General Conference Weekend

We had such a great General Conference weekend last month.  What made it so great, besides being able to listen to messages from prophets, testifying of Christ and teaching us how to be better people?  Family!  And friends!  And we loved every minute of it.

Friday morning we met up with David and Caroline and their son Elijah (two younger kids stayed with Grandma and Grandpa.  David was one of Ben's mission companions, and they both claim to have taught the other one everything he needed to know to be a good missionary.  But we've enjoyed getting to see D&C here and there over the years.  They were married the same summer we were, and we were able to attend their sealing in Baton Rouge.  (Mom - was that the same trip when we went on the air boat ride and fed marshmallows to the gators??)  Then we spent several days with them when they lived on Staten Island, and a few years later when we each had one young child, they stayed with us in Georgia and we visited Savannah.  Most recently, we stopped at their house in Arizona on our way across the country, but Caroline and the kids were gone to a family reunion in NOLA so we didn't get to see them.

On this trip, David and Caroline were bringing Elijah, who is Cat's age, to General Conference for the first time.  It was so fun to hang out with them for a few hours - breakfast at our house, then hiking the Y, then lunch at the Cougareat.  (Which, according to Carolina, is pronounced Coo-gare-ee-it.)  Unfortunately, Elijah had had an allergic to reaction and wasn't feeling great, but he and Cat still hit it off and had fun together.  And the bonus was that our kids did a lot less complaining about hiking than they normally do, no doubt because they wanted to seem tough for our hiking companions.  (And BTW, thank you to Caroline, who supplied all of these pictures!)

  

Cat and Elijah jumped out of the car at Kiwanis Park
to get a few more wiggles out.

At the Cougareat, Caroline dared Cat and Elijah to stand on their
chairs and do a dance in order to win candy of their choice.  They both did.
Then Cat knocked over the table.  But they earned their treats.

On Friday afternoon, my brother Andy and his wife Amy arrived from northern California to spend the weekend with us.  Within minutes, my grandparents were also here, having driven up from southern Utah for the weekend.  Oma and Opa didn't stay with us, but we had a nice visit before they moved on to my Aunt's house.

I loved my Oma's shoes and socks.  How cute is she???

 We had the rest of the weekend with Andy and Amy, and we loved it.  They were so fun with my kids and tolerated them very well during the conference sessions.  We did our best to keep the kids quiet and occupied, but having new people around did wonders to arouse their talkativity and silliness.

Special breakfast Saturday morning - not just doughnuts,
but doughnuts and beignets.

 

While Andy and Amy were here, they used Cat's room, so Cat was to sleep with Jack.  Jack has a double bed so they could have slept in the bed, but Cat preferred the floor, so Jack slept on the floor too.  And Eliza insisted on joining the fun.  So they all happily slept on the floor of Jack and Luke's room for two nights.

The weekend consisted of pizza and a movie on Friday night; Andy and I going on a run Saturday morning; watching conference and eating lots of food during the day; Ben's Thai food for dinner; Amy and I going out on our own while Ben and Andy watched the Priesthood session at home and the kids watched a movie; staying up talking and hanging out that night; more conference watching and food eating on Sunday (A&A had tickets to attend the morning session in SLC); and a cousin dinner with all of our local extended family on Sunday night before Andy and Amy flew home.

It was really fun to get so much time with Andy and Amy, hanging out.  And I was thrilled that Andy agreed to go running with me in freezing weather (he's not used to that!) because we had over an hour to ourselves, just to talk.  That doesn't happen, and I knew what a treat it was.  I loved that Andy and Amy made the trip and made the time for us.  It definitely made our conference weekend even more special.