Busy Weekend

This past weekend was pretty crazy for us. Besides the normal school work, church work and house work and going to the temple, we had the task of putting on my last big fireside of the semester. I serve as the Spiritual Committee co-chair and sit on the board for the MBASA (MBA Spouse's Association). My co-chair Alanna and I have had a very busy this year trying to put on the events under the spirutual committee, including monthly FHE groups, choir rehearsals, mini-firesides and a few other small things. But by far the biggest events we have done have been the MBA firesides. We invite all students and spouses, we provide babysitting for everyone so that the parents can actually sit and listen to the speaker, and then we provide refreshments following the fireside.

This may seem pretty straight forward, but as soon as you realize that you will have about 100 kids in babysitting (ages 15 months and up), then the simplicity flies out the window. I think this past round of babysitting has been our most successful yet. Our first good move was to get three wards worth of young women and leaders to come in and run the show (we had about 25-30 helpers). We divided up the kids according to age (15-18 mo., 19 mo.-2, 3 and up) which helped a lot. For the younger ones we did toys, coloring and fruit loop/straw necklaces. Then for the older group we divided them up so that half of them did a movie for the first half hour while the other half did an obstacle course/relay, coloring on huge endrolls of paper spread out on the floor and fruit loop/straw necklaces. Then the groups switched for the second half hour. I think we managed to avoid chaos this time and we got very good reports back on the babysitting situation.

So once you get the babysitting figured out, then it becomes more of a normal fireside situation. We got some amazing speakers. Randy Bott is a professor in the religion department at BYU (a very well known one) and we got him and his wife Vickie to come and speak to us. 

It was such an enjoyable night. I wish that they could have gone on for another couple of hours, but one hour was quite enough for the kids in babysitting. 

The spouse choir did an amazing job once again. I will miss being able to conduct that choir!

We had a great turnout; we were pushing 130-140 adults. Then to top the evening off we all  enjoyed BYU mint brownies and ice cream. I'd say the whole thing was a raving success! Whew! I'm so relieved that it went so well and that it is over now! We've got other things to stress about next month, so it's good to have it done.