western family picnic

i have been pretty mia lately and apologize to those of you who undoubtedly check my blog daily and have been slowly dying for lack of substinence (anybody? anybody?). i understand that really, pictures of ones room can only go so far... but alas, there is good reason that i have not been in the blogging sphere as my life as of late has consisted in planning the western family picnic for work.

in a nutshell, it's an annual event centered around diplomatic outreach and we invite ambassadors and their families to attend with the hopes of friendshipping with members of the church. the venue is the marriott ranch in hume, va which is a beautiful location for a picnic.

it's my first time planning it and i'm amazed at how many details went into it. designing the program, picking out gifts, securing a speaker, deciding on who gets invited, coordinating with byu dancers, the list never seemed to end. but luckily somehow it all came together and went beautifully. we had 400 guests and seeing as how my previous largest event i planned was for 75 people, this was a big jump. but i loved it. and learned a lot. and got really worn out. oh, it's so nice to be done.

perhaps bigger than anything was the testimony builder that it was for me. (work building testimony, what?) the last two weeks leading up to the picnic were by all outside standards stressful, but i didn't feel stressful once. (okay, i can be dramatic at times, i felt stressful a few times, but seldom). i REALLY felt so blessed and was reminded that the Lord does carry our burdens if we in turn do the best that we can.

yee-haw...welcome to the marriott ranch.


senator bennett among byu living legends and folk dancers


this is our "prayer" meeting before hand. i like to pretend that as i was speaking bishop marriott was smiling at me. i'm assuming he was smiling at someone else, but i can still pretend.


the gift bag. my theme was red and white checkered with brown accents.


me and taylor