What a weekend-Friday

This was the weekend of the long awaited Widows and Widowers Conference in Layton, UT. These next few posts will highlight my days and thoughts there!!!

Last week was a pretty fun filled week for me. First Jami came over and spent her Spring Break with us which was so much fun. Then it was the widows and widowers conference that I was really excited about. I had quite a few preparations to make before I could go to Utah for the conference. I had to figure out my driving situation because Valerie needed the car to get her back and forth to work. Babysitting is always a trial when you are a single mom of 4 kids...I needed to find people to watch the kids while I was gone and Valerie was at work (many many thanks Branick and Amanda...the kids had so much fun!!). Figuring out my schedule while I was there, where I was going to stay and of course what to wear!!

Friday finally came and I hitched a ride to Utah with Jami since she was going back home and I was staying with her. She was on a committee in her ward that was putting on a traditional Passover dinner so we went to that instead of the opening fireside for the conference. It was so amazing I have never experienced anything like that. I must say that I didn't know what entailed in a Passover dinner and it was so fun to learn about it. We had a Seder...which is like a program that they do before their feast. It can take up to 3-4 hours...they pray, drink tons of wine (we had grape juice), sing hymns, eat unleavened bread, bitter herbs (which almost made me cry because they were so spicy and have so much fun together as a family. Their most favorite part of the Seder is retelling the stories of the plagues that God cast upon the Egyptians because the Pharaoh wouldn't free their ancestors. The meal was so good and so bad for the diet that I was doing weeks before and am now on the maintenance phase...but oh well I was out of town rules don't apply!! Our Seder and Feast took about 2 hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.

We were kinda antsy to get out of there because she wanted to take me to one of her mid-singes dances and it started at 9pm and was going to end at 12:30am. After we cleaned up at the church and picked up her son we were getting back to her place around 10:30pm. So we changed as fast as two girls can and dashed off to the dance. The dance was pretty fun, I felt a bit awkward at first. The only person I knew was Jami and I was a new girl there so not many of her friends really acknowledged me. There was this one girl named Jeremy who became my buddy and we had fun together while Jami was being swept away by all the guys. My mid-singles group in Boise was having a dance that night and I longed to be there. I was really looking forward to the swing lessons before the dance and all of my friends that I dance and have fun with. Once again I am shy and not so outgoing so going to that dance in Utah was pretty hard for me. When the dance got over we all went to IHOP after and Jami and I had a goal to be in and out of there in an hour since we knew we were in for a long day the next day. We did pretty good I think we actually left 15min after our goal time...not too shabby!!

We got back to her house around 2am and just crashed. I actually slept pretty good but I had such butterflies in my stomach anticipating what would be coming the next two days. I was hoping and praying that I would learn stuff there that would help me and the kids and honestly I was really hoping that there would be widows and widowers there around my age and not all of them in their 70's. That might sound mean but I really wanted to find more people I could relate to. Sadly the alarm went off much sooner than I would have liked and I got up to start Saturday morning and a new adventure...