General Conference

Members of my church, The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints(or he Mormon church as we are some times called), gather twice a year for what we call general conference.  It is broadcast from SLC Utah in the conference center to the WORLD, and it is one of my favorite times of the year!  We get to hear from apostles and prophets, who express love and encouragement to every person on the earth who chooses to listen.  We learn from these inspired men and women how to love others, how to be happy in this life, how to build strong families, and many other things that God would have us know.
I know that God loves each of us, and one of the ways that I know that is because He does not leave us alone on this earth, but he continues to guide and direct us as He did in biblical times with Moses, and other prophets anciently.  I am so grateful to know that God has given us prophets in our day, and continues to love, guide and direct his children.  Everything about conference weekend makes me feel loved, and reminds me who we are.
Dave and I try to make it fun for our kids, and get them involved too.  They love conference weekend!  Landon told me after one of the sessions today that he wishes conference was EVERY weekend.  I was going to pull out one of our card board boxes for the kids to play in this weekend, but I just wasn't feeling it, and wanted to try a few different ideas this time.

We made a conference wall for Landon.  When each Apostle got up to speak, we would help him find who was speaking, take down the white paper and he would color "notes" about what the speaker was saying.  We are going to use those "notes" to review what was said in conference tomorrow for family home evening.

It was actually really sweet to hear him explain what he had learned from a child's perspective.  I did a couple of them for him if he was too busy playing, although it might be hard to tell a difference between my drawings and his.:)  The wall ended up looking like this:

Easton had his own wall too, and he got to look at the wall after each speaker, and try to remember and point to what that speaker was talking about.  He loved it, and it was the perfect activity for a 3 year old's attention span.

We had a picnic lunch at the beginning of conference.  The boys LOVED getting to eat in the living room on a blanket!

They made "spy glasses" by cutting pictures of the savior out of the Friend magazine and gluing them to a toilet paper roll.  They used them to watch the talks through.

We printed off some temple and prophet dot to dot pages for the boys to do. 

We swapped toys with a good friend so they would have some new toys to keep them occupied without having to spend any money.  This was one of their favorite things, and it was cute to see even Oaklie even joining in, and watching them all play together.

They colored conference themed pages.

They made the conference center together with blocks.  They did it on the other side of the baby gate to keep Oaklyn from destroying their creations. :)

They played conference bingo.

We had french toast and fruit for a special conference breakfast.

We passed around this bag and made conference ice cream.  Dave found a really good recipe for this, and it actually turned out.  

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from conference:

Now general conference is over, but I can't wait to go back through and listen to, and read the talks.  I've set some goals, and am ready to get to work.  I love being with my family.  It really was a great weekend!