General Conference Spring 2011

I love General Conference. The Saturday session is always a little wild as we always (spring and fall) have soccer games on Saturday (thank goodness for Tivo). But the Sunday session is a regular holiday at our house. I LOVE it. It is so fun to hang out in our pjs and make good memories. I like that the boys were looking forward to it like they would any holiday. They should look forward to it right?
For breakfast we surprised the boys with this fun hot chocolate. Add a Peep and everything is more fun :)
Poor McKay struggled that day as he has EVERY day with teething. This molar has been a beast and it isn't even half way through.
We had French Toast (Josh's favorite) with orange syrup. Josh and I LOVED the orange syrup, they boys were slower to come around.
Then Palmer kept saying, "we'll go down stairs and then you can get our surprises ready." That boy is always so afraid I will forget things. So Josh took them downstairs and I got their surprises ready. We always try to make their snack healthy as we know that we are going to be in the house with them all day and we don't need them to be bouncing off the walls. We usually just do apples and Goldfish crackers. This year we gave them all a puzzle to put together along with their Conference packet. It was fun to do puzzles all day.
Okay so ya know what I just said about "healthy snacks"? Well, we canceled that out with this little activity. It was so fun, but holy mackerel they were hyper. I am going to do it again next conference, but maybe with ONE candy bowl. I got this idea at 8:30 the night before so it is a little thrown together, but you put 5 different words on 5 different bowls full of something (the idea used candy, but again, I will not do all candy again), when the kids hear the word, they get to get a piece out of the bowl. It really kept them listening and they were even shushing each other so they could hear. That was a change for sure.

The funniest thing happened when President Monson gave his talk about temples. He said "temple" over and over as well as "family". I know it is horrible, but couldn't stop laughing because it was a frenzy at the candy bowls. The boys ABSOLUTELY know what President Monson talked about. It was a really fun idea.
In between conferences when I was getting everything ready for dinner I heard all sorts of commotion from downstairs. I called Josh up to ask him to help me with something and this is what I saw (can you see his safety glasses under the Batman mask?) The kids were having a pretty good time with this crazy guy ;) They haven't stopped talking about it.

Josh built them each a "base" that they could have a little gun war from.
He even was thoughtful enough to get some pictures of the whole wild thing. I tell you what, there was a lot of laughing going on. Apparently Josh was the most hit target. Lincoln was laughing as he was telling me today when we were looking at these pictures "Dad got hit A LOT". I have a feeling that it explains some of Josh's nutty costume choice.


For dinner I tried a new recipe. I have never made sweet pork tacos, but have always wanted to. They turned out incredible (recipe coming soon :) and the left overs have been just as good. They were also easy peasy, which is always a plus.
For the next session our little booklet that we printed out from Sugardoodle had the funnest craft. The boys cut out all of the pieces and then when they heard the word on the piece during conference they would go and tape it to a balloon. This is what we had when conference was all done. They liked drawing the faces on too. I think this would be easy to do yourself as well. Paper plates would be perfect for this. We also snacked on this while listening to the inspiring talks.

After conference we talked to the boys about the "Armor of God" found in Ephesians and what each piece means. When I was young my mom made some amour for my brothers to wear. Definitely on my to do list.

For dessert I made these easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Eggs. I actually had all of the stuff for it right on hand.

The last thing we did was to make parachutes and raced them as well as tried some experiments with them. I am not posting this here, because I think it is already long enough. I will post them later, but they were really fun.

I have to say in years past Conference Sunday has just really been a long day for the kids as well as Josh and me. The boys fight when they are bored and the parents end up really grumpy. This year we were prepared with so many fun things to do that we loved the whole day.

General Conference and April Fool's Day Ideas

Okay I know it is a bit weird to combine General Conference and April Fool's Day ideas, but they are both this week and it just worked out that way.

Last night we had our little Pre-General Conference Family Home Evening. Josh is so good to do this with the boys to help them to understand why General Conference is a big deal to our family. We like to make it fun for our kids and I try to put together "quiet kits" to help them sit through some of the sessions. I have felt that in years past, that they have had a good experience with these little kits. I am in the process of putting together the kits for this year. If you are interested in some fun things your kids (and you) can do during General Conference, check this site out. There are also some fun ideas here.

I am also getting excited for April Fool's Day! I love this day for some odd reason. We like to think of fun (not mean) little tricks to play on the boys. I have some good ones this year. I have put some links at the bottom of the page for some things that we have done in years past. There are also some fun ideas here, here and here.

April Fools Day 2009
April Fools Day 2010

2009 October General Conference
2010 April General Conference
2010 General Conference Family Home Evening
2010 October General Conference

General Conference Packets

Each time General Conference rolls around we try to do something the night before so the boys wake up to a surprise. Usually we just print off one of the many packets that are floating around the web and add some things to it. We have done some really elaborate ones, but this year was all about simplicity. We just put the packet on the couch with a snack and some moon dough (that stuff is so fun...and messy!).

And the boys were thrilled. I probably should always stick with simplicity. I like them to look forward to General Conference, even if it is just for a surprise. When they are older they will look forward to it for other reasons like Josh and I do.

They were so good and quiet so we could listen (at least for the morning session).

General Conference F.H.E.

                                

The F.H.E. right before General Conference Josh was in charge of the lesson. He definitely went above and beyond. He gave a lesson about prophets and told the boys why we watch General Conference.

He gave each of the boys their own pictures of the First Presidency. They were so excited to have them and they saved them until General Conference and then watched with them.
                        

Each of the pictures had a bit of information on the back of them about each member of the First Presidency.
                            

Spring 2010 Conference Kits

This General Conference I wanted to do kits again like last year. I decided not to make them as elaborate since they already had plenty of things from their Easter Baskets and I wanted them to concentrate on the conference packets this time.

I did snacks (of course), a conference packet, and a little coloring book (the packets are a little old for Hunter) with colored pencils to color with.

The thought the kits were great and Palmer really listened to conference trying to find the bingo words. I love these!

General Conference Quiet Kits

I always look forward to General Conference. The only hitch is that we usually spend a lot of it telling our kids to be quiet so we can hear. This year I decided to give them quiet kits to keep them occupied during conference. I had so much fun putting them together.

I just went to Walmart and got inexpensive things to do. Some other ideas would be puzzles or file folder games. We took them away from them between sessions so they would look forward to the next session.

I took it apart to show you what I put in it. It had things like coloring books, activity books, their conference book, blank paper, crayons, each got a Halloween book, snacks and army men (those may seem random, but they were a huge hit!)

I was sent these conference books last year by my friend Melissa. I didn't have time to do them last year. This year I printed them out and gave them to the boys during the Saturday session. We didn't give the boys the activity boxes until the Sunday sessions to keep their attention.

This is Palmer's favorite page. Hunter didn't quite get the concept, but he had fun coloring it!

And of course we had to have snacks. I didn't want to do sugar snacks because we did not need the kids on a sugar high. They didn't seem to mind and were happy to have some snacks in there.

The boys thought it was so fun to wake up to this surprise! I am hoping that this will help them look forward to conference.

The boxes were a success! The kids just sat and played with the stuff in their boxes. One of the best experiences with General Conference yet!