Time out

Time out used to be a somewhat negative event in our house. When Jay or Rose got too frantic or upset (or violent), we'd send them to the bathroom to have a few quiet minutes of time out. The other day I realized that we haven't used time out in months. It stopped being necessary and lost its efficacy, so it slowly faded from our disciplining repertoire until I didn't even notice it had gone. 

In my experience, time out usually involves dealing with a slightly crazed child. Or a slightly crazed mother--every now and then at the end of a long day I will ask/demand Jeff to give me a time out wherein I go to my room for 30-60 minutes to read, decompress, and gather my scattered wits while he handles the kids. This weekend I experienced a different, more structured type of time out: Time Out for Women. 

I have known plenty of people who have attended Time Out for Women at one time or another, but I've never really been interested in going myself. It seems kind of weird to me to pay money to go listen to what amounts to 7 or 8 hours of church talks, especially when we have 10 hours of General Conference twice a year and three hours of church every week. I feel like my life has plenty of uplifting material without adding Time Out for Women. When my friend was getting a group together a few weeks ago, however, I decided to try it out. I figured that at the very least it would be fun to have a sleepover at a hotel with my buddies!

Our hotel was called the Davenport Tower and it was decorated with lots of animal things. Our room had a funky leopard print chair and matching pillows, and the lobby had this giant golden hippo. We felt so dutiful taking these group pictures, but we couldn't bring ourselves to post them on social media because of the Time Out for Women leaders' shameless plugs for posting pictures and using a certain hashtag to promote their event's amazingness. I sound so mean--I'm not trying to be mean! 

Now comes the part where I should be diplomatic. Time Out for Women was an interesting blend of cheesy, spiritual, shameless marketing, and sisterhood with a whole lot of SITTING. Although I did get some very good thoughts and feelings out of some talks, my overall impression of the gathering was rather lukewarm. Would I do it again? Eh, probably. Would I be jumping up and down with anticipation? Probably not. The church is true no matter what I think of Deseret Book's Time Out for Women. I think I'd rather plan my OWN version of time out for friends and go do something with a bit more adventure and bit less sitting. There's my opinion of the event itself. Now onto the good stuff:

The best part of the weekend was just what I expected: a girls outing! Sleepover! Girl talk! Hotel! Restaurants! Five of us went together and I have to say that it was just GOOD to be together. As a grownup with a husband and kids, it's easy to feel isolated. It takes forever to build real, meaningful friendships in this stage of life. I LOVED Time Out for Women for the time out of regular life that we had, to be together without any other responsibilities. The friends I went with are the same ones who regularly attend our monthly book club and I have loved getting to know them better and better slowly over the past few years. I love how we can always have a glorious mixture of silly and spiritual, girly and meaningful in our conversations. Dieter F. Uchtdorf said "In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e." That applies to friendship too, and I'm glad to have had a healthy dose of TIME with friends this weekend. 

It rained a lot while we were in Spokane. Our hotel was downtown so we walked everywhere and it felt so urban, fresh, and out of the ordinary for us small town dwellers. We were definitely the first people to ever take a picture like this by this sculpture. hah!

An unexpected perk of leaving my sweet family for  33 hours: how sweet it was to come home. Selfish as it may sound, it's good to feel appreciated and loved. Sometimes the best way to feel that love and appreciation is to spend some time away. The husband gets to experience wrangling the children solo for a prolonged amount of time, the kids realize what it's like when their take-for-granted mother isn't there, and the aforementioned taken-for-granted mother gets a breather with time to MISS her kids. Wins all around! (confession: I found myself missing them all about 5 hours into my time out, haha) When I walked in our door and kissed Jeff at 8:30pm on Saturday night, Jay was still awake. He came out and hugged me tight and said "I missed you" in his tender little boy voice. I soaked it up. I told him that I missed him too, and then, with arms still around my neck, he asked "so how was it in Spokane?" I told him a few things that we did there and we talked for a little while. I love my Jay so much. He kept hugging and kissing me and saying that he missed me while I was gone. Love that soft freckled face.

Rose was happy to have me home, but she and Amber weren't nearly as concerned about me leaving for 33 hours as Jay was. They love their Daddy. I couldn't resist taking a sneaky church picture of the girls piled on their dad during the opening song in sacrament meeting today.