WV: WILD and Wonderful*

Yep, it's that time again...off to yet another conference! Last weekend I drove down to Morgantown, WV for their YSA conference. It was a pretty good weekend, I'm still so tired!

Friday afternoon I picked up Kaitlyn, she also goes to Edinboro. She's a youngin' (18!) but a very nice girl. I have to laugh because in just a few years I went from being the young one in the singles ward (making everyone else feel old) to being the old one! How did that happen? I don't know.

Our drive was supposed to be 3 hrs 20 min but took longer- I made a "scenic tour" whoops, then we got stuck in a traffic jam due to an an accident. But we got there ok. I got there too late to sign up for the talent show and I wasn't in the best mood to do a stand up routine anyhow. I did write a script, I think I'll post that later. The talent show was fun- there were good acts and some pretty awful ones!

These guys were funny, they put Oreos on their foreheads and tried to get them in their mouths without using their hands. They made the funniest faces! The girl did it, girls love chocolate!

This girl could write her name very legibly (and in cursive!) with each foot and with each hand:



On Saturday we started off the day with a lecture from a man who has done a lot of Book of Mormon/archaeological research and he thinks it all took place in North America. He had a lot of really interesting info and images and I have to say it made more sense then other presentations that I've seen. The church has no official standpoint and I was pleased that the guy fully admitted that it was all a best guess. I don't like it when people think they know more than the prophet.


From there we had classes, the titles on the sign up sheets were pretty cryptic. "Please Don't Eat the Flowers" turned out to be a class about etiquette. We did role plays of what to do as well as what not to do and they were pretty funny. "Skiing With the Seventy" turned out to be a class with Elder Lansing of the Seventy and his wife. They talked about how they met while skiing and that it's something that they like to do together and with their family. They talked about how you should have common interests with your spouse. He also related skiing to life (It's difficult but worth it). It was a good class, they're nice people. "The Electric Fence" turned out to be a team-building exercise, and if you know me, I hate team-building exercises! Do they ever really work? No, they just make you hate life. So I skipped out of that one as soon as I found out what we had to do:





Mormon Mosh Pit? No, you had the group inside the roped off area (the rope came up to my shoulder and I'm not short) and you had to get them over without touching the "electric fence". Lame, no? Well I really didn't want to climb all over people and I really didn't want them touching me, so I skipped away. Not to mention I was like the biggest person there and I don't bend too well these days, it would've been embarrassing.




"My" group was the only one to get their last person out...they rearranged themselves so that it was a tiny girl in there as the last one and guys were able to sit on other guy's shoulders to be tall enough to grab her out. Erin, the last girl in, is a dancer...they grabbed her hands and she was able to kick her feet up enough that other people caught them and they got her over. Way to go Erin!


I can just picture it now: "Hey, how did you meet your wife?"




"Well, I grabbed her butt as part of a team building exercise, then I said hi to her." Groan.





After lunch, we got in groups and made cardboard cars for our "Drive-In" movie theatre. We did this a few years ago as a Primary activity, sit was kindof little kiddish but kinda fun. My group wound up slapping together a cattle truck with the guy in the cab part.

(Note the rattail on the left, I swear WV has weirder guys than anywhere else!)

What's inside our truck? Cute girls!

We watched the movie Up, love it. I couldn't help but cry. A LOT!


After dinner, we got ready for the Masquerade Ball!

Girls just wanna have fun (and dress up!):

Regan, Briana, me and Tracy

Erin, me, Kelley and Melissa

I didn't post any pics of the guys, but most of them dressed up, too. Some even had tuxes.

I made my mask (of course!):

I also hot-glued a pinback onto another butterfly for my shirt. I had another one that I wound up loaning to another girl who had forgotten her dress and mask. I wore a dressy T with a big black satin ballgown skirt that I have. Wore heels too. It was fun to be girly.

You could make a mask there, but I was afraid that they would have cheesy stuff- and I was pretty on the money with that. I'm an art student, for crying out loud, and I couldn't bear to have a substandard mask. I wanted to be unique. Yes, I have my vanities!

The dance was fun, I boogied all night. I need to do that all the time, it's great exercise!

We stayed with a nice family that had a creaky house. We got TOTALLY lost trying to find it, that's WV for ya. I slept in the basement, I swear everyone's basement is the same! Everyone's basement is crazy!

Creepy basement+plastic skull=silly pics

We couldn't resist.

I don't have any pics of Sunday- what do you take pics of, church? We had to find our way from the house to the institute building WVU, which wouldn't have been so bad except that our directions were WRONG. SO wrong! They took us close but not quite. And you couldn't see the building from where we were. They should have had a map for us. One of our (physically fit) guy friends flagged us down and RAN all over to show us the right way. He's totally my hero.

Elder and Sister Lansing spoke to us that morning, it was really good. She talked about not having excess baggage, he told us five things to do:

1) Know who you are as a child of God

2) Know what to pray for

3) Give service

4)Don't be discouraged

5)Have a proper perspective

He also said that it's more about what we become in our experiences than what we have. So true. After that was testimony meeting, which was nice. And funny at times. Like when the girl with the noisy beaded gypsy skirt got a loud phone call and ran out of the room jingling all over the place. Or the really loud/unconformist girl stating that she's putting in missionary papers. I think she'll be good but I was like "You realize there's some conformity here, right?"

Afterwards we packed lunches, said our goodbyes and headed for home. Kaitlyn went home in another car from our stake (so I didn't have to drive all the way up to Edinboro) which meant I had to navigate home by myself! It turned out to be a good thing that we had gotten lost Friday night trying to find our housing- I couldn't go back the way I came (dang one ways!) and found myself in the same area and was able to find the freeway from there. Heavenly Father knows what he's doing- we didn't know that we'd have to be at the college when we got lost there.

Once I got home I went to bed and slept and slept- I was quite sleep deprived. I didn't even get up for dinner! I didn't want to go anywhere today but I was a good girl and went to school.


*WV is certainly wild- try navigating it! You try finding a road that you can't see UNTIL you turn on it! Let's just say I found myself turning around a lot this weekend!