Women's Conference 2013

 I just love, love, LOVED Women's Conference at BYU.  I love my Spanish ward and I love my Nursery calling, but once a year, at Women's Conference, I need to be Spritually fed.  And what a feast it is!  Two days of really being taught by wonderful women and the Spirit.  I love learning and being motivated to things in my life that will bring me and my family closer to the Lord.  Probably the biggest thing I took away from all of this is Scripture Study.  I have always know how important it is, but I don't think I realized how vital it is to the Spritual Survival of my Family.  I decided to take on the 21 day challenge for my personal scripture study and the following Sunday when visiting my mom's ward, my kids brought home a Scripture study challenge, paper chart.  I think the Lord is telling us something.  So we are doing that challenge as a family and my kids are super excited!  3 days in and so far so good.  I know with the Lords help and making it a priority we can do this! 

The other great thing about Women's Conference (besides the Mint Brownies!) is spending time with the Wonderful Women in my Life!  Here are some of them!

Some of my good Pre-school Mommy friends, Livier Chavez, Yadira Budd, and Me!  This year, my dear friend Yadira was a presenter in one of the Spanish sessions.  I went to hear her and she did awesome!  Loved her class!

This year my wonderful, amazing Mother-in-law came!  I am so glad!

Day two, my Step-sister Margaret joined me!  I just love this girl and am so glad we are sisters!

Group shot! (minus one friend who had sped off to her first class already)

Here she is!  Are you surprised, it was Cylee who sped off to that first class?! ;)  All kidding aside, I am glad I cornered her for a quick pic.  It was so fun meeting up with Cylee at Women's Conference!  We definitely do not see each other enough, so it was fun to hang out.  What I love about Cylee, is it doesn't matter how long it has been since we've seen each other, we always just pick up where we left off, like we saw each other just yesterday!  Love this girl!

This was a fun surprise, bumped into an old AZ friend, Crystal, while waiting in line, we got to sit together for a class as well!  It was fun seeing her!

Until Next Year!

General Conference Sucess!!!

Today was day two of General Conference. It is now over and I am feeling awesome!  6 Months ago General Conference was a nightmare.  The kids were boarded, played with toys, ran around, fought with each other, got shushed and got sent to other rooms as Isaac and I tried to get something out of conference.  I vowed that in 6 months I would get prepared and things were going to go better.  And boy did they!  I put together several activities and their own General Conference Binders.  The result.... we had our first ever, quiet, enjoyable General Conference!  The kids colored, played games, took notes, drew pictures, and LISTENED to Conference. And I took the advice of another mom and put my toddler down for her nap during the Afternoon session.  Benjamin and Abby sat through and enjoyed all 4 session's of Conference!  And at the end Benjamin said "Mom, that was fun!  I love General Conference!"  I think I actually heard angels singing at that moment!  I felt like the world's best mom!  Which does not happen very often AT ALL!

Here is some of what they did, followed by a list of all their activities and links to where I found them all.

First we start the day with a special General Conference Breakfast.  This gets the excitement started, because I include cinnamon rolls with our breakfast on General Conference weekend and since they only get them once in a while as an after dinner dessert, they think it is pretty fun to get them for Breakfast!

Coloring

Benjamin enjoyed taking notes for each of the speakers (especially since he saw his Daddy taking notes)  On this one for Russell M. Nelson he wrote (all by himself) "Get ready to be a missionary" and then drew a picture of two Missionaries.  Made me such a proud Mom!

The stacks of different train car topics for our Conference Train

Here is the Conference Train after one session of conferenc

The kids really liked this activity of moving the General Authorities to the podium as they did during conference

Draw the Speaker

First Presidency Puppets

Our final Conference Train.  It got really long!

 Benjamin allready told me that he "Can't wait for General conference to come again in October!"  Wow, I feel like I witnessed a miracle!

 And here is what was in my kids General Conference Activity Binder.

General Authority Chairs

General Conference Notebook

Activity Packet

Draw the Speaker

Temple Memory Game

Conference Bingo

Conference Train

More Activity Packets (including Junior Primary)

Ultimate LDS General Conference Packet (A to Z)

Ultimate General Conference Packet #2


In the future I plan to add more, like Activity Packets for Junior Primary kids (instead of Nursery age).  Even though my two older kids are not in Nursery.  I thought the Nursery Packet was a good place to start.  And again, I did not want to get to complicated.

I also plan to add more coloring pages, and dot-to-dots, and I plan to keep searching and finding what is best for my kids.  There is so, so much out there.

Spring Break Fun

Spring Break was nice. We did not go anywhere and tried to relax and slow things down for a week. But we did want to get the kids out and do a couple of fun things during Spring Break. We had fun and once again I am so glad I have a friend like Yadira who is as crazy as I am and willing to stay at a place all day just so the kids can have fun! And it's great company! The first thing we did...

Hollywood Connection!

This was so fun and it was FREE! with our Pass of all Passes!  They even had free hot dogs and drinks for the week of Spring break!  We totally scored!

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The kids loved the bumper cars!

Mini Golf

Isabel really loved the carousel!

She also love the Bus ride!

Another day we went to...

Kangaroo Zoo!

The kids had a blast here as well!  And it was actually quite relaxing for us moms because we just sat there all day and did close to nothing!  It was nice (for once)

Once she figured out how to get into the big slides that is all Isabel wanted to do, was slide down over and over!

Easter egg Hunts!

The Saturday after the wedding, we got to go to a really great Easter Egg hunt in Smithfield!  This is the best city hunt we have ever been too!!  Lots of candy and gift certificates and even $$ !!

Although the hunt in Smithfield had lots of candy, my kids are picky with their candy and did not like most of it.  Luckily when we got home, the Easter bunny had been to our house and he leaves their favorite candy!

Allan and Alicia Wedding!

Allan got married!  And this time to the right girl!!  We are so happy!  She is perfect for Allan.  They compliment each other so well and she has the same righteous desires that he does.  She supports him and encourages him and they make a great team.  And she love Lindy like her own daughter!  Allan is a blessed man!  I knew the Lord would bless him with such a great girl because he is a good man who is deserving of a great woman!  We just love her and are excited to have her in the family!

A pic from the shower we had at my house

Lindy walked her Daddy down the isle

The ceremony was beautiful!

Abby & Lindy

"You may now kiss the bride"

The attempts to take a picture of the kids

The Bride and Groom's attempt to take a picture with the kids... lol

Sisters!

Later at the Reception, I tried to get some nice shots of Abby, because she looked so cute... oh well, I tried.

Abby & Lindy

Dance Time!