General Conference April 2013

General Conference is wonderful...to hear from our beloved Prophet and Apostles is a choice experience....but can also be quite difficult with children...

anyone with children knows what I mean...

We could "banish" them from the house for 2 days...not really an option and I wouldn't feel good about that :) Also, I want them to start learning from our inspired leaders.  

What to do? 

We've tried a lot of different things over the years.  Here is what we tried this year.  One thing I think helps make conference time exciting for kids is to make traditions...

We always set up a tent in the house during conference

Don't have a picture of it, but the boys always melt chocolate chips on Cheerios.  Super tasty treat and they love to bring them around and share with the family.

We have a little girl who loves to "lead" during musical numbers so she really enjoyed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

We played scripture pictionary while listening....okay, hard to listen during it but we were doing scriptures...

Jonah, Baby Jesus, Brother of Jared

Moroni, Joseph Smith, King Benjamin (Porter guessed the tower in about 5 seconds)

Also: we review the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 Apostles (that's the 3 Tree: Perry and 10 hen: Eyring)

The Last Supper

What 5 year old would get this? My Bobo

President Hinckley

We have the book that talks about his tree becoming the pulpit in the Conference Center.

We always print off "tie coloring" pages and pages for the boys to write down things they are hearing and coloring pages.

This year, we let the older 2 boys type their own notes...BEWARE that this method may cause some headaches in the beginning.  The boys were constantly asking us how to spell things and what was just said...which we couldn't hear because of spelling something for them!  I am proud of the results though...

Some of Quincy's thoughts:

Jesus is Light. And open your hart to Jesus. And share the gospel. So we can be closer to god, and the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Book of Mormon is hope. and keep the commandments. agency is a gift. and heavenly father gives us commandments because he loves us. be friend people. have faith. the test of this life is obedience.

Some good thoughts to start working into the heart of my tender Quincy. 

The Church is true.  So thankful for the opportunity to listen, ponder, and then obey.  Thankful for the GREAT task of teaching my children.  It's hard.  It's worth it.