Kid Conversation...ish

We had our ward primary program a couple of Sundays ago.  I don't remember it being like this for me, when I grew up, but in our ward, they always have the kids prepare their own part on a given topic.  For the youngest kids, they will ask them questions and write down their answers for them to share.  I think they asked The Frog what he know about prophets and this was his response:  (and what he shared in sacrament meeting from the pulpit)

"When it is conference time, the prophet speaks in a microphone.  Then, the electricity goes to our house.  We have a book about prophets.  I know who President Monson is, but I don't always know the other guys..."

Conference Activities

What a great weekend!  I always love General Conference- well, I have since I went to college and actually stayed awake during all 4 sessions :)  However, since having children, I haven't been able to pay attention as much as I wanted and it's always been quite stressful and contentious somehow.  I was determined to make this year better!

I got the idea (thank you Pinterest!) to make little activity bags- one for each of the apostles and members of the first presidency and prophet- and then I printed out and laminated these cards, putting one of each in each bag.  Then with every new speaker, we would go through all the bags and, together, try to determine if the picture in the bag was the same as the speaker.  I think The Frog had as much fun doing this as doing the activities.  I also had 3 other activities planned for when there was a long streak of other general authorities.

General commentary?  It worked great!  Yes, I still had to help entertain the kids, but I feel like I got sooo much more out of conference this year.  I can say that I at least got the overall topic from almost every speaker, which is leaps and bounds above the previous 4 years.

Here are the activities I chose:

• Stickers- one of the best activities, believe it or not.  Peach (2) and The Frog (4) both liked this and spent quite a bit of time on it because I gave them a bag of those foamy stickers that you have to peel the backs off of, which means it took more time to use each sticker :) We just put them on construction paper- their choice of color.
• Color with crayons, then water color on top- my kids just really seem to like watercolor, and doing crayons first just extended the time spent on it a bit.
• Glitter glue symmetry prints- scribble with glitter glue and then fold in half to reveal.  It was a bit quick, but when The Frog opened his up, he thought it was really cool.
• Draw with elmer's glue + glitter- too quick and too messy.  Won't do this again with young kids.
• Finger paints- I thought it would be fun to try having them paint on tin foil, but The Frog wasn't interested in that.  Peach did, but I'm realizing that for some reason, painting activities hold my kids' interest longer if they are allowed to use a paint brush.
• Painting toenails- this was an extra activity actually suggested by The Frog.  This one is especially good because they have to sit still while waiting for the polish to dry.  And they spend a good deal of time looking through all the colors and deciding what they want.
• Bead necklaces- this was an unassigned activity too and it was really really great for The Frog- Peach wasn't so interested and mostly threw beads everywhere.  I got out a muffin tin and The Frog and I spent a good amount of time just organizing them by color first, then he made his own necklace.  We did this Saturday morning session and the kids wore their necklaces (and tried on each other's) all weekend.  (I ended up just making one for Peach since she wasn't that interested, but she loves wearing it.)
• Toothpick and marshmallow sculptures- I was a bit worried about this because I hate handing out treats before lunch, but The Frog was very disciplined about not eating any of his sculptures until after lunch, and it was a fun, quiet, activity to do in the afternoon too!  The Frog got really into this and built some pretty cool things!  Peach mostly just kept sneaking a marshmallow and running away.  haha.

• Origami- I found a Halloween origami set at JoAnn's for $1.  It's a good idea, especially for the future, but a bit too old for my kids.  The Frog just watched me do it for him.  Peach was wholly uninterested.
• Halloween lanterns- I really like having these cute lanterns around, but I didn't plan it out very well.  I just kind of made this activity up.  I cut Halloween shapes out with my Silhouette, which, by the way, doesn't do great on construction paper.  Good to know.  I wish I had colored vellum lying around...  Anyway, we glued Halloween shapes to a white piece of paper and then wrapped them around a spaghetti sauce jar.  I quickly discovered that the shapes were not staying curved to the paper and I pretty much had to go over everything with packing tape.  Even so, I think they turned out super cute, and it was fun to light them during dinner and even breakfast this morning (it's darker out when we eat breakfast than dinner :D).
• Tissue paper and tape snakes- we just took tissue paper and crinkled it into a long "snake", then wrapped it with tape to get it to stay.  Didn't take as long as I hoped and I had to help The Frog more than I thought I would.  He did play with it briefly, but it didn't take as long to decorate as I had hoped.  Peach was uninterested, and instead hid balls of tissue paper in everyone's shoes.  So I guess she was quietly occupied...
• Cookies- since the beginning of the second Saturday session always begins with a lot of "business" items, I thought that might be a good time to bake and eat some cookies.  (I made the dough the night before).  It went over well, as you might imagine, and I felt good that we all had lunch already.
• Painting on wooden magnets- I got 2 of these little kits at JoAnn's for $1.  I didn't realize that the paint wasn't washable until I got them out to work on, but it worked out okay and both kids spent enough time on them to make it worth it.  I did have to be very controlling about having only 1 paint cup open at a time so we could wash our brushes and so I would only have to keep track of one color to not spill and stain everything.
• Play dough- this is normally great, but The Frog napped for the first half of the very last session of conference, so he kind of had a queue of crafts to work on and I think he wanted to do some of the other things that he doesn't play with regularly.  In the future, I might actually make play dough and part of the fun could be measuring the ingredients and kneading in the coloring.
• Legos- short lived for the same reason as above.
• Blocks- The Frog and I built a pretty cool castle, until Peach woke up from her nap and kept knocking everything over.

