Photographic Evidence

that I am the luckiest momma on the planet.

Losing our Virginity

One of my very favorite events of the year took place this weekend—the annual retreat with my sisters. Once a year we escape husbands, kids, jobs, houses, and every other mundane and boring aspect of life in order to lounge, eat, gab, eat, watch movies, shop, eat, play tourist, eat, sleep in, and oh yeah—eat some more.

This evolved from a tradition began when we were all teenagers, sharing a bedroom and staying up half the night talking about boys. We called them 'socials,' and we planned them out like military maneuvers. We'd stock up on ice cream and potato chips, stash it all in the garage, and then late at night when everyone else was asleep, we'd climb out the bedroom window to retrieve our snacks and spend the rest of the night stuffing ourselves, giggling, and playing absurd versions of "Truth or Dare."

Adolescence is still in style at our yearly retreats. "Wendy, why are you wearing white tights with your pajamas? Oh my gosh, those are your LEGS!" Snicker, snicker. Wedgies and belching contests... some things never change.

Saturday we realized that we were all, every single one of us, pedicure virgins. Considering all the beauty treatments we’ve indulged in between us, this was amazing and cried out for immediate rectifying. We found a strip mall salon with the winning name of Sparkling Nails, where for $20 a team of Vietnamese men and women will slough, buff, and ‘sparkle’ your feet for an hour.

As you can see from the pictures above, it worked. I felt like I was five again—“I want the pretty flowers with the shiny jewels…” My five year old is insanely jealous and begging nonstop for me to take her to the store with foot bathtubs and sparkly toe nail polish.

We decided that losing our communal virginity needs to be our new tradition at our annual sisters’ retreat. The challenge will be coming up with something that none of us have done. More of a challenge than you might think. Here are some things we thought of and discarded because at least one of us had already done it:

Tattoos
Botox
Laser treatments
Bungee jumping
Nose and/or belly piercing
Male strippers
Full-body massage (not by said male strippers, although maybe that could be the new experience next year…)

Because what is said at sisters’ retreat stays at sisters’ retreat, I can’t divulge which of us has done which of the above items. Apparently we are a rather adventurous lot, which doesn’t leave many options for new exploits. The extremely short list of things that NONE of us have done reads like this:

Skydiving (there is a reason some of us haven’t tried this. We’re currently in discussions about whether adult diapers would solve the fear factor).
Making out with a woman (this one isn’t going to happen. For any of us. EVER.).
Reading all of Jane Austen’s novels (the question is, do any of us really WANT to read all the JA novels?)

Colonoscopies

I'm hugely hoping that we think of more options before next August, otherwise I'm going to end up either reading more ga-ga girly stuff than I can stomach in one weekend, or laying on a table with a tube snaking up parts of me I don't want to think about. I'm not sure which would be worse.

Appropriately for such an estrogen-heavy weekend, in an estrogen-heavy post, quoting from another ga-ga girly girl, "You know full as well as I do the value of sisters’ affection to each other; there is nothing like it on this earth." –Charlotte Bronte. Here's to the girls. Love you!

Retiring the Crown

While the good Lord has blessed me with many talents, apparently artistic ability is not one of them. Normally this would not pose a problem, in fact, it wouldn't even be known, to me or anyone else, but my current calling is leading the music in Primary, and it seems creating visual aids is part of the calling.

Early on I erroneously assumed that because they are children they wouldn't be very particular about the quality of the artwork--in fact, they would be forgiving of my halting attempts. Wrong. The first time I showed up with posters I'd illustrated and drawn myself, no one knew what the stick figures were supposed to be. Some of the teachers snickered.

I gave up on creating visuals myself and decided to buy them. Thankfully there is a thriving industry of psuedo-Mormon "art" for Primary, so for $9.95 plus tax I had visuals for an entire year.

These particular ones have to be colored first. No problem--coloring in the lines doesn't require artistic skill. Once again, wrong.

I finshed the set of visuals for a new song we were learning this past weekend. No matter how I looked at it, every picture looked like the winner of the Miss Jesus 2008 Drag Queen Pagaent. Too late to redo things, I figured the kids wouldn't notice if I just held the pictures up with a smile and acted like they were perfectly normal. Wrong.

Before we could even begin the song, a little girl halfway back raised her hand. "Um, did your kids color those pictures? 'Cause they're really bad." There went the remnants of my ego.

But she wasn't done. After church she followed me outside. "I have a suggestion for you," she said. "I think maybe you should let your kids color the pictures, 'cause it would probably be better than if you do it." OUCH! I asked if she realized how young my kids are. We're still in scribble mode at our house--apparently that includes me. She pondered that. "Well, then maybe I could color them for you. Or maybe we could just learn songs without any pictures."

Sigh.