Fabulous Trip and Back Again

We returned from our fourth trip to Utah in the past 5 months on Saturday and it feels good to be home. However, I did have a blast this trip. I got to hang out a lot with my sister and her family before they move to Florida in July. It will be crazy to have them on the opposite coast, but hopefully we'll get to see them at Christmas sometime. The other awesome part to the trip was going to Women's Conference! And even though it was hard for me to leave The Boy, I had a blast once I got there. I felt really bad for him because he'd had his cousin BabyD to play with and we were all there and then we all left him at the same time and my little sister was at school, so he just had Grandma to entertain him. My mom is fabulous and they had a wonderful time together. When my mom dropped him off to me on Friday he exclaimed (after he woke up - he fell asleep like 10 minutes from my sister's house), "Mommy! You came back! I so proud of you!"

I love Women's Conference and it was so fun to be there with the awesome chicks from my ward. I think there were 12 of us there, but I never did nail down an exact number. We stayed at the home of one of girl's parents. That was so fun because it was like a slumber party each night. There was a lot of laughing, and eating, and a little bit of sleeping. During the conference I got to hear Sherri Dew speak; hear from the General RS President; attended classes on being a young mother, raising boys, managing anger (hee, hee), and how marriage is an equal partnership. The highlight of the Conference was having President Monson as the closing speaker. So there we are in the Marriott Center with thousands of women jabbering away and as soon as he entered it was silent and everyone stood. It was amazing and I know we all felt the Spirit testify that he is the prophet of the Lord on the earth. I also really enjoyed Sherri Dew's talk because she had a lot of powerful statements to make about being a woman in the latter-days. These are some that I got written down as I was frantically writing:

*Take a little more time to be a little more holy.
*Our spirits crave to progress.
*If the world can't look to us for a true example of womanhood, where can they look?
*We are the ones that need to define LDS womanhood.
*We may not be the first generation of women to be influenced by the world, but we need to be the last.
*Beware of those who profess Christ, but spew anti-Christ statements.
*Coming to Christ means walking away from the world.
*With the Lord's help and with our best effort, we will prevail.

I'm excited for the transcripts to be published and on May 15th and 16th BYUTV, KBYU and at byubroadcasting.org they will rebroadcast some of the talks - including Sherri Dew's and President Monsons' talks.

Last night I hosted book club for the ward girls and it was so much fun. I had chosen The Princess Bride and I got really into themed food. So, here is the menu:

Princess Buttercup Cupcakes (Lemon Cake/Lemon Frosting)
Miracle Max's Resurrection Pills (chocolate/chocolate/chocolate cake bon bons)
Fire Swap Banana Dip (Banana Dip and Bananas)
Snow Sand Spinach Dip
Iocane Powder Punch (just your standard wedding punch)
Peanuts and Peanut M&Ms (No more rhymes now. I mean it. Anybody want a peanut?)
Trooooo Luv's Kiss (Strawberry Hershey's Kisses)

It was fun to host, but I'm glad I'm off the hook for a little while. It sucked all my creative juices out of me! LOL