Cousins and Trucks

The weekend after General Conference, our household doubled!  Ben's brother Michael and his family stayed with us for several weeks while they were looking for a house to move into in the Salt Lake area.  Which means... more family (COUSINS!) in Utah - hooray!

Among the other preparations we made before they arrived, we had fun making and eating Halloween sugar cookies - something I really wanted to do before we began limiting the gluten-based items we baked because Michael's family eats GF.  It felt like an extra special treat to randomly cut and frost sugar cookies on a weekday afternoon and evening, too.

They arrived on a Friday night and the kids were so excited to have cousins here!  They had some play time before getting settled that night, then got right back to it on Saturday.  We decided to go on a little outing, to Orem City's "Touch a Truck" event, where kids (and adults) could get up close and personal with tons of different trucks, from waste management to first resonders to construction, and more.  The kids enjoyed seeing the trucks but mostly it was just fun to hang out together!

General Conference

Well, after taking a hiatus for several weeks, I'm going to try to get back on the blog train here.  I left off with General Conference, so here are a few snapshots and memories from that weekend.

I arrived at the Conference Center in SLC as Ben and the kids were getting ready to go
help clean our church Saturday morning...

then they were rewarded with enormous doughnuts.

When I got home after the morning session, Cat had a non-member friend over, and he
stayed for the afternoon session.

The girls really wanted to go to the church to watch the Women's Session that evening,
so we put on some church clothes and headed to the church.  I'm so glad we did - what an
amazing meeting!  I was overwhelmed that Pres. Nelson announced the new temples during
that session!  Pretty cool to have one coming to our neck of the woods, too.

We love the new YW Theme too.

I'm pretty sure when I arrived for an earlier call time at the Conference Center on Sunday
morning, everyone at the house was still asleep.  (Or they should have been!)

Evidence that the kids had fun hanging out on our neighbor's
trampoline between sessions.  Hooray for good weather!

I'm so thankful for the council we receive during General Conference.  Ben and I have tried to make it a priority for us to watch each session as a family, and I love seeing the kids pay more attention and learn more as they grow older and more mature.  We're so blessed to be members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.