General Conference Weekend

I love General Conference. Not the least reason being that I don't have to prepare a lesson for church or put on a dress or deal with squirmy toddlers by myself in sacrament meeting. However, I also LOVE listening to the prophets speak and feeling the spirit and hearing the choir sing. So we set up our living room like in King Benjamin times with our "tent" facing the prophet and tried to pay as close attention as possible with three little kids.


Between sessions we made sure to get outside and play. We shot off rockets (old film containers filled with water and alka-seltzer), played baseball, and went to the playground. The rocket was funny because we put the tablet in the water, put the lid on and then all backed away quickly. Uh-oh...who was supposed to grab Christian? Luckily the rocket shot in the opposite direction. :)


Baseball was fun because it was the first time Kelly played along and Isabella even tried to do a few things too. It almost felt like a real team, not just me playing 5 positions simultaneously.

On Friday before Conference, I took the kids to Kensington Farm to see the baby animals. I go every year around conference time because that's when the animals are born. We saw 5 lambs that had just been born the day before. So incredibly cute!


Benjamin wanted me to take a picture of him with the one sleeping.


Bella kept trying to pet this one, but it would never get close enough.


We also saw baby pigs (who were much more willing to come close),


chickens, and goats. And then Benjamin discovered something I'd never noticed before - a maple syrup production area right next to the farm! I had overlooked it every other time. We had fun walking through the forest and looking at the sap dripping into the buckets and the various machinery they use.


Of course, Benjamin's big thrills were wielding his gigantic stick ("Make sure you get the whole stick in the picture! Did you get it? The whole thing?")




and jumping around on fallen trees. ("Take a picture of me while I'm jumping! Did you get it?")


That's a boy for ya.

I hope everyone else had an enjoyable conference weekend, felt the spirit, and now has lots of new ideas for how to be better. Benjamin loved that one of the speaker's names was Benjamin. He got excited every time his name appeared on the screen. I loved several of the talks, but I will have to listen to them again without kids to understand them better. The kids tried really hard to be quiet and did way, way better than I ever remember doing at an even older age, but still, it was hard to focus. I love that I can view them again on the church's website already and don't have to wait a month for the Ensign (the church's monthly magazine which always publishes the talks from conference)! That's going to be my scripture study for the next week.

Last, but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear sweet husband tomorrow!!! He'll never be as old as I am, but he's getting up there! :) Hope you have a great one...while at work all day! ;) So not fair. Everyone should get their birthday off automatically. I guess, another thing to add to my list for when I run the world.