We had a great General Conference weekend. I like the idea of creating some extra things for my kids (and the adults in our house...) to look forward to General Conference weekend, so I've started doing special cooking, mostly in the mornings, since it doesn't start for us until noon. So Saturday morning, we had crepes with Nutella. Jack really liked the "chock-et!" It's great to be able to share life's finer things with my children.
Then I got the kids out the house for a little while so Ben could get some things done. We met up with some friends at Coastfest, an educational event sponsored by the Dept. of Natural Resources, which teaches kids about the wildlife, ecosystems, topography, etc. of our coastline. We only stayed for about an hour, but the kids had a great time getting up close and personal with the animals that were all caught locally. They saw/touched/held: a snake, a baby alligator, sharks, shrimp, horseshoe crabs, sting rays, turtles, and others I can't remember right now. It was cool! Thanks for talking me into going, Allyson and Amber. :-)
Then we got home, ate some lunch, and watched conference. The kids did great! We set up a bunch of pictures from the Gospel Art Picture Kit on the wall, and let Cat cut out small pictures of the apostles and tape them onto the pictures (in page protectors.) Cat also helped with the taping of the pictures onto the wall. This was a good, simple activity to help her pay attention intermittently and recognize the apostles, but she wasn't as into it as I hoped she would be. We also tried to make a tent under the table (when the laptop was somewhere else) and tell the kids that it was the quiet tent for listening to our leaders (like King Benjamin's people listening to his sermon from their tents) but they were only excited about that for a short time.
In the end, this is what helped Cat stay quiet and even pay attention a little more than anything else we did. I got her her own notepad, and she sat down and copied, word for word, what Ben was taking notes on. On this page, she has written "find out what the Lord wants you to do then do it dear to the shepheurd."
She did some drawing, too. I found this page a few days after conference and it took me a few minutes to decipher it. Can you guess?
She wrote "the 1 prestitse" and drew a picture of 3 men. It's the First Presidency. Love it. And I bet Pres. Monson and Pres. Eyring appreciate all of the hair.
Sunday morning we made our own donuts and had some fun with it. Since we'd just gotten out all of the Halloween stuff, and I don't own a donut cutter, Cat suggested that we use the Halloween cookie cutters to cut out the donuts. It's hard to tell, but we ended up with bats, ghosts, moons, and of course pumpkins for donuts. We also made our glaze orange. Cat loved it and I think we might have a continuing conference tradition now.... We'll see if she remembers next year. :-)
Since the first session of General Conference is during J's and E's nap time, we decided to take the kids to the Church for the second session on Sunday. This ended up being a very bad idea. It was the session they did the worst in. They were rowdy and difficult in the chapel, and then they saw that someone was in the nursery playing with toys, so they just begged and begged to go to the nursery to play also. We finally relented, partly for our sanity, and partly for the relief of the other people struggling to pay attention to the speakers. So they spent the last 30 minutes (or more?) in the nursery playing while Ben and I sat in the foyer and listened. E crawled around happily.
All in all, it was a really good conference experience. I admit that I didn't get as much out of it as I would have liked to, but that is mostly because I was focused on the kids and helping them to stay reverent, learn, and listen. I think that's the way to go for this season of my life.
