Come listen to a prophet's voice

 Snippets of Fall General Conference 2013--we did our CTR bucks and activity packets and Conference store again.  The kids get so excited for it.  Just when I think I need to change things up a bit, they insist on the same tradition.  I love that they get so excited about listening to our Prophet and apostles.  We really get our buckets filled.

Our tent broke last year (or maybe it was this spring?), so this was our makeshift tent for this session.

When we did play dough sculpting for one of the talks (I can't remember which), Irelynd is always so creative.  She sculpted a ghost and a present, representing the gift of the Holy Ghost.

 This was some of the items for this Conference Store.  Those are nunchucks from the dollar store.  I had Brighton with me, and he insisted on me buying those for him and Keaton to earn.  Luckily, they didn't break too much or cause too many bruises with them...

 Surprisingly, Brighton allowed us to do his hair this year for the crazy hair bag.  He's usually insistent on not doing girl stuff.

We look forward to Conference every 6 months, and are so sad to see it end.

General Conference 2013

 For our Conference store this year, we upgraded the items to things the kids needed anyway.  Nearly everyone got new clothes, Keaton got new underwear, and Savannah got a new zebra pattern purse.

 Waverly insisted I take pictures of her in her new outfit.  Love the boots with it!  This pose was all her.

General Conference weekend 2012

 Something wonderful and amazing has happened at our house.  It was the initial goal of all the preparation and effort we put in to General Conference weekend, but I expected a LONG term investment payout, not to be seen for years.  My kids LOVE, no ADORE General Conference.  Since we started doing our Conference bags, store, breakfast, etc., they have enjoyed it, but this year I started fielding questions a month beforehand about when the big weekend was coming.  You'd think it was coming Christmas, with the excitement that was building for this 2 day event!  And most of it came from the little ones.  Brighton, especially.  Even Savannah told me her friends moaned about having to listen to one talk, and she said she "got" to listen to the whole thing.  It was a MAJOR mama paycheck to hear my children reminisce and tell me about their favorite parts of General Conference.  Brighton told me his favorite speaker is President Uchtdorf, and he listened intently for any reference to planes.  He also told me he knew listening to the Prophet was the right thing to do.  Just when I think my children are little hellions, I am reminded by just how special and strong and amazing this generation of kids really are.  At Brighton's age, I think I could tell you who the Prophet was, but not any GA's.  Sometimes they astound me.  I will forever be grateful to all the creative women who shared their ideas with me to make this event something to look forward to and enjoy together as a family.

 We especially enjoyed the play doh bag that was a part of Pres. Uchtdorf's talk.  It was fun to see what everyone came up with to represent a part of his talk.  The little ones mainly played with theirs,

 but Irelynd really put some thought into hers.  I wish I could remember exactly how she put it, but this was a representation of the not-so-good ways we spend our time.  See the frowny face below?  That's how we feel when we don't do good things.

 Savannah's was some kind of a clock, too.

 Aunt Michelle sent us a Halloween box with candy necklace kits in it.  Perfect for a Conference bag!

General Conference weekend

 We enjoyed our General Conference traditions and weekend again this year.  Due to my lack of interest in blogging lately, I've been lazy about picture taking as well.  I only got 3 photos this year of our activities.  Above was our crazy hair bag.  This time all the girls got crazy hair.  We would've done Scott's too, had he had any...

 And we put up our tent too.  I'm afraid due to our lack in camping excursions, when our children grow up, when someone says "tent", this is the image that will first pop into their heads.

We had a wonderful weekend full of fun family time and amazing counsel and spiritual boosts from our beloved Prophet and leaders.  Our kids have come to LOVE General Conference, and talk about it more than Christmas or Easter.  Brighton was already asking when the next "St Conference" was going to be.  When the twins see a picture of President Monson, they say St. Conference.  (I'm thinking they're getting St. Patrick's and General Conference mixed up!)  I'm glad to see that our efforts are paying off in all the work leading up to the event.  I'm hoping they'll have such fond memories of our fun times together that they'll choose to watch with us instead of going off with friends, when the opportunity presents itself.

General Conference 2011

 We LOVE conference in our house.  Ok, well at least Savannah and I do.  Hopefully after this year, I converted a few more.  We had a RS meeting to share ideas of keeping kids occupied during the sessions, and I got some GREAT ideas, in addition to what I picked up on Pinterest.  Love Pinterest.  But that's another story.  I had a great breakfast planned for Saturday morning, to kick off the 2-day event.  Alas, all we got to eat of it was these fruit shish-ka-bobs.  Funny story:  I found a copy-cat Cinnabon recipe (on Pinterest, of course!), and was so excited to try it.  Made them, put them in the oven, and then BAM!  Scott checked on them in the oven, and all I remember seeing is dough hanging everywhere.  It was such a cinnamon roll carnage that I couldn't process what had happened.  The glass casserole dish it was in exploded, sending glass all through both pans of rolls I had made.  Luckily, we had a very small pan left still to cook, so we were able to all get a small taste of them, and they were GOOD!  Savannah was almost devastated (she loves Conference Cinnamon rolls), but I told her it'd be a conference we'd never forget, and that was worth the loss of the cinnamon rolls.  We just enjoyed them all the more the next morning.

