Welcome

Your place at the retreat is assured. We are so excited about including you in our community of women who are commited to enhancing their lives and their relationships.

The retreat will begin with dinner Thursday evening, January 29, at 6:30. Our lodging is in Alumni House West at Camp Casey. See the link below for directions.

You are welcome to move into the Alumni House as early as 3:30 to settle into your sleeping area. If you arrive earlier, feel free to explore the grounds or the adjacent park and lighthouse.

Please let us know if you will be arriving later than 7:00 pm by calling 206-527-5492.

We will be ending at 10:00 on Sunday. You may wish to lunch with others in nearby Coupeville, home of great seafood and our local blue mussels.

We are excited about this retreat for many reasons, partly because the focus of the retreat will be learning simple skills that make a surprising difference in the quality of your relationships and in how you feel about yourself.

Last year's group liked these practices so much, they continued to meet every other month for the rest of the year, and you will be eligible to join the group after attending the retreat.

The retreat will be a sort of training, one that gives you the skills to deal with your own inner self in a way that releases you for better choices and easier recovery. We won't be focusing on any one addiction, but the skills we'll be working with are especially powerful for complex addictions, such as food addiction or self-sabotage.

Here are three really important things to do:

• Bring your own bedding, pillow, and towels.
  The cost of the retreat is low because of the camp setting. The beds are dormitory style, mostly single beds, some bunk beds, a few full. (Let us know right away if you have special needs and require a particular type bed. We will put those with breathing machines in one room.) A sleeping bag will cover all possibilities or you can rent a linen set from the conference center for $8.75.
  
  If you plan to rent a linen set, contact Camp Casey directly and make arrangements with them for payment and pick-up, particularly if you will be arriving after their office closes at 5 PM.
• To be on time for the retreat, be on the 5:30 ferry.
  In winter, the Friday ferry wait can be about an hour. Or get to the ferry line by 3:00 for a worry-free trip, time to settle in, make your bed, and get familiar with the grounds.
• Fill out the form below so we can meet your needs (and place your bed in your appropriate subgroup).

Time Payments: If you have created a payment plan, remember that all payments must be received within the discounted period to receive the discount. Any payments received after a fee upgrade boundary raise your fee to the new rate.

Refund Policy: Cancel by email by January 1 to get a refund minus $100. Cancel by January 15 to get a 50% refund. As all fees are committed by January 15, no refunds past January 15, 2009.

Accessibility: We regreat that although the dwelling we rent is glorious--an old Victorian-style officer's quarters--it is not accessible. 5 steps lead into the house, and both bathrooms are on the 2nd floor. However, we can make arrangements for ground floor use of a bathroom in another building.

Snoring
Let's face it. Some of us snore. We are going to designate one room as the snoring room. To help us choose which room will be the snoring room, please fill out the form below. (It might be a good idea to bring ear plugs, just in case someone else's snoring would bother you.)

Christine will customize your meals and snacks if you are on a particular food plan. We will be following the guidelines that build satiety (body chemicals that automatically reduce appetite). No sugar or wheat will be a part of any meal or snack. Certain alternative flours may be used. If you are abstinent from all flour or if you would like to consult with Christine about her menu plan, feel free to email her in care of us (avonlea@whidbey.net. If these parameters do not fit your food plan, please send us your food plan, and Christine will follow it. And if you weigh and measure your food, Christine will do that for you too if you like.

If you are not a food addict and do not have an appetite disorder, you have two options. You can try our food plan for the weekend and see how you feel on it, or you can bring other foods and leave them in your car. We request that you bring no sugar, soft drinks, snacks, or wheat items into our cabin, but you are welcome to take a walk or go to your car and have your own snacks. However, we also request that you not eat such foods in front of other retreatants unless they, also, are not seeking recovery from food addiction or appetite disorder.

And finally, if you are a SOAR member, this will be a great weekend to let someone else do your food prep for you.

If you aren't a SOAR member, you'll get to meet other members and to learn some of the skills we use in SOAR.

Bring List

• Bedding/sleeping bag
• Pillow
• Towels/washcloth
• Casual clothes
• Flashlight
• Raingear
• Walking shoes
• Journal or notebook or both
• Pen
• Meds
• Nightwear
• Whatever you usually take on overnight trips
• Ear plugs
• Toiletries
• Bottled water--in case you don't like the local water.
• Optional: musical instruments, drums, nose flutes, rattles

Camp Casey Rules

Please park cars off to the sides of the road, leaving room for emergency vehicles and not parking on grass.

Not Allowed: Pets, alcohol or drugs, fireworks, candles.

No smoking inside buildings.

Emergency messages from home: 360-678-5050. Answering service needs group name, which is Avonlea.

Want to find this page again? Press the 3 dim dots in the payment box at the bottom of the Retreat with Anne Katherine Page.

January 29-Feb. 1, 2009

Starting at 6:30 pm

Alumni House West, Camp Casey

on Whidbey Island, at Coupeville, WA

Directions

Would you like to make a donation to the Scholarship Fund? Avonlea donations are tax deductible.

Be sure to fill out the form at the bottom of this page.