General Conference - The best two weekends of the year

I'm getting prepared (AND EXCITED) for our worldwide General Conference this weekend!!
Pretty much summed up with
 time with my family,
 in my pajamas,
 making our favorite treats,
all while being fed spiritually by our Prophet of God and inspiring church leaders...
it is the best (two) weekends of the year! 

I am going to do better at being temporally (we've got our Saturday jobs planned for Friday night) and spiritually (be reading a few conference favorites, like this one by Elder Hales, "General Conference: Strengthening Faith and Testimony".) prepared.
As for helping my kids get prepared and excited, I love this quote:
“It is when children are young that parents must be innovated in helping them develop good habits regarding conference participation. As our children are given opportunities to observe and learn the role of these special witnesses, they will receive a spiritual confirmation of the sacred calling of their church leaders and they will feel a deeper love for and interest in these leaders and their message.” 
– Neil L. Anderson
Also, I loved this talk about helping our children understand doctrine to really permeate their hearts.

 I'm going to share some of my strategies and plan here so I can reference them in the future,

 and if anyone else benefits too...well that's a bonus!! :)

First, we held our family home evening this last Sunday, the week before focusing on our upcoming conference. My goal was to get everyone excited and focus on the blessing conference is in our lives.  We watched this video which gives a great tour of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City,
 this video, about WHY conference matters and

talked about the importance of note taking,
(for this I read through a recipe for cookies and then asked everyone to tell me from memory the exact measurements and ingredients they could remember.  I kept a tally.  Then I passed out pens and paper and read through the ingredients again.  EVERYONE got the ingredients perfect.  Everyone could even more easily list them from memory!  Everyone got a treat :)
Next we made countdown coloring pages to hang around the house.  The kids could list, color, or draw anything they wanted about conference that they were looking forward to.
Tyler is looking forward to hearing the new temples announced

Matthew's drawing was us all being together (and I'm pretty sure represents my morning hair!!).

 

Along this same idea, I found this link with a cute paper chain ideas a little late,
but definitely will do this in the fall.

Second, my kids made conference note taking binders.

    I bought an inexpensive six pack at Costco and let the kids cut out pictures or quotes from old church magazines.  I want them to love these and want to use them.  Then I printed out an activity packet.  These packets are everywhere including lds.org, sugardoodle.net, redheadedhostess.com, or one of my favorites here.

 The trick for me is having this all done ahead of time.  Too many years, the morning of conference as the opening hymn begins I've been in front of the printer.  Not any more :)

Megan's binder cover turned out so cute!

 Third, I made this conference center board.  This originally came from this blog (she has amazing ideas on gospel teaching) with many of the fantastic printables from this blog.  I choose the things that I wanted and love how it turned out, plus we've had fun working on it together.

Fourth, I'm prepping for our conference traditions.
In past years I've done bowls of candy labeled with principles (for example faith, prayer, etc), but decided it caused too much getting up and down.  So this year I made this basket with treats and attached photos of the First Presidency and 12 General Authorities.  When they speak we can open that particular treat or cut into the strawberries, etc.

Don't judge :), we didn't eat it all.

My kids LOVE traditions and even if I wanted to take a year off, there is no way!  They count on "conference cake" (it's a delicious sour cream coffee cake), going on a walk between sessions and we always take our Primary teachers a treat.  This is a great opportunity to thank our Primary teachers for all they do to prepare and bring the Spirit to their classes each week.  This year I made my new favorite cookies, Brown Butter Salted Carmel Snickerdoodles.  Seriously, if you aren't hoping to eat several, don't even make them.  They are so amazing!  Also, we found a cute paper plate basket tutorial on pinterest, my kids wrote a note on the back, and we packaged them up like this. 

After conference, there is the challenge to take what we have learned
and been inspired to DO and put it into practice.  We each picked our favorite talk and are giving a little report about it this week for family night. 
I also found this cute idea to help remember main points.
How blessed we are to hear from a prophet of God and his inspired counselors and 12 apostles!