General Conference and Spring Break

1. General Conference. It was just what I needed. Spiritually uplifting, inspiring, and an excuse to relax at home for a weekend. I only require my kids to sit through one entire session. They are, after all, 2 hours long each. Most of Saturday they were doing other things, but did come and listen to bits here and there. Sunday I created key word treat jars. Put different treats with different key words (prophet, temple, prayer, etc) and if they heard the word they could go and get the treat from that jar. I've done coloring packets and things in the past, and I don't know if it's just that my kids are getting older- but this worked really well. They were really listening and at least knew some of the key concepts that were talked about. The overall takeaways for me were about loving communication, kindness, while standing up for truth and righteousness. One of my favorite talks was by Elder Teh, titled, "Where Your Treasure Is" When he spoke of visiting earthquake and typhoon victims in the Philippines. He said that as they visited people who were living out of tents in meager situations and asked how they people were, over and over again the response was, "We are OK". It just reminded me to keep things in perspective and remember how blessed I am.

2. Beautiful spring break weather. Last year for spring break I planned a "staycation" and had some fun activities I wanted to do with the kids each day. However the weather was so cold and/or wet it really messed up most of my plans. Most of the kid's friends were gone on trips to warmer locations, and so we couldn't even arrange many playdates. I remember thinking, "Next year we've got to plan on going somewhere." However, since we'd gone to Colorado for New Years, Disneyland in January, Jake to Mexico in February, and Jake and I to the Virgin Islands in March, Jake really didn't feel like he could take too much more time off. We still thought we might do a long weekend in Moab or something, but then we found out that Jake's brother and his family had spring break the same week and were coming down, and then his mom and grandma decided to come for a couple days too. So we decided we'd stick around here again. The weather was beautiful the whole week this time though!!! This week the weather isn't as nice again, but I'm so glad it cooperated to give us a nice enjoyable spring break!

3. Company for Spring Break. Like I mentioned, we ended up having family here most the week. Monday I took the kids to see Muppets Most wanted, which I had promised them I'd do (I figured it was a safe promise, cause it's something we could do even if the weather was bad), but then we had family here Monday night to Friday morning. They got to play with cousins, we went to the zoo, we took them swimming at the Kamas pool and we helped Rick's family look for homes. I even got to go with the ladies to swim in the crater which I haven't done for years. Friday they all left. Naomi and TJ went to play at Ferguson's in the afternoon so Jake and I could go to Park City Mountain Resort with Josh and Dekker. We had a fun time snowboarind (Dex skiing) with them. Then Friday night we had the Kearns family (who were in town also during their Washington spring break) over for dinner and they stayed the night before heading home the next day. It was a great spring break!

4. New couches. I also talked Jake into letting me buy a new sectional for downstairs. I've been wanting to for a while (we moved the other one upstairs and the OLD couches downstairs to make sure I liked the other sectional upstairs before replacing the old couches). Rick had said he really wanted to do a movie night in our new "theater room" and watch The Hobbit pt 2. I convinced Jake that it would be a lot more comfortable for everyone if we had a sectional that would seat a lot of people better, and that we could use our existing 1 year same as cash credit at RC Willey to get something. So I went to the RC Willey Outlet and found the perfect L shaped sectional on Monday (after I took the kids to the movie) and then Jake somehow fit it in his truck and brought it home, and when Rick got here he helped him move it in:)