Retreat, Remember, Re-evaluate, Renew

I was fortunate to spend last weekend with a marvelous group of women in one of the most beautiful places on earth. My friend, Michelle Ennis, enjoys putting together retreats and holds this retreat annually to allow her friends and clients to enjoy uninterrupted time scrapbooking. Michelle is a great believer in the strength a gathering of women can give to each other. I have always come away from these retreats feeling rejuvenated and ready to face life. Taking a break from the daily stress has allowed me to look to objectively at my life and I have often used these weekends to refocus and make tough decisions. That happened this weekend as well, but that is another story.

The retreat is held in a cabin on the east side of Zion Canyon, about an hour from my home. It was actually designed to hold scrapbooking retreats. The cabin can sleep 18 people comfortably. For this retreat there were sixteen women in all. There were older women and younger women, grandmas and new mothers, mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. I went with my friend Katie and it was fun to have time just to laugh about the things our kids do.

Lots of the women made bets on whose husband was going to call first. My husband, Rick, is a trooper and made it till Saturday night. In fact he even had a party with the girls eating pizza, nachos and ice cream sundaes while watching Shrek.

In addition to scrapbooking, there were wonderful meals, incredible views, and activities like running, Zumba and Pilates. Women brought projects other than scrapbooking to work on as well. There were also mini-classes if you wanted to take them to learn more about an aspect of scrapbooking or how to set up Skype on your computer. My focus was on scrapbooking - I have a lot to get done. As Katie said, we can Zumba any time, but it isn't often we get time to scrapbook. By the way, Katie won the prize for most pages done with 78.

I was able to complete 60 pages including the journaling. I was so excited since I hadn't been as prepared as I usually am and didn't think I would accomplish that much. Here are some of my favorite pages:

My friend Yvonne Poulsen sent me the following layout in a care package of scrapbooking supplies. It worked perfect for my daughter's first birthday pictures. She shares her amazing ideas at Just My Scrapbook!

It was a fantastic weekend!!! Michelle explained at one point, every woman in that room had gone through something very difficult during the proceeding year, yet we had all come through stronger. Thank you everyone for the memories and I took lots of pictures to crop next time.