Fun Work Weekend!

Since Saren is plunging forward with Power of Moms at www.powerofmoms.com with so many terrific ideas and Shawni www.71toes.blogspot.com and Saydi’s www.bostonshumways.blogspot.com blogs are also geared to helping moms and since Valuesparenting needs ideas and a new way to contact moms, we decided to have a 48 hour work weekend to collaborate our ideas for helping moms and families.  Charity of course, was the frosting on the cake as we got lots of imput on India www.ouradventuresinIndia.blogspot.com  as well as what is needed to prevent teenagers from being sent to rehab centers like the one she works at.  The combination was magical and we had so much fun brainstorming like an ant colony all over the ant hill of motherhood! 

We all flew into Phoenix on Saturday.  Just before closing we got to the Phoenix Art Museum where we found an art exhibit photographs of four sisters who took a pictures every year for about forty years…always standing in the same order and for some reason, never smiling.

We decided we should do the same so here is picture #1…except that they just can’t help smiling! Note the “other sisters” in the background.

Sunday morning was pretty crazy with NINE women all trying to get ready for an 8 a.m. church at once!  Poor Dave and Max were literally squeezed out!

Dave gave one heck of a great SS lesson which gave us fodder for podcasts which we had decided to make thanks to Saren’s urgings! 

We had so much fun brainstorming about how to collaborate on our efforts to help moms be better and become better ourselves while we were at it! 

We recorded five podcasts, which were really fun to do. We can’t wait to do more of them this summer and include all the Eyrealm moms who also have such great ideas.  Charity hung in there on the podcasts adding to one that we made about ideas to teach kids empathy, even though we all got the giggles and it was hard to keep starting over!  It will be so fun to post them on Valuesparenting which desperately needs a makeover and will be a nice addition to POM and anybody who wants to post them on blogs.

So many ideas surfaced about new ways we can reach mothers through websites and blogs as well as some new thoughts for the I Love Lucy project. 

We made it through the 48 hours with just the right mix of agreements, disagreements and hardly a meltdown. How fun it was to be together to combine our brainpower.  

We do have to say that we had some pretty spectacular food while were together.  It is absolutely hysterical to hear these girls order food at a fun restaurant.  The combination of different food tastes (luckily we are all crazy about Thai food) and gourmet cooks made it such great entertainment for me!

On the way to dinner we stopped at the famous Arizona Biltmore Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  This stained glass window was actually created by him in the 1930’s.

 

In addition to everybody’s stimulating thoughts, many thanks to Shawni for loads of navigation on the Iphone, lots of gas and picking out some great places to eat as well as providing us with some great “kid moments” with her adorable kids!  Thanks to Saren for keeping us inspired and focused, thanks to Charity for putting up with hours and hours of mom-talk and thanks to Saydi for going home on the red-eye with a stop-over in the middle of the night so she could spend a little more time with us and still be there in the morning for her kids!

We even got to see Josh!  He has posted some of his pictures from Ethiopia in an album on his website if you want to take a look!  He’ll be posting something on his blog soon too! 

Of course no Eyre gathering would be complete without some jumping pictures!   Here is my favorite one of the girls:

 

And my most unfavorite one of me!  Looks like I think opening my mouth might make me jump higher.  We laughed until we cried!  It’s my knee you know…definitely NOT my age! 

so we’re all back to our goodly trenches and in my case MORE snow!