2nd Annual Smith Girls Trip

For the second year now the Smith family girls traveled to Allison's house in Neola for our "Girls Retreat". How fortunate we were again to have everyone 18 and older able to attend the whole weekend. We have such a good time! We had Mom, 6 daughters, 3 daughter-in-laws, and two neices in all! This year was every bit as fun as last year.


For our "craft" this year we were able to make beautiful patterned shirts. We learned how to do them and then let creativity take over. Essentially you take a solid colored, dark shirt and lay designs over the shirts. Anything from plastic grass, to laminated cut outs, to chains and old keys. Then you spray bleach directly on to the shirt and when the shirt turns the color you want in the places you want you spray vinegar on the shirt to stop the bleach. Hang dry and then launder as normal. Some of the shirts turned out great, some were good, and a few were honest to goodness failures. But overall I think we all learned how to do it and most have shirts to prove it works!
Another craft (of which I have no pictures??) was making countdown blocks. They are basically 2 wooden blocks on a platform that can be turned to count down the days until a special event or holiday. They turned out really cute as well. Thanks to Jeremy for cutting all those blocks out for us!

And of course we ate...and ate...and ate! We had wonderful soup when we arrived, and an evening of treats! Breakfast was mini puff pancakes with strawberry syrup and bacon. After a beautiful morning at the Vernal temple we went to Gondolfos for lunch. Dinner that night was Cafe Rio pulled pork salad and dessert nachos! Our final morning we ate crepes with triple berry sauce and more bacon. We all gained a few pounds over those 3 days!
And a lot of the time and a majority of the fun was unplanned, spontaneous, hangin' out and visiting. We sure do love each other and have such fun together. It's a true blessing that we all get along and genuinely love spending time together. I definitely married into a wonderful group of sisters and sister-in-laws of the Smith family. (And my two beautiful nieces that were there too!)




We came back with fond memories, great laughs, and a desire to do it all again next year! Thanks to Alli for hosting us and putting up with a couple late nights and crazy times!