Holiday Holy Day

I know I said we were done with holidays after Easter, but I love holidays so sometimes I make them up.  Well, this one isn't really made up; it's actually using the term Holy Day correctly (holiday is a derivative of Holy Day).  It's General Conference.  I mean really, what gets more holy than gathering with your family to listen to the prophet? The scriptures are full of accounts of people traveling for many miles over many days to listen to the prophet, and all I have to do is get on You Tube.  It's pretty holy.  

Over the last few years, my celebration of this Holy Day has evolved.  I used to think that Conference is for adults and the kids can listen if they want, but it's a bit much to expect them to sit for that long.  Then Elder Hales gave a talk a few years ago on involving kids in Conference and helping them watch.  Groan.  And then I became more and more ridiculous with my other holidays and spent more and more time on Pinterest, and this is what we did to celebrate the April 2016 General Conference.

The Monday before Conference, March 28th, for Family Night, we put all the Apostles pictures on the floor and gave each kid a wooded spoon.  Greg and I then told facts about them and had the kids guess which Apostle we were talking about by slapping the picture with the spoon (this is a game from my old teaching days).  Then, and I took this idea from Pinterest, I got 2 gift bags and filled one with popsicles while I left the other empty.  I had the kids guess which bag had popsicles.  Then I had Greg look in the bags and we voted again, this time Greg voted.  The idea is that Greg is like the prophet and knows what's in store for us so we if follow the prophet we get popsicles.  Then we ate our popsicles.

Several days before Conference, I had the kids make a list of topics they thought would be discussed in Conference.  I then printed out corresponding pictures for each topic (since not all our people can read) and taped them to jars.

On Conference day, I pulled the dinning room table into the living room and covered it with craft paper so we had somewhere to sit and color while we listened.  Then as each person spoke we either drew a picture of him or her on a laminated piece of paper or put up his picture (I had printed out pictures of all the Apostles).   The kids then color ties or flowers to add to our pictures and write a brief phrase about the speaker's topic.  Then we tape our pictures and notes to the wall.  Also, each time a speaker talked about one of the topics the kids had picked earlier in the week, we added a puff ball to that jar.  Pinterest suggested having candy in the jar and having the kids get a piece of candy, but that was just too much junk for me.

The kids did get bored of this from time to time, so I didn't push it, but if they wanted to listen, they had a way of focusing their energy.  On the other hand, I was pretty busy passing out ties and flowers and picking crayons up that I didn't really get to listen.  But I decided when Rex was a baby to not worry about that kind of stuff--right now the most important thing is to teach my children, I'll listen to every word of Conference and Sacrament meeting in a few years.  Besides, all the talks are already posted on lds.org, so it's not like I can't and won't read them in the peace and quiet later.

The Monday after Conference for FHE, we counted all the puff balls in each jar and had a lesson about the topic with the most puff balls--temples.  We actually talked about ordinances and covenants and how they lead to the temple and to Christ because that covered several of the jars.  We used blocks and the little men from the Candy Land game to build a tower to the temple with each step up representing an ordinance and covenant.  You know like the Tower of Babel...

Don't fret, we also had a big breakfast for lunch on Sunday because Conference starts and noon here but big breakfasts are a requirement of celebrating Conference, even if it is at noon.

The Great Wall of Spirituality

Alice in deep mediation over what Elder Christofferson is saying.

Henry coloring on the table, of course.

Rex filling up our jars.