I made conference packets for everyone to do and color.  These were a flop though, but I loved the bright colors.

 We made our usual Conference Tent, and talked about King Benjamin.  Brighton put it together for us this year, a fact he was VERY proud of.  I had to fix it when he wasn't looking.  Shhhhh...

The favorite thing was our conference store, new this year.  The kids were told they could earn Conference Bucks during conference by listening quietly, sitting through a session, filling our their packets, etc.  Then during the break between sessions, we opened our "store" and they could use their dollars to puchase stuff.  We had dollar toys and food.  The pop went fast, as well as the toys.  I had 3 levels of items: 4, 2, and 1 tickets.

Can you tell which item Savannah went for first?!

 Another new idea this year were conference bags.  I put a picture of each of the 15 apostles/First Presidency on a bag, and put an activity or a treat in the bag.  When that GA spoke, we did/ate that activity/treat.  One of the ones that worked well was water colors.  I had everybody paint a picture with watercolor paints of something the speaker talked about in their talk.  I was pleasantly surprised at what everyone came up with.  We painted Pres. Uchdorf's talk, and we had to guess what everybody's picture was after the talk was over.  Irelynd painted the earth, and Heavenly Father in the lower right corner, sending his love to Earth.  The way she put it was precious.  Brighton painted...ok, I'm not sure.  I painted an airplane, of course, and Brighton wanted to keep my picture.  

Keaton and Waverly were happy with their store choices, too.  These mermaids lasted all day, and half the next.  That's a long life for a dollar store toy!

We also put stickers on a map for each new temple that was announced.  We were shocked about the new Provo temple.  That will be so awesome!  Everyone wanted to put the sticker on for it.

I got a new hairdo too!

After the first session, Scott built this bigger, more permanent tent that we can reuse every Conference.  Off PInterest, too, I might add.  Yes, he's addicted too.  It was a fun weekend!

New General Conference Traditions

Thanks to the article in the Ensign about making General Conference more meaningful to children, and a mini-enrichment lesson on Friday, we decided to start some new traditions in our family around General Conference. We wanted to have our children associate Conference with fun family memories so they would be more likely to watch it as they grow up, and to get to know these wonderful men that lead the Church. I'm becoming aware that I am best with food traditions, and have to put more effort into thinking of non-food-related traditions. Hopefully, we struck a balance with both. We started out with a special breakfast on Saturday morning: Conference Cinnamon rolls (aka Dang Good Cinnamon Rolls. Thank you Melanie Shockley! They are the BEST cinnamon rolls this bread-incompetent mother has ever made), omelets, and fresh fruit. The girls always play Conference Bingo during at least one talk, but they played during all four sessions of conference. We gave them a packet of questions, games, and coloring pages as well, and promised them ice cream for completing it, at least to the best of their ability. During the lunch period between the two Saturday sessions, we built a tent in our family room, which we left up until Sunday night. In Primary, they told the children about King Benjamin and how the people sat in their tents to listen to him, and challenged the kids to make tents in their homes to listen to conference. The girls loved that, and furnished it with their sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows. Even Brighton made us find him a sleeping bag. (It was an old pink one of Savannah's.)

On Sunday we had another special breakfast: Egg and Sausage casserole and orange julius. Yummy! By this session the girls, mainly Irelynd, were getting bored with conference, so I pulled out the box of hair stuff and they gave me a hairdo. Wow! That was some awesom hairdo girls! I lost a chunk of hair or two in the dis-barretting afterwards, but it kept them entertained and mostly quiet for a good 45 minutes. Even Brighton got in on the action. During the last session we played Conference candy key words. I filled a bowl with random treats--mini marshmallows, craisins, chocolate chips, popcorn, and cheerioes--and they got a treat every time the speaker said the corresponding key word for that treat. They loved the talks on temples, as the chocolate chips were assigned to that key word. "Say temple 5 times..."

Ooh la la! We are taking appointments now...

I also had everybody write down 3-5 questions about conference which we will compile into a quiz game to be played at our next FHE. I was amazed at how much they picked up, and seemed to absorb from listening so intently, even just for the sake of calling out Bingo! Irelynd, who is our lost-in-a-perpetual-daydream kind of kid was putting down markers on words Savannah didn't pick up. Hopefully, they learned something, and hopefully we made some good memories this weekend, and the girls will look forward to next Conference, even for just the great cinnamon rolls!