General Conference Weekend

I love general conference. 

For many reasons. Here's a few treasures from the Ben and Chelsea dating scrapbook:

 Long story short: Ben's family was going down, I mentioned I'd always wanted to go, Ben convinced his parents to let him take a "friend", came home more than friends.
Went the next year too:

Oh boy, lovely aren't we?

My love of General Conference only grew as I served as a missionary on Temple Square. (Though as a missionary actual Conference was pretty hectic, but still amazing)


I tell Ben all the time we'll hafta go back and be a senior missionary couple on "the Square".

After we got married, Conference remained a speacil part of each spring and fall.  Fall 2009, we went down as weekend gettaway to Park City (and the offically weaning McKye)

It was absolute BLISS, sitting with no kids taking in the all the talks, free to take notes and pay attention.
No cheerios, no drool on my shoulder, no mother's lounge....


Not this year. 
We'd talked about going down but decided to stay home with the kiddos. Which made for a very different conference experience from our "gettaway". 


Different but good. SO very good.

Okay. So I actually did attempt this year to "gettaway". We'd gone to the Temple Thursday and high-jacked Ben's sister Jaci (aka bestest babysitter ever!) So Saturday morning ( after feeding Levi his delicious breakfast of oh-so-staining blueberries) got dressed, left Ben and Jaci with the kids and conference streaming over the internet, and headed up to the church to listen, kid free.


I sat there, in the quiet dimmness, peacefully taking notes. 


I take notes because somtimes I'm surprised what I end up writing. Honestly it's like I looked down and there on the page in my writing it said: 


"Chelsea go home"


Accompanying those words was an overall sense that my days of sitting alone and quietly listening are not right now (they have been and will be again, one day, but not now). So even though my kids were mostly gonna play cars and and wrestle at my feet (and on top of me) they needed me there.


There to call out "Look McKye! Who's that?" 
(Prezzzzident Mawn-SON!")
There to make sure our little FHE craft got played with. (See below)
There to snuggle them through familiar hymns sung by the mo-tab. 
There to correct McKye's enthusiastic mislabeling of the conference center as a "tem-po!" (at least the first ten times, then I just gave in, "yup, temple")
There to show them that this is what are family does. 
We listen to prophets.


"Go home Chelsea." 
So during the intermediate hymn I did. 


And I was so glad.
Sure I didn't take as many notes, or concentrate quite as well.
I nursed my baby and snuggled up to Ben and knew 
I was exactly where I was suppose to be. 
I was with my family, teaching them that we love Prophets, that we listen to our leaders, and we love the words of Christ.


(This being said, Ben and I did just take Levi up to the church and boys stayed home with their aunties for the Sunday afternoon, it was weird sitting that close on the pew to my husband!)

(Check it out! I totally called Pres. Uchtdorf's wardrobe choice!)

Jaci coloured McKye a Pres. Monson tie. He wasn't to thrilled about me trying to get the "matchy picture"

Look he really did like it:

Jaci also coloured our 12 apostles  (colourful suit choices eh?)

Love that there's peopel out there making such cute great stuff,
so all I hafta do is print it out!

     http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7399

Then when it was all done--including a fun girls n kids night during Priesthood session and yummy lunch with Ben's mom and sisters, it was

Back out to the yard, for some undie-clad-tramp-jumping!

Ben must have got a message about spending time with his kids, cuz after the session he got our tent out (the one we haven't set up since our first summer married) and set it up and we spent all evening playing in the tent.

In the end that's what conference does. It makes us better. 

Better mothers and fathers. Better friends. Better people. 

More like Christ.

And because it does. 

We'll be there again in six months, and six months after that, 

our whole lives.