Another great General Conference session has come to an end.  How did the speakers and messages touch your heart?  Did you receive answers and encouragement to do just a little bit better today?  One of the highlights of General Conference for me is that I always feel like I just went to a Pep Rally where I was encouraged, uplifted and given a big high five to keep going.  There is always room for improvement and in some areas a lot of room, but I always come away feeling hopeful about the future.  That is such a blessing in a world of confusion, violence and unhappiness.  I know that the speakers were guided to share and discuss the will of the Lord for us today.  What a blessing.

I thought I’d share a couple thoughts and pictures about how our Conference weekend went.

My daughter helped me set up everything the night before.  Once you put together your Conference pieces, just store them away in a plastic tub.  The next time Conference comes around, pull from your box and just update anything that needs to be reprinted.  We spent about 1 hour getting everything together including snacks.  It was fun having a little lady elf help out!  Here’s the finished preparations.  Did you spot my elf in the picture?

The first thing we did Conference morning after breakfast was to support my oldest son in his cross country meet.  While we were getting ready for Conference the night before, my oldest son was throwing up!  Oh, how I had vomiting.  If I get sick with that same sickness, I always have to take a trip to the ER.  Find out about why I drink so much water now from a blog post I wrote earlier this year.

He woke up at 5am and pushed through to run at his meet.  He did a great job.  Just look at the picture on the bottom right of his face.  I had to zoom in to see that he wasn’t smiling, but exercising all his strength to finish strong.  Great run, son!

We came home from the meet and logged onto lds.org to watch General Conference.  Here’s how Day 1 went.  The new game I added this time, “Swat-A-Lot” was a hit as you can tell from my son’s expression.

It was pretty cool to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing part of the song that starts with one of our Toddler Games, “In the leafy treetops the birds since, Good Morning!”  It was the perfect game for my toddler.  My daughter had good listening skills during one of the talks where she got to roll a bowling ball as she listened for  few key words.  You can pick up the bowling ball game for free here.

Day 2 of General Conference started with a fun Comic-Con drawing that my daughter did about the Sacrament.  I love all of the symbolism in this picture that her 7 year old mind came up with.  The broken heart, prayer and “pooly” which is actually spelled “pule” and is the Hawaiian word for prayer!  I love how she has been listening and learning in our little hula class I teach each week and incorporated it into her sketch!

My Mission President was Dean M. Davies who is now the 1st Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric.  I was so excited to hear him speak and what a blessing it was to hear my children get the opportunity to learn from this great man as I did while I served in Puerto Rico years ago.  You can see my youngest son, grabbing the bag with Bishop Davies on the front!  They enjoyed listening to him while the paying attention to what he said so that they could grab the right picture with their large magnets.

My oldest son was suppose to be taking notes in his new journal that I put together for the youth age kids.  He seemed to love the snacks that were in the bag, but he didn’t take many notes.  Near the end of Conference, he started juggling.  That was not part of the plan!  After being annoyed for a bit and wondering how come he can’t just sit down and listen to the talk, I asked, “Are you even listening to the speaker?”  To my surprise he said, “Yes” and in great detail explained the whole story that Elder Renlund was sharing.  Wow!  Okay, note to self, sometimes children listen in their own unique ways!  I was humbled to realize that sometimes all my hard work doesn’t always pay off but that sometimes they find their own ways to listen and learn!  I had to snap a picture of his juggling skills.  Maybe I’ll have to throw his juggling balls into his Conference bag for next year!

The Light Bright activity is always fun.  My daughter is showing you a picture of Jesus that she made.  I love the look on my daughter’s face as she listens to the speaker while playing Tic Tac Talk.  This game is played with yourself.  When you hear Jesus’s name spoken, you place him on the tic-tac-talk board.  The other marker is of the scriptures.  It was fun to hear both kids say “Jesus won” or “The scriptures won” as they listened to what was being shared during Conference.

We had a few bumps in the road, but overall it was a fun weekend.  One of the “financial bumps” was when little guy knocked over the projector and broke it!  Yikes.  We finished the rest of Conference watching it on the laptop.

I would love to hear how your Conference weekend went.  Please comment below with your child’s favorite listening game!

And, here is another freebie for you!  Last time, I posted a 6 Month Calendar for my readers to use as a review source.  It was so popular that I thought I’d do that again.  Here are the talks from this past weekend.  If you study one per week with a couple doubled up at the end, you will be able to study all of the talks before next Conference.  Just click on the image below to download the flyer.