Couples Retreat

                I know this is REALLY long, but wanted to remember this in the future.

This past week has been crazy!! For several months now our Stake R.S. Presidency, which I'm in, has been planning a couples retreat. This past Friday and Saturday it finally took place and it was a BIG success. Friday night we had a nice sit down dinner where we had the youth serve us. We had Green salad, Chicken Cordon Bleu, baked potatoes, fresh green beans, homemade rolls, and dessert. I really didn't want to be in charge of the dinner, but somehow ended up doing it anyway. Have you ever tried to plan a sit down dinner for 250 people??? It was quite the experience. I do have to say that the hand of the Lord was in it several times and helping me along the way.
Each morning from Wednesday-Friday I had a "little" trial to start my day with. Wednesday I left to go and buy all the food for the dinner and grabbed my insulated bag to put my "cold stuff" in. It had been sitting in the garage. As I picked it up I realized something was in it. For several days the garage had smelled really bad and I told Russ we must have a dead mouse somewhere in the garage. Well, I found the "dead mouse" it was a salmon fillet I had purchased the week before and somehow it didn't make it to the refrigerator. I quickly got rid of the fillet, but wasn't thinking and through the bag in my car. Guess what I got to smell all the way to Olympia??
I arrived home with literally my car filled to the brim. I wasn't quite sure where I was going to put all the food when a lady from the ward stopped by to loan me some of her cookie sheets. She ended up taking all the stuff for our green salad home and putting it in her fridge.
On Thursday morning I got up early to drive to the lake because I had stored some of the food in our freezer there. All mine were full of chicken and green beans here at home. The temperature was around 20 degrees. As I went to unlock the gate the lock was frozen so I had to walk down to the house. Last summer we had an alarm system put in our lake house. We decided to put a horn on the outside of the house also to really scare off any burglars that broke in. When I entered the house and put the #code in, it said, "invalid number". After experiencing that twice I knew the alarm was going to go off and frantically starting searching for my cell phone in my purse to call Russ. I wasn't fast enough & the alarm started blasting through the house and across the lake. Before I could even get Russ on the phone the alarm company came on the speaker & wanted to know who I was and what my password was…I didn't even remember we had a password. By the time Russ got on the phone I was pretty frazzled, but quickly got the password and they turned off the alarm. The worst part of all this was the house next to ours was getting a new roof put on & two guys were up there doing it. As I walked out of the house with my big garbage bag full of frozen food I felt like a burglar!! I'm sure they wondered who that crazy lady was.
When I got home from the lake I had 4 people come and help me get started with the food. We worked on pounding and rolling up chicken from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. and ended up with exactly 250. I had purchased 22 packages of chicken with 4 LARGE breasts in each one and got 250 chicken cordon bleus out of that!!

My dear friend Diane Valentine who made 300 homemade rolls for the event and helped me with all of the chicken.

Another dear friend, Callie Hensley rolling ham and swiss cheese into the chicken.

This is Caton buying me more Corn Flakes & did a great job crushing them.

Kayla, a newlywed in our ward, married to Caton, helped me wash & wrap all the potatoes and slice lemons for the water.

After I finished cleaning up the whole kitchen from all the chicken I started making the dessert. I decided to make "Strawberry Delight" which is basically angel food cake layered with strawberry jello with frozen strawberries. After the jello becomes a little thick you fold in real cream that you've whipped up. I made 8 batches Thursday and then Friday I made another 17. Friday morning it was so cold outside I would put my pan of jello and strawberries outside on the deck to start thickening while I would start another batch. In the middle of all this Russ was running errands for me. I had him bring half of the potatoes to Kayla's house to bake and as he stepped out onto the deck with the big box of potatoes he exclaimed, "what did I just step in?" As I looked out his shoe and door mat were covered in strawberries and red jello. Let's just say Russ was NOT real happy. I thought it was kind of funny & after I thought about it I told him if anyone should be upset it should be me, because now I had to make another batch!!

I had 15 cookie sheets of dessert. The Lord knew I couldn't fit all these in my refrigerator so he made it so my whole garage was a refrigerator with the temperature in the teens and twenties. A tender mercy for sure!

After I finished all of the desserts on Friday I started rolling all the chicken in butter and crushed Corn Flakes. I was suppose to be at the church at 5:00 and at 4:45 I was still rolling chicken and hadn't showered. Believe it or not I made it there by 5:25 with shower and all. 

I was able to get all the chicken baked at 6 different places. We ended up having one pan of chicken left. We figured we had about 235 people there.

This is 191 of the 250 chicken cordon bleu. I told Russ I'm taking a picture of these because I'm NEVER doing this again.

While I was busy making the food the rest of the R.S. Presidency and others were turning the gym into a beautiful place. I feel bad even putting these pictures here because they don't do it justice.

We had YM & YW from the Stake dressed in black pants, white shirts & a red tie with hearts on it serve us. They did a really good job. I ask some single sisters to help out in the kitchen and they did awesome.

Sister Larson, Sister Allred & Sister Langi

After our dinner we had the couples go off by themselves somewhere….the chapel, R.S. room, classroom, etc. and we gave each of them a booklet to go over together. It had different tests to take and wishes to make & "remember whens" to talk about. The couples really enjoyed it. After that we had our dessert and headed home.

Saturday we came back and had classes that each couple signed up for. These are the classes we offered them. They could choose one for each hour. 

Group 1

   1. 7 Values for Highly Effective Children

   2. Staying in Love (Fun Dating Ideas)

   3. Are You Listening? (Improve Communication)

   4. Dealing with Illness and Depression

Group 2

   1. Keeping Fit and Healthy Together

   2. Kids Are Gone, Now What?

   3. Protecting Children from Pornography & the Outside World

   4. Overcoming Bumps in the Road

We then had a panel discussion with questions and then closing remarks from President Larsen (my sweetheart) and me.

Here's a few of my comments. The MOST important thing in a marriage is that you put the Lord first, your spouse second and you third. The first great commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart and the second is to love thy neighbor as thyself. I talked about how important it was to love yourself or it was really hard to love others. I've asked myself this question many times if I would want to be someone else and I always come up with, no. I love being me, although there's some things I would like to change. I talked about when we were first married and the many years we were in school and didn't have 2 nickels to rub together, but I'm no happier now than I was then. We put the Lord first, paid our tithing and we somehow always had enough money to pay our bills and keep food on the table. I had someone tell me the other day that it was pretty much impossible to not have both the husband and wife work now a days. I had to disagree. I told everyone I have 20 nieces (including my daughters) with a total of 58 kids between them all and none of them work. They might not have everything they want, but they're home with their kids!! Its possible! Sometimes its hard to stay home with all those little kids and you're ready to pull your hair out. I remember one time when my two boys were little and fighting and screaming and I hid in the closet for 10-15 minutes. They became quite alarmed & began to cry. When I finally came out & they were upset with me & I told them they didn't need a mom because they weren't doing what I told them. In the end its all worth it though.

I told a few other stories about Russ and I. I'm grateful that after 32 years of marriage that Russ still makes me want to be a better person. I love being a wife and I love being a mother. 

Our last tender mercy was it was suppose to snow on Friday night. We prayed that it wouldn't until our retreat was over on Saturday, as people freak out here to drive in the snow. After our retreat was over it took us 2 hours to clean everything up. Just as we pulled out of the church parking lot the snow flurries began to fall. All in all we got a lot of good feedback & we pray it will help couples in our Stake marriages be stronger.