love them to death and it was such an awesome experience doing this with them. It is something that I know we'll never forget. Now everyon get your tix to the openhouse!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

Next Monday, June 1st, the Oquirrh Mountain Temple (click on the link for some cool pics of the building process) opens up its doors for the public open houses! I cant even tell you how excited I am to have a temple a few streets away from my house...and I thought living 10 mins away from the Jordan River Temple was awesome! With it being only a few seconds from my house I should probably be going twice a month now!

We, like pretty much everyone who lives in Daybreak, just came out to "look"and see what Daybreak was all about, and we all ending up moving here! I really do feel like I was meant to move to Daybreak and I know that living so close to the temple is one of the reasons why. It has been incredible watching the building process and I cant believe that its finally done!

All of you out there better come out to Daybreak and visit the temple...and me while your at it! (If its a night or weekend!) You can get your tickets here, or if its like the Draper Temple open houses just show up with no tickets and I'm sure you'll be fine.

I always meant to go take some picture of this finished temple but I haven't gotten around to it so I stole these amazing pictures from my friend Claire...Claire if you read my blog THANKS! You know I think these pics are awesome!

Called to Serve

henry b. eyring...thomas s. monson...deiter f. uchtdorf

amazing men. great examples. new leadership. while i still miss president hinckley, i know that president monson will do an amazing job. and uchtdorf is a great addition to the presidency. i am excited to see where this new leadership will go.

President Hinckley

i just wanted to say how truly bitter sweet these past two days have been for me. i was very shocked when i first heard the news, not that it wasn't expected-he's been hinting it for awhile now, its just that i cant imagine someone else in his place. i was about 9 when President Hinckley was first called so i don't really remember any other Prophet. he was such an amazing man and such an inspiration to me. he is the prime example to everyone, lds or not, of how to live a full and happy life. from his dedication and humor, to the love he had for everyone-especially his family and wife...he truly has inspired us all. i, along with the rest of the world im sure, feel like i knew him personally. his love and spirit would gleam constantly and it could always be felt. i am going to miss him so much-his smile, his sweet personality, his cane, his wit and most importantly the love he had for the church and for the world. although he will be missed, i am so happy that he is with his sweetheart once again.

New calling...

So as most of you know we just moved into a new house, new city, and new neighborhood...which means a new ward and a new calling! Because our ward is so gigantic I was hoping that I'd just fade into the background and never have to speak or get a new calling...but of course I was wrong! Last week a member of the bishopric called to set up an appointment...yea for me! So I went in not knowing what to expect but hoping that I wouldn't be called to teach relief society or anything like that! I was actually hoping that it'd be something to do with young women's...and to my surprise it was! But it definitely was not the young women's calling I had hoped for...I'm the Young Women's Camp Director! Don't get me wrong, I am SO excited and I think it will be so fun...but a 22 year old planning young women's camp? It just doesn't sound right! I still feel young enough to be a young woman, not planning girls camp for them! But I know that it is meant to be and I am so grateful for it! I am a little nervous, but thankfully I have the ultimate Young Woman for a mom (she's served in the Young Women's for as long as I can remember) who will help me out! It's a great opportunity and I'm really looking forward to it!

In the meantime Al still hadn't gotten a calling...until last night! He was called to teach Elders Quorum! This is a perfect calling for him and he is thrilled!

We are both so excited to serve and get more involved in our ward!