Sunday, April 22, 2012

Power of Moms Retreat

The Power of Moms retreat I went to the last couple of days was a like Motherhood Ideas Overload! I came home with so many good ideas that I want to try in my home and a few new systems to set up as well. It was such a great weekend.

Friday we had April Perry present the Mind Organization for Mom way of organizing your mind and all the things on our ever lengthening "to do" lists. She has a whole system to keep things in order and I am anxious to incorporate many of her elements into my own system.

Then Saturday I spoke about Enjoying Motherhood NOW whenever Now is for you. I felt it went fine. I hope those in attendance got something out of it. I wish I could really give people some of the lessons I have learned these last 4 years without them having to go through the pain I have to learn them.

The rest of the day was spent going over how to take care of ourselves and our families and create the kind of families we want to have when we are grandparents. There were so many good ideas shared by the group on how to do this. I am going to take it slow in implementing things to see which ideas I still love as time goes by.

Today we sat down as a family and prayed and read the scriptures and then sang a song about keeping the commandments. Then I asked the girls if we could write our own "family commandment" because God always writes his rules down (ie the 10 on the tablets) so why don't we do the same. I asked them what our rules were.

They said things like "Don't wear shoes upstairs. No food upstairs. No putting kids in washing machines. No jumping off the dressers." I wrote down some of what they said and then pointed out the reason we don't wear shoes on the carpet or take food upstairs is to keep our home clean. So maybe our rule should be to be Clean and that one rule could cover all those and also only having clean language and taking care of our bodies and not watching bad things on TV. They agreed.

To address the washing machine idea and the dressers, I said the reasons for those rules were to keep us safe. We want our home to be a safe place. So our rule became Be Safe! This also includes keeping others safe in our home too.

By the end of our lesson we had come up with 6 rules. We had an art competition to see who could make the best poster for our rules and Sabrina won. So now we have some clear family rules. We call them our "COLARS" because they guide us to the home we want to have.  They are Clean Obey Love Ask Respect and Safe. (Ask refers to things like going to others houses or borrowing things or if you can watch TV or whatever.)

We are going to see this week how we do at keeping our family rules then next week I will introduce consequences for not keeping them.

If you have a chance to go to one of these retreats DO IT. It is worth the time and effort!

4 comments:

chercard said...

It was so nice to meet you at the retreat. I enjoyed hearing you speak so much after feeling like I "know" you from reading your blog. I loved the message of enjoying those children NOW and that we paint the picture of our motherhood journey. I passed it on to a friend of mine at church yesterday who said she is just waiting till her kids are 18 to enjoy life. Our FHE tonight is to come up with our laws.

Tiffany said...

Hooray for being so quick to implement some of what you learned! I absolutely LOVED your "I'm thinking of 3 things game" and can't wait to try it with my kids. It was wonderful to meet you. Thank you again for everything.

Amber Grimshaw said...

Your speech was amazing. I think To myself everyday "I wish I could give the lessons I've learned over this past year to the world without the heartache" " I wish everyone could connect with their spouses the way that I did without the pain" the best and only way to look forward to eternity is to find joy every day. Xoxo

April Perry said...

Stephanie, it was such a PRIVILEGE to get to meet you at the Retreat, and your keynote was amazing. You taught us beautifully and from the heart--and you added so much to the group discussions. It was a pleasure to meet you, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the Retreat! Much love, April