- It's a nice, relaxing way to spend a weekend and it's kind of a bonus that General Conference replaces regular church meetings. I love the nice leisurely mornings and relaxing days.
- I look forward to the messages from our church leaders and I always find that a handful of talks really speak to me. Sometimes I receive direction, sometimes I feel peace, and sometimes the talks just make me think of things my mind has been pushing aside for too long.
- Conference is a great opportunity to gather together as a family. I actually feel pre-conference excitement in the air a few days before conference is going to air. The girls are at the point where they look forward to certain conference traditions and we always re-invent the wheel a little bit and try new things.
A few days prior to conference, the girls gave me a list of snacks to buy at the grocery store. They wrote a word they knew they would hear during conference on a paper bowl and they filled each bowl with snacks. The bowls with words like love, prayer, and hope got the sugary and chocolate snacks. The bowls with words like prophet, missionary, and church were filled with healthier fare like cucumbers, carrots and pretzels because the girls suspected that those words wouldn't be used nearly as much as the "sugary snacks" words.
This year the girls set up a little play tent in our family room where Leah and Meg spent the better part of conference. They ate their snacks and worked on coloring sheets, word searches, and other conference-related print outs that they had prepared a few days before. When they got tired of worksheets, they fought about who was taking up the most space in the tent and how the other was entering into the tent wrong. Brita sat in her pea-green folding chair wrapped in a blanket for most of conference and the two younger girls burst out of the tent during the songs so they could dance and sing along while standing on the couch (still wearing their pj's of course).
This year, we taped pictures of the First Presidency and the Apostles on our family room wall and the girls took notes on post-its.
We stuck the post-it notes all over the pictures and walls. I loved looking at our wall plastered with pictures and words of our prophet and leaders, but even more than that, the significant thoughts and notes that my girls jotted down on those green and yellow papers were precious and heartwarming. When I get to read the things my girls write, I feel like I'm peeking into their souls and I sure love what I got to see through this little activity.
I needed to read those post-it notes peppered with the thoughts of their hearts and their testimonies that they are working so hard to build. I took pride that wasn't mine to take in their mature and deeply rooted insights. I felt joy build up in my heart when I realized that the everyday monotony of family life has really been a journey of exercising faith, building testimonies, and learning to apply correct principles.
I feel like I fail every day as a parent and I get frustrated because I placed some high expectations on myself before I had kids. But I didn't know stuff then that I know now. And the most important thing I know today is that my girls don't need a perfect mom in order to become strong, competent, good people. It appears that despite my constant slip ups, my effort to provide the element of support my kids need from their mother must be good enough. Thank Heaven the "mother element" is not the only factor in play here because I'm learning that my girls do a lot of growing on their own and whatever else is lacking seems to be made up with the help of their Heavenly Father.
The tender mercies of the Lord are beautiful and encouraging, and the fact that my girls live with pure hearts and righteous desires are tender mercies, indeed.
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