General Conference Fun

We always love General Conference weekend.  For Family home Evenings the entire month of September we worked on learning the names and faces of the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles as well as something small about each of them to help us remember them.

The boys LOVED it!  And it helped them recognize and be more interested in listening to them speak.  It was funny to hear them say "yeah it's L. Tom Perry- he's 6 foot 3!!!"  So cute.

This conference weekend was extra fun though because we got to have family come visit.  My sister-in-law Nikki's brother got married here in Utah so she and my brother and several of her family members came to stay with us.  

Dave loves babies.  And Isla is always an obliging subject.

Last spring for Conference we played Bingo and tried a few different things to get the kids more interested in listening.  Some of it was worthwhile but a lot of it was more distracting than helpful.  So this time I looked around for ideas I thought would be better.  I found this one where every time the kids hear a speaker say a specific word, they get a treat.  I picked 8 key words and tried to mix up treats with snack foods.  Some were better and more frequent than other but in general it worked great.  The kids listened and got treats it required very little attention from me so I could listen too.

Here's the whole group- My 6 and Nikki's 9.  Amazingly we made us all fit comfortably.

Ethan enjoying one of his gummy worm treats.

Yep, even Taylor got in on the treat action.

The one funny side effect of this was that Miles couldn't remember all the key words so he latched onto the one most frequently said- "Jesus Christ".  He got a gummy bear every time he heard it.  And every time he heard it he'd scream it out loud.  It sounded kind of like he was swearing because he'd yell it out.  I tried to stop him after I realized what was going on but of course he was pretty stuck on getting a treat each time he heard the words.  Ahh well maybe next conference we'll find something better.

The best part of having 9 extra people in the house?  Help entertaining and cleaning up after the kids!  Nikki's family was seriously the easiest guests we've ever had.  We'll take them ANYTIME they want to visit Utah again!