The second half of 2013 has been a great year for the Silver Pines Young Women. It is hard to believe that the year has gone by so quickly. It seems like we were just finishing Girls Camp, and now we have just wrapped up our end of year Christmas party/Farewell to the Rudolph Family. We were so sad to see the Rudolphs go. With that, we lost Sister Charisse Rudolph, our second counselor and our wonderful Haydin (Laurel President) and Randi (Mia Maid President)Rudolph. We will miss them, so much! They brought such a fun and loving spirit to our group!
After Girls Camp, we welcomed a couple of new Beehives, Grace Aitken and Piper Trent. We like to kidnap the incoming Beehives by going to their house and whisking them away for an ice-cream or fro-yo celebration! We also like to decorate their door with love (balloons, heart-shaped sticky notes). We had a lot of fun! The Beehive class is growing all the time. They are definitely the largest class. Mary Buhanan has been serving as President, and has been doing an excellent job. She led the girls in planning a wonderful activity at Ainsley Court retirement home. One of our mutual activities leading up to the event was planning the night, then another night--we spent making the crafts that we took to Ainsley Court. The girls wanted to play Bingo with the residents, so they made bingo cards and prizes to go along with the game! This was a great experience for all of the Young Women. We all wore our pink Silver Pines t-shirts.
The Young Women enjoyed a fun activity with the Young Men at a local park playing frisbee golf. The Young Men did a great job planning the activity, and they even brought us Gatorade for afterwards. Everyone had a lot of fun! Summer was coming to an end, and that is always sad to see. However, we had plenty of fun fall activities on the calendar. One of the activities was planned and carried out by our very own Mia Maid, Aiyana Gressens. She planned a wonderful evening of crafts. The Young Women made homemade lava lamps and homemade goo! It was so much fun! Aiyana did an amazing job planning and carrying out the entire activity. She is an amazing example to us all, and her smile is infectious!
Sister Aitken, our Personal Progress leader has been very helpful in planning our monthly Personal Progress nights. Not only does she inspire us to check off our value experiences, she also provides us with very fun incentives--candy and treats! We are all trying to work hard on our Personal Progress, as Young Women in Excellence is just around the corner in November. Personal Progress nights are combined with our Class Presidency meetings. Sister Clowney gave a lesson on the importance of being responsible and following through with an agenda. We are trying a new system to help us with our class presidency agendas. This system will be on our Young Women bulletin board, and we really hope that it helps to follow through with our agendas. So far so good!
September also brought the kick-off of Moroni’s Quest. This is going to be a super youth conference. We learned that we will be making and wearing costumes. We will be learning music, performing in a re-enactment, and putting together ward videos. It sounds really exciting! Sister Melissa Fuller is our leader for Moroni’s Quest, and we are planning to start serious preparations at the beginning of 2014.
Our main event for October was our Trunk or Treat Activity. The youth were in charge, and it turned out to be a great success. The Young Men were in charge of helping set up, parking, and the hotdogs. They did an excellent job! The Young Women all signed up to have a themed car. We had “Go fish,” “Donut on a String,” and all kinds of different themed cars. We also provided a prize for the best car! The Young Women, also, provided a cake walk, which was really fun for the kids. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and we hope to get to do it again next year! It’s so much fun to see the kids having such a great time...and the adults, too!
We were very sad to see many of our leaders leave us. In addition to Sister Rudolph, we lost Sisters Ruth Posada, Meleah Ekstrand, and Jesse Nelson. We will miss them, very much! In the midst of everyone leaving, we began preparations for Young Women in Excellence. Sister Annie Aitken, our Personal Progress leader chose a great theme--reminiscent of our Candyland Camp. The theme was “Seek the Sweet.” The Young Women planned everything out, and decided to give talks on the sweetness of faith (or divine nature, individual worth, or their perspective value). The Cultural Hall was decorated head to toe with candy decor. The Young Women gave fantastic talks that truly brought the Spirit into the meeting, and several of the young women displayed the sweetness of their musical talents (Grace Aitken-piano, Katie Solgere-Ukelele, Mary Buhanan-flute, and Eve Trent-guitar). The Bishop shared wonderful closing remarks that left us all with a renewed energy for the importance of Personal Progress. Also, it was wonderful to have one of our newest members, Leah Coyle, and her mother in attendance. If the talks weren’t sweet enough, the refreshments certainly were. There was everything from cookies and cakes to candy and sweet pink lemonade. The girls even wore a candy themed outfit to make it an even sweeter night!
Our next project was making a care package for one of our sister missionaries, Erin Jensen. She is going to be serving in Russia. We decided to make a greeny package, so all the Young Women brought green things to put in the package. It was so much fun! We all wrote letters to include in the package, as well. It seems like she was just with us in Young Women, and now she has already gone to a year of college, and now off to her mission!
Before wrapping up the end of the year, the Laurels planned a really fun Target scavenger hunt with the Young Men. Delynn Buhanana, Haydin Rudolph, and Sierra Noyce worked hard to plan an awesome night of fun! Everything went off without a hitch, and we ended the night with icecream that we bought at Target. It was a great bonding night, and a great night to exercise manners in public.
Finally, we had our annual Christmas party. We decided to have it at the Aitkens. The Young Women planned everything that they wanted to do from hot chocolate bar to hot tubbing to white elephant gifts. The only bad things was that the night was too short. We could have stayed there all night, especially since we were all dressed in our pajamas! I forgot to mention that it was a pajama party! This was a great way to end the year, but it was certainly sad to say goodbye to the Rudolphs.
We’re looking forward to many great things in 2014. Now that we have learned (or done our best to learn) how we can stand in holy places, we look forward to coming unto Christ. Our new theme for the year is “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness” (Moroni 10:32). We have already had a couple of fun introductions to the theme. Our Christmas gift was a copy of the 2014 theme, framed. As well, Sister Clowney gave us hats that said, “Put a LID on ungodliness.”
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