General Conference Weekend

We had a fun General Conference weekend.  It was nice not to have competing interests to deal with, since folks around here understand that people want to watch General Conference this weekend instead of doing other things - Cat's soccer league had no games this weekend, for example.

I didn't take any pictures of us watching General Conference, although that was definitely the most important thing we did all weekend.  Sunday we even had my cousin and his fiance come watch conference with us, which was fun.

We made our traditional crepes for breakfast on Saturday - delicious with Nutella and strawberries.  Ben cut the grass for the first time of the season before the morning session, then between sessions he and the kids, plus a few neighborhood helpers, washed the car.  Thanks, guys!

That night when Ben left for the Priesthood session I had the kids help me plant wheat grass seeds to use as Easter decorations.  They didn't mind having to play in the dirt at ALL.

Sunday morning we made our traditional donuts, and they were dee-li-shus.  When I had one that was still warm and melt-y and covered with sweet glaze, it was almost Krispy Kreme-like.  You probably think I'm crazy, but... yeah.  I thought they were just wonderful.  We had a few different coating options set up, and the kids enjoyed helping with everything.  Their favorite was the glaze with sprinkles.

While dinner was baking, I helped the kids dye a few Easter eggs.  They liked writing on them with a white crayon before dyeing them.  And no, I had not planned on making gray dye.  I was just using water + vinegar + food coloring, but the only food coloring I had was the gel kind, so it was a little tricky figuring out what the color would look like.  I was going for purple, but oh well!

Since Sunday was April Fool's Day, we made a "tricky" dinner - meat & potato "cupcakes."  Cat and Eliza helped pipe the colored mashed potatoes onto the individual meat loaves.  When I've done this in the past, the kids have been really upset when they found out that they weren't actually getting cupcakes for dinner.  So now I employ their help so that they're in on the joke, and it's just a silly way to eat dinner on April Fool's.

(Yes, Jack looks like a war veteran in this picture.  Just before we were making dinner Cat and Jack were both pulling on something in the living room.  When Cat let go of it, Jack fell backwards and hit the back of his head on the hearth.  He had a nice little cut on the back of his head and of course we couldn't get a bandage to stick without shaving his hair, so we put some gauze on it and wrapped this thing around it to keep it in place.  Nice, huh?  It's all healed up now.)

Even though she helped in the preparation,

Eliza was still a little surprised...

and Jack was still hesitant...

but Ben was downright confused.

I DID manage to surprise them with my April Fool's dessert: Jell-O gelled in cups with straws.

It was a great weekend, with General Conference and fun, simple family activities.