General Conference

Can I just start by saying how much I love General conference?!? It truly is one of my most cherished times of the year. For those who do not know what it is, each year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints hold two semi-annual conferences from Salt Lake City. In these conferences, our prophet, currently Thomas S. Monson, his counselors, the 12 apostles and quorums of the seventy speak to us. We get to hear from the Prophet of God! What a gift and blessing!! With each session I am touched by the Spirit of the Lord and feel such a resolve to do better, to try harder,to be more. This time was no exception.

With having three small kids, it's tricky to actively listen to conference. Often, Dougie and I catch up the following weeks by listening to them online or reading them in the Ensign. With that being said, we felt this year that we need to be getting the kid more involved with conference. We didn't set our expectations too high, but we had a plan.

We played a game. The night before, Nola and I prepared notes of papers with specific word on them. We had 'prayer',
'happiness', 'scriptures', 'love', 'Jesus', 'blessings' and 'temple'. We also had pictures of all the apostles posted on the wall. When each speaker was presented, the kids would pick a word from the hat and then take down the speakers picture from the wall and post them on the eisle. Every time they heard the word from the paper, they had to raise their hand and then they would get to eat one of their Easter chocolates. It worked pretty good!! Nola caught on and was catching words left, right and centre! Robbie just ran around pretending he was Thor and John bounced back between snuggling and ripping the picture off the wall. All in all, it was a success!

It is a privilege to be able to teach our children about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to them for all that I have!!

...I do just have to share a funny little story. One of the speakers spoke in his native language and it was translated in English. So while this man spoke, another voice was recorded over top of his voice speaking English. My kids love the movie 'Prince of Egypt' so when the voice over came on, Robbie gasped and said 'Is it Moses?!?!' Doug and I tried not to laugh because he was totally serious! We explained to him what was going on and told his that the man was named Rafael. With an even more confused look on his face, Robbie burst out laughing and said 'No! That's not Raphael!!' Remember, Robbie IS a ninja turtle, and he knew that the guy on tv was not Raphael. We continued to explain what was going on, but then the speaker started talking about the artist Michaelangelo!!! At that point, Dougie and I couldn't hold it on anymore. We laughed until our stomachs hurt! What were the odds!!