Conference Favorites

As if General Conference weekend isn't cool enough - a weekend twice a year (for our church)when you get to stay home and watch uplifting and faith promoting messages from the prophet, apostles and church leaders, from your couch, in your very own family room, on cable television, with your family. A Sunday without meetings, no rushing out the door so you won't be late, no high-heels that hurt your feet all day. I LOVE IT! But I love it even more because we have some family traditions that make the day even more special. Not only do I love these traditions, but my kids look forward to them for the 6 months inbetween and expect now every General Conference Saturday and Sunday. This year, I even added a new one! My sister sent me this idea from "Brown Paper Packages" website and I thought it was awesome. *Buckets with gospel words on them and filled with your kids favorite treats - as they listen to conference and hear the words on the buckets, they get to come up and take a goody* So I mostly copied, with changing a few things. I wanted to be able to change the words on the treat buckets. So instead of having gospel words written or stuck directly on the buckets, I painted some wooden rectangles with chalkboard paint and attached them to the front of each bucket. Then I just wrote the words with chalk - and now I can change them as often as I want! Also, as you can see, my buckets were green (I also have some smaller white ones, I liked them both) not because I painted them, only because that is what the $1 section of Target had (probably left over from St. Patrick's Day). But I thought they were more fun anyways! I left off the ribbons the the handles because...well, I have boys, and I didn't want the ribbon to obstruct the view of the TV.

The kids LOVED it. It really did work - for the bigs and littles! This one is a hit for all the ages. They listened and heard words even at times when I didn't!

They like to keep busy with work sheets too. Busy AND quiet are good. So I always print out Conference packets - you can find them on the internet. Sugardoodle.net had some great ones this Spring for all ages.

And of course - our traditional breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls. I only make them twice a year -April and October (General Conference time!)

I love General Conference weekend. And I love having these simple family traditions to go along with it. I see that it fills my kids with feelings of love and excitement for these weekends and I hope that they will associate that love and excitement always with listening and following the Prophet.