Easter and General Conference

Can you call General Conference a holiday? If so, after last weekend I think I would call it my favorite. What a great way to be together and celebrate Easter. We really had a wonderful weekend -- Q was with us most of Saturday and every moment of Sunday. It was fabulous.

We had our first successful Easter Ham dinner -- the Chipotle Orange glaze turned out great. And tonight I used some of the cubed ham to do a Sweet Potato Hash that really hit the spot and was quick to put together.

Easter baskets were really low-key this year: kites, a Sunday movie, and a sprinkler... and look how pleased they were. Simplifying felt really great.

Conference was especially enjoyable too. Some of the things that worked well for us were having the "Reverence Room" they needed to be quiet in, an activity table full of printed coloring pages, dying eggs during one session, eating lunch (full mouths = able to hear speakers), Bingo was a hit, and the most helpful idea was this tray of rotating snacks. When they heard one of the words they would get the matching snack (I realized I didn't have much on hand -- croutons, raisins, carrots, chocolate chips all made an appearance). I couldn't believe how much they were listening. It was especially fun on talks about things like Family History where their words were getting said every couple of sentences.

Half way through the last session we paused for an Easter Egg Hunt. There was some candy, but most of the eggs were filled with puzzle pieces. I really liked the way it turned out -- no fighting over who got more eggs or what kind of treat was inside. They had to share their eggs and then work together to do the puzzle -- and it kept them busy for the rest of the session. I'm definitely doing that again.

We got some wiggles out by going for a walk around Antrim Lake. They tossed pinecones off the bridge and we got to play with Q's new camera lens.

Then we tried out their new kites at the nearby park. I was afraid there wouldn't be enough wind, but cheap kites are amazing. It was so sunny and perfect -- too bright for some tender eyes, but we solved that problem.

Our post conference FHE was really fun as well. C's favorite song right now is "Watchmen" from the EFY tape when I was a counselor (our car is tape only and we don't have that many tapes laying around). So when I found this FHE it gave me all sorts of ideas. We made our own tower out of blocks and as we put the apostle tower together we talked about what each of them taught us during Conference. It was good for the parents to get a quick overview of counsel given as well. The marshmallow towers were fun (Q's quite the builder) -- I think C ate his weight in gooey whiteness.

Last night we finished off the Easter season by doing an egg toss. The kids were hesitant about throwing their eggs, but when they realized the eggs were doomed to the trash either way... soon eggs were flying!