General Conference

The day started out very frustrating. Nobody wanted to get up and nobody wanted to eat. they were all excited for General Conference to begin. We made sack lunches (we did this yesterday) and spread a sheet out on the basement floor. They really enjoy watching conference this way. We could tell they were listening when they would make comments on the talks.

In between sessions we played "Nice Kitty" and "Swoop Bunny." The girls didn't like Swoop Bunny until they 'got it.' Joseph and Ben were the last to 'get it' and were such great sports about it.

Everyone was kinda restless during the last session. I came upstairs with Ruth and Moroni and they went down for a nap and I got to hear the last of the last session in peace. I remembered to record the last three sessions (Saturday afternoon and the two Sunday sessions) so I can watch some of those until the conference archive comes out online with the PDF versions. They already have it split into a recording for each talk so I could put it on my flash drive and listen to it in the big van. I loved doing that last year. I guess the one down side to having the minivan is that I don't have to drive the big van as much and that's the vehicle that has the USB port. Maybe I should make a CD up since the minivan has a CD player.

We ate cinnamon rolls during the last session too. It's a great tradition to have cinnamon rolls (I have found that a lot of people have the same tradition), but the infusion of food/sugar might, in part, be responsible for some of the craziness. I think for next conference, we'll have cinnamon rolls for breakfast and pop some popcorn for the afternoon session snack. Robert thought the idea a bad one since we'd have to vacuum, but I think I'm going to push to at least try it. Vacuuming's not so bad when it's already been vacuumed once and you're just cleaning up immediately after.

When General Conference was finished the BYU channel had "The Other Side of Heaven" playing. Rachel and I sat down and watched it. She really enjoyed it and I enjoyed watching something uplifting with her. Since I was occupied watching the movie with Rachel, Robert made dinner. We didn't eat until 7pm -- but the movie finished just before that anyway (and I suspect they were all full on cinnamon rolls).

After dinner we cleaned up and talked with the older kids about what needs to happen if they're going to stay up after younger kids go to bed (ie, not be grouchy the next morning, wake up by 8ish, help get younger kids to bed, no computer/tv after 10). We had commented that ideally they'd be in bed by 11 and either Rebekah or Rachel said, "I know, the spirit goes to bed at 11."

We read some Huck Finn together and then sent everyone off. Joseph had to carry Sam to bed since he fell asleep listening to the story. Ruth, however was still wide awake. I put her in her bed, got her woobie, a sippie cup of milk, and a kiss good night. I took her to bed several times more. At 10 I sent Mary in with her so someone else would be in there, reading stories etc. Between 10 and 10:30 Robert was the one taking her back to bed each time she came in. She looked so sad, "I want my mommy." One point even Robert asked if we should cave. We decided to just keep putting her back into bed. She finally fell asleep. I suspect a few more nights like this and then she'll be used to it. I also need to have her stop napping so she's more tired at bed time and it's easier to fall asleep. It's so hard to do that because they are so tired in the afternoon and the peace during nap time is nice. Moroni will be next. Hopefully we can get Rebekah's room cleaned out this week (it's spring break) and we'll start tucking Moroni in. He's going to be a hard one. Robert's going to have to give up his Harry Potter blanket since it's Moroni's favorite blanket (with the ties). I guess we all will have sacrifices to make.