paper muses retreat

As I am starting to get food ideas together for the upcoming retreat in March, I decided maybe I should post pictures from the retreat that was in November. It was awesome and I highly recommend the retreats to ANYONE, scrapbooker or not, they are the BEST!! Lori and Lindsey are awesome and the location is amazing! Check it out at www.papermusesretreats.blogspot.com

I got up early one morning, no huge surprise, and this was the beautiful sunrise. So pretty!! I'm pretty sure this is about 30 min after the last scrappers went to bed :)

Here they are in full force, scrappers everywhere!! There is tons of fun music, lots of snacks and food and so much fun and relaxation to be enjoyed!

Lori, workin away

Here are some of the classes, so stinkin cute!! (this is lori's mini album)

(lindsey's layout)
(lori's layout) There were lots of other cute classes as well.
And lots of fun to be had!! Lori had never done the rockstar hair pic. Obviously her hair is way more rocker than mine!
And then you have to look as scary as you possibly can, I did pretty well I think :)
Love those collagen injections! We are hot!
The ladies
The cooks
The scary retreat invader! Seriously this racoon was HUGE!! That garbage can was not small and this guy was stalking all the doors just waiting to run inside and scratch our eyes out!! My mom and I decided to leave last minute pretty late Friday night and the BEAST wouldn't let us out the door! I had to grab a handful of snacks and throw them another direction just to get his big fat face away from the door. We made a run for the car with all the girls screaming that he was under my car, I was seriously freaked out! Then as we finally pulled away I looked back as one of the girls was kneeling down calling the racoon to her so she could pet it, rabies, yes please!

Anyway, we pulled away at about 11 or 11:30 pm and as we left one of the girls said, "please be careful and call when you get home so we know you made it." I also sent a text to my dad telling him that we were on the road and would be home in a few hours. These two thoughts were my only hope as my car slowly came to a stop in THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE at about 1:20 am. I have never been so sure that I would die as I was at that point. Either death by hypothermia or lonely trucker, either way, I was gonna die. You always hear that you can make emergency calls on a cell phone even if you have no service, NOT ALWAYS TRUE!! We probably called 911 about 100 times on each of our phones. My poor mom and I were shaking all over partly from cold and partly from nerves and can I tell you that we beat the world record for peeing in one night. Seriously, how much can one body produce in one night, ALOT! Thank goodness for my close to the spirit mother who completely out of nowhere grabbed a roll of toilet paper and a flashlight as we got in the car to leave. There was snow on the side of the roads as we drove home and it was FREEZING! My mom and I each had a hoodie on and one pair of gloves to share. I had the right glove and she wore the left. I had brought the pleasure quilt, thank goodness and we shared that and draped my clothes from my bag over us. Poor mom wasn't even wearing socks for the first hour or so. Seriously, I have never been so cold and so scared. Every once in a while a big semi would pass and I would be terrified that they would notice us and stop. There were probably plenty of nice respectable guys that passed, but with my luck, we would get the lonely psychopath that would eat us for a midnight snack. We couldn't sleep, so we just shivered and waited. I kept saying, "the girls have to notice that we never called to say we made it home and then they will call dad who will have noticed my text and wonder why we arent home and of course they will come look for us, right?" But no. Girls didn't notice and Dad didn't see my text. Finally when it got a little lighter around 6am, mom let me climb up the hill next to us to see if we could get reception there, but no. I started reading a church book about women that my neighbor Jade let me borrow which helped our mood. Mom told me about an investigator that she has been talking to on the phones at the MTC for months and the things she planned to say to her that day. Thank goodness for my mom to keep me sane. Around 6:30 or 7am we werent as scared and we opened the hood of the pathfinder and stood outside to try and get someone to stop. Two hunters finally did and we explained our situation and asked them to call 911 when they got some cell service. They checked the mile marker where we were and left. Then another set of hunters stopped and offered to jump us. The car finally started and we took off, about 3 miles. As the car was dying we noticed a policeman coming our way so we started waving our arms to get his attention and then the car died. Thank goodness he noticed us and turned around. He said he got the call from the hunters and the mile marker where we were he can't even use his police radio. Totally a dead zone, lucky us! Anyway, he drove us back into town where my dad met us and I had a new alternator put into the car. Huge thanks to my parents for devoting their entire day to helping me get the car fixed, and I got home safe the next day. Yikes!! Sorry for the novel, but it had to be documented. When Mom and I drive home from this retreat in March, I can guarantee we wont be leaving at 11pm and there will be all kinds of people who will know when we are leaving and when we should be home, and there better be a search party!! :)