Conference Weekend

Last weekend was General Conference. While it is always nice to have a break from teaching Sunbeams, getting the kids ready for church, getting Jackson and Addy to stay quiet during Sacrament Meeting and just generally being gone for 3 hours at church on Sunday, the weekend was a mix for us. I used to look forward to Conference weekend. What's not to like? Watch church in your PJ's on the couch while eating treats. When we lived in Utah sometimes we got to attend in person-- which was awesome. And then we had kids. I guess kids actually weren't responsible for the demise of my enjoyment of conference. I think it actually happened somewhere when I thought my kids were starting to get older and I started having expectations that they would act differently than wild goats.

Wouldn't this be enough to bribe you to be quiet?

 We started out well-- complete with real homemade Cinnamon Rolls during the Saturday Morning. My slacker conference tradition is to make Cinnamon Sugar Bread with canned biscuits so this was a big step up for me-- thanks to my attempt at no-knead refrigerator Challah dough (which was super-easy by the way... next Brioche!). But despite my sugaring up of the kids and printing out cute Conference Packets for them, it took us almost four hours to watch that first two-hour session of conference. Even though we started watching it live, between pushing pause to break up wrestling matches, rewinding to hear what that word was that was drowned out by screaming and pausing to roll out the rolls and put them in the oven, it turned into quite a marathon.

Wild goats in action.

We took a short break to eat lunch and then began the second session. Addy was down for her nap and Jackson was happily playing so I started to again entertain the unreasonable expectation that at least two of my children were capable of being in the same room as the broadcast without turning into raving hyenas. I made a valiant effort, but between Jared and Camryn teasing each other and wrestling, Jackson screeching at the top of his lungs and me feeling a sudden uncontrollable desire to bean someone, break something or scream, I thought it would be best for everyone if we adjourned conference and mom locked herself in her room to cry for a while. After a requisite period of solitude (I told the kids not to bug me unless there was blood or fire) I started getting notes under the door asking me when I was going to come out, so I piled the kids into the car to go to the park.

A really cute wild goat.

As soon as we got out of the car at the park it started to rain, so we piled everyone back into the car. Instead we drove to Michael's, where I stocked up on crafts for the kids to do during conference on Sunday. Who knew that $30 could buy me one session of relative peace and quiet?

Fun at Michael's

After a semi-harrowing stop at Baja Fresh for dinner to use a Groupon I had bought-- did I ever mention how much it bugs me when I spend $4 for a kids meal and a certain child (cough, cough, ahem, Jackson, cough, cough) drinks the juice and doesn't eat a single bite of anything else?-- we headed home. We survived Sunday conference quite well, completing our typical session-and-a-quarter before giving up again. We then turned to Animated Heroes from the Bible's "Joseph in Egypt" for our the religious educational value of the day and peace was restored.

Jared took this photo as a surprise for me.