Time Out For Women - Review & the rest of the trip!

Yesterday we managed to get on the road by 12:00 to head to Fresno for Time Out For Women. I rode in my mom's van with two ladies from my new ward and a non-member friend of theirs. My mom's best friend, from my ward, her daughter met us there. She and I shared a room together with our little babies. She had a little boy who is four months named Luke. Jayden wasn't a huge fan of Luke. LOL She held his hand and flirted with him but got insanely jealous when people cooed and talked to him and not her. LOL

Anyhow, we found the convention center and then realized that we hadn't mapquested directions to our hotel or anything and my mom was being stubborn and wouldn't let me program the navigation system, so we drove around - the convention center is in a BAD part of town. Our hotel, even WORSE part of town. We got there and the front desk told us we couldn't check in yet because they were still steam cleaning the carpets in the rooms. So we went to Denny's to wait it out. Finally we could check in, they got us in three rooms in a row. The floors were still squishy and wet. Yuck. More on the Horrible Room and The Very Long Night in a bit.

By the time we got our stuff in and I nursed Jayden, it was time to head back to the Convention Center, we had gotten our bearings on Fresno and knew how to get back so that only took a minute. We happened to just "fall" into the right parking structure that was offering FREE parking, and it was literally STEPS from the conference.

Inside very nice ladies stopped everyone of us with a baby and showed us the "Mother's Lounge" and where we could sit inside the auditorium. We had the back right side of the auditorium to ourselves. They didn't really seem to want our groups sitting with us, but there were less people on Friday night so our whole group sat together.

First up was Mercy River, three women with AMAZING voices, who are also HILARIOUS. We sang along with them, it had a very Young Women's Camp feel to it. (Little did I know we would soon be "roughing it" in our MOTEL.) My favorite song we all sang was Come Thou Fount, it's such a beautiful song anyways, but hearing I don't know over a thousand women singing it together, you could very much feel the Spirit.

Next came Ardeth Kapp, unfortunately her microphone wasn't working right and since I cannot hear very well anyway, I did not really hear any of her talk. I wish I had, plus this was my first time using the Mother's Lounge - only to change Jayden, I just nursed her in the auditorium, but the hallway it was in was echo-y and her voices carried and bounced and plus wasn't very loud and it sounded like the Peanut's teacher rather than her voice. So I really didn't get to hear much of what she said. I'm sure it was great and I could have been truly inspired by her words, but I didn't hear them.

Next up was Jason Deere, Dan Truman, and "Friends" they performed from their CD, Joseph A Nashville Tribute. It was AMAZING. I bought the CD, there is a song about Emma Smith, just so very touching. I cannot possibly do it justice by describing it, it's definitely worth buying on iTunes though - the actual song is just called Emma - I'm pretty sure it's on iTunes.

That ended the night and we headed back to the MOTEL. Notice my lack of referring to this as a HOTEL, yeah, MOTEL for sure. So 1/2 of us decided to go back to Denny's to eat again because we were hungry (it was 10 pm now) and the other 1/2 went back to the Motel. After a nice dinner my group headed back and my roomie (whom I had never met before yesterday) and I went to our room with our babies. We talked to our husbands and got our babies to sleep and then sat up talking until 4 AM! Around 2 PM, after walking around on the still-squishy-carpet, we were sitting on our beds facing eachother and Crystal notices there is a HUGE blood stain, yes blood stain, on the showing part of my box spring. We couldn't bring ourselves to pull back the sheet and look...we couldn't do much, it was the middle of the night and the room was in one of our mother's names and they were asleep, so we just sat up giggling and grossed out. We survived it though.

In the morning, after getting only 2 hours sleep (our babies woke up at 6:00) we got up and everyone got dressed and ready and we left the MOTEL (checked out too, YUCK) and headed to the Convention Center again. We grabbed some McDonald's along the way. Again we got FREE parking, yay!

Inside the Convention Center we got awesome tote bags and again were referred to the cordoned off area for nursing moms. This time there was not enough room for whole parties to accompany nursing mothers so Crystal and I sat together and our moms would come visit us now and then to let us go to the bathroom or get us bottles of water or stand to rock our babies, but really - the way the program is set up - speaker, music, speaker, music, with lots of breaks, our babies behaved AWESOME. We only ever took them out for diaper changes. They slept during speakers and danced and Jayden learned how to clap during singing.

First up Saturday morning was again Mercy River, we sang Come Thou Fount again, and then all the speakers for the day gave us "teasers" of their talks later on. The first speaker was Mary Ellen Edmunds. The woman is ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS. Seriously. I laughed SO hard I cried...alot. We were seated pretty far back but there was a big screen they were projecting her closeup and her facial expressions, oh man. She is just so funny. I woke up Jayden I was laughing so hard. The theme was "Joyful Life" and all of the speakers spoke about having a Joyful Life.

Next Kenneth Cope came out and he sang, beautifully, and Jayden danced and clapped and thoroughly enjoyed it. He spoke a bit between songs, it was really beautiful!

After he spoke we heard from S. Michael Wilcox, he gave a wonderful talk from what I heard of it but honestly, I stayed up until 4 in the morning, Jayden fell back asleep and I dozed off a bit, sorry, bad reviewer here!

We had a lunch, then we heard more from Kenneth Cope and then Emily Watts spoke. Oh my goodness, she is hilarious! She talked alot about Mom Guilt, boy do I do this! Something she said that I thought was particularly hilarious was the back when she was having kids she was nursing one of them and they seemed extra gassy, so she thought what have I eaten, what have I done, and felt guilty for eating chocolate when it might have upset her baby's tummy...she said we have it so much worse now, people are so judgemental and we're supposed to be doing so much to ensure bright futures for our kids that if they come out a little behind the curve then we're thought to have not played enough Mozart for the baby in the womb, and it's a whole lot earlier for Mom Guilt now, LOL.

After Emily Watts spoke we heard from Dean Hughes. He was also totally hilarious but again, I got snuggled in and dozed off for a little bit of his talk, but I really did hear most of it. He talked alot about being patient and not letting the little things get you down, just let that stuff slide. That is something I definately need to work on! During one of the breaks my mom bought every single book in the Children of the Promise series. LOL

The final speaker was Sharon Larsen, she spoke of her struggle through infertility and having a rebellious child. She spoke about how adversity makes us stronger, a very important message!

Then the conference ended and we left, we bought books at the makeshift Deseret Book they set up and loaded up the car and left. Jayden had apparently had enough of "being good" and FREAKED OUT and screamed most of the way home. It was a great two hours. LOL But really, she did very good. Well I'm so exhausted I'm nearly crosseyed, so I'm going to bed now. I didn't get a single picture because I accidentally left my camera on at one point and it was dead when I went to use it which thoroughly disappointed me because they did allow flash photography in the auditorium (just no recording). We bought the box lunch - it was very yummy and way better than hunting down food somewhere else, so if anyone who reads this goes, just do the lunch, it's easy and good.

Overall, it was a very Spiritual, rejouvenating, experience and I'm SO GLAD I got the chance to go! If Time Out For Women comes within a few hours of you - make every attempt to go, it's SO totally worth it!