The Frog was so pleased with their projects, he wanted them hung up.  This is now our "Conference Craft door"

The Frog building with marshmallows and toothpicks

Halloween lanterns glowing at breakfast

Tissue paper and tape "snake"

Didn't do-

• Leaves- The Frog had collected some pretty leaves earlier in the week, so I pressed them and thought we could do something with them, but we kind of ran out of time, and it was one of the things that we would have done while The Frog was napping.
• Scissors and punches- we never did this one because it was associated with D. Todd Christofferson and he only spoke in the Priesthood session.  Typically, though, my kids love to go to town on blank piece of paper with a pair of scissors, especially when I get out my funny scissors with different cutting edges.

Some other things I want to remember:

Peach really loved listening to all the musical numbers and would sometimes request that Jay and I sing along with the Mo-tab or she would come in and sing her version of "I Am A Child of God" while the choir sang whatever they were singing.  So cute.

It was funny to hear The Frog compare the pictures to the speakers- "no, he doesn't have glasses", "this guy has white hair", "he's kinda fat- yeah, that's him!"

I'm very pleased with how the weekend went.  I made a special breakfast both days- waffles yesterday and pumpkin cinnamon rolls today- and we did a picnic lunch on the lawn yesterday.  I'm hoping that the kids will grow to love conference and look forward to it when it comes.

FHE New Year Commitment

I started another blog last September, hoping if I had to "report" my reading somehow, I would be better at reading my scriptures every day.  

WELL, it didn't really work. Turns out that having to read AND say something insightful about it

every day.

overwelmed.

BUT I have been better about having better planned Family Home Evening (FHE) on Monday nights, since the New Year started and it has been a great success- that is to say, it's been fun and a great way to talk about small gospel things that I think would help our family be more harmonious and stay close.

Today, The Frog asked me if we could have Family Home Evening tonight! :)  

For any of you who would like to start the habit, you can get some ideas from what we've done this year so far.  Keep in mind, my "lessons" are for 1 and 3 year olds.  And note that we sing "Once There Was A Snowman" for our opening song every week.  Even Peach knows how to "fall down" at the end.  (and in fact does it as soon as we start the melting part.  It's adorable!)

 Last FHE was about The Creation and we "created" some sugar cookies for a treat.  These aren't pictures from FHE but Peach earned a cookie and The Frog didn't, but he convinced her to share with him and it was just too cute not to take pictures.

If you have any FHE suggestions or activities you've done that worked great, I'd love to hear them here or on my other blog.  Thanks!

Ward History Party

Our ward had a fun ward history party that was movie themed.  They took a bunch of famous movie posters and inserted people's faces.  Here was ours:

Peach's Baby Blessing

We decided to take advantage of our trip for Thanksgiving and bless Peach at a ward in Massachusetts so Jay's family could take part. Jay's mom generously let us have a brunch at her house after and it was SOOO nice to get to talk to some of my friends who live in New England- many of which I haven't seen in years. Thanks to all who came! I was so busy catching up, I forgot to take photos of us together. (sometimes it's probably better to live in the moment anyway, right?) I did manage to get a couple shots of our family though.

Baby Blessing Dress Reveal

I actually finished making this a long time ago, except, I didn't finish the diaper cover because the way the pattern said to make it looked HUGE, so I thought I'd wait until a week before Peach would wear it to finish it. I, of course, altered the pattern a bit and putting ruffles on the bum was a MUST. Here it is!

Sunday School Slip 'n Slide Soiree

Jay and I teach Sunday School to the 12/13 year-olds at church. We decided it would be fun if we had a little class party- plus we really wanted to try out Jay's new slip 'n slide (his birthday present from The Frog) I think we all had a really great time.

I got a bit carried away with the camera and ended up taking over 200 pictures! (yikes!) Here are the highlights :D

BYU Women's Conference

I have been helping out with the crocheted edge baby blankets service project at BYU Women's Conference this year. It's been a great experience, but it's nice to have it all finished (as of yesterday).


It was so awesome to be surrounded by so many women, all wanting to serve and learn and try to improve their lives. What a great vibe! I just love how everyone acted like friends, no everyone was friends, even though we all had such differences- backgrounds, ages, experiences, hometowns... all so vast and varied, but we had all come together for a common cause, and that makes us sisters. So fabulous!

I was also impressed with how non-stressful the whole thing turned out to be. I tend to be a walking gray hair when I'm in charge of anything, but everyone was so friendly and non-hurried that I was completely at ease the entire time. Such a blessing!

It was really great to get to know some of the ladies in my neighborhood who were helping out with our project. Turns out that one of them, Sister S, has the coolest job ever- personal assistant to Donny Osmond. For real! According to her, he's a real dream to work with too. He's a perfect gentleman with his head screwed on straight and even opens doors and carries luggage for Sister S all the time. So nice to hear that some people can take the fame and not be annoying and big-headed about it. Particularly nice when they share your religion-- makes you think maybe it's working :)

Another woman in my neighborhood is the head of the ballet department at BYU and said she could definitely help me audit some ballet classes, sans enrolling. Shweet :)

All in all, I'd say Women's Conference was a big up for me this week, and I'm excited to be able to attend another year. Maybe next year I'll be able to go to some of the classes :D