A New Generation – General Conference Notes and Bingo April 1, 2022

I can hardly believe that my little girl is not so little any more!

I sort of have a thing for General Conference. Most anyone familiar with my blog already knows that. But apparently it has rubbed off in an unexpected, but very fun way, on some of my kids. Several of them – without any awareness on my part until after they were done – took on making their very own versions of General Conference BINGO this year. SIX and ONE actually made a competition out of it. LOL I got to be the judge for whose BINGO boards won in 5 different categories. It was pretty fun for me – totally awesome mom experience honestly. SIX made hers by cutting and gluing and drawing with pencil, but ONE (who has already graduate high school and has a certificate in media design from our tech college) went a different route. Here is what she came up with…

Temples and General Conference – Sounds Like a Good Combo To Me! September 26, 2021

I was hanging out with FIVE this afternoon after church and asked her what she wanted to have available for General Conference this time. We started looking for some of her old favorites. We looked at my Conference Trains and then the Conference Flower Garden. I decided it was HIGH TIME that I FINALLY updated those two fun conference activity sets. I mean really! It’s been a hot minute since I last did that! But when I went to open the files and take that project on, I learned that I only have the svg files (my preferred file format for creating digital artwork – I love when things can scale as well as svg allows!) on my old defunct laptop named Olaf. SO NOT COOL! I did NOT – absolutely NOT – want to recreate my same wheel again! So, I asked HUBBY if he would be willing to pretty, pretty please rescue my old files from their prison on the old dead laptop. (Sometimes being a hoarder pays off – so SO glad we hadn’t simply purged the old laptop until we get a chance to pull my files off!!!) HUBBY is A-MAZ-ING and started the process of pulling my zillions of old files off of Olaf and onto a portable hard drive for me. But until that transfer process is complete, I was still stuck without my files.

I could have patiently waited for those files, but patience is a virtue I am only striving for and have not really attained today. That and I wanted to get crafty NOW. (Oh, maybe that is the same issue – no patience. LOL) When I have a few open minutes that I can craft, I don’t dare wait until later to do a project. Later often fails to show up! So I asked this not-so-little-anymore princess of mine what she would want on Conference notes pages if I were to make her something NEW.

NEW!? She was excited – and frankly, so was I! We started wandering about the internet for inspiration and she decided temples were the thing she wanted. What a great idea!!!

General Conference FEAST-ing October 2, 2016

I made a new type of BINGO board for General Conference and we tried it out during this Sunday Morning Session.

IT WAS AMAZING!!!!!

It was such an incredible experience that I am changing the board and putting 5 different letters at the top in place of the B-I-N-G-O. I am hereby calling this General Conference F-E-A-S-T!

Personal General Conference BINGO October 1, 2016

Make Conference BINGO a spiritual FEAST!

I can’t believe I forgot to post this! I actually made this after Conference in April but wanted to post it closer to this Conference, but…. Well, let’s just say I completely forgot I hadn’t posted it yet! LOL

Anyway, this is my new invention. Actually there’s nothing new about BINGO or doing BINGO during General Conference, but this was a new way to approach it.

New and Improved General Conference Train! April 2, 2016

 

I had decided to give up on doing anything with my Conference Train for this April Conference. Sometimes even good things have to get set aside for better and best things! And really, that’s OK! Then the unthinkable happened – my kids wanted to watch an uplifting movie that they have been wanting to see for a while, but we haven’t had a chance to see together after the afternoon session was over today. So… Magically I found myself with OVER an HOUR of time that I could sit with my kids and enjoy time together while they did something lifting to them and I could mess with my trains!!! Magical appearances of open time just NEVER happens it seems, so I did not look the gift horse in the mouth, but instead I grabbed my computer and began playing with choochoos! I am SOOOOO excited!!!! Plus, I finally made a caboose!!! Anyway, I simply can’t wait until October to share them with you, so here they are!

General Conference Flower Garden – Weeded and Watered March 31, 2016

Better now than Saturday morning! I had hoped to finish this up before now, but Thursday is better than JUST barely before Conference starts at 10:00am (MST) this weekend. Right? Anyway, here is an updated version of the General Conference Flower Garden that I made before. I have added our 3 new Apostles, changed Elder Nelson’s page to reflect his new position as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, added in blank pages for Seventies or other men who speak, AND finally added a page for the sisters who speak!

72-Hour Kit Camping for Conference March 26, 2015

My 72-hour kits are decidedly in a state of unruly-ness and are surely ill prepared to be of any use or value to anyone at the moment. Our norm is to bust out our kits between Saturday sessions of General Conference, swap out ill fitting clothes, pull out and eat for lunch and as Conference snacks the foods that need to be rotated, and try out one or two or three of the dry pack meals that we have chosen to keep in ours. (They have a mega long shelf life and are a bit pricey so we don’t rotate them every time.) We also try to add SOMETHING, even if it is super simple or seemingly unimportant, to our packs each time.

I love this method! The biggest reason I love it?

Peace in My Tempests March 3, 2015

Here are some thoughts I jotted in my journal after watching a Bible Video that struck me in unexpected ways today. These thoughts are simply my feelings, but they struck with so much new light today that I really wanted to share them even though I don’t have time to really edit them or tweak them to be anything more than my rambled thoughts. Hopefully they offer something worthwhile in your day anyway. 🙂

First, here’s the video…

Or you can find it here too.

Now for my thoughts from it…

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know Some About You February 25, 2015

I am LOVING my new calling and it is likely to direct some of what gets posted on here for the time being. Though, since I haven’t been posting anything lately, I suppose any excuse to take the time to post is a wonderful thing. 😉 Actually, I have simply had to make some choices to find better balance in my life and pretty much ignoring social media and this blog have been requirements to attempt to reach that balance point. I have several things that I intend to do over the next while on my blog, but it will not be coming fast or super frequent. But, it is more important for me to keep my real life as functional as possible than to keep my blog supplied with new posts and material. I hope it is worth it for others to still keep my blog active even though I’m not updating it tons, and if not, at least it is an outlet for me when I need it.

Anyway, enough of that rambling.

Keeping it Simple June 22, 2014

We have “Quiet Time” at my house for a while every Sunday after church. This started as a matter of self preservation when we lived in a tiny tiny trailer with multiple kids (I think we only even had ONE and TWO back then). The oldest thought she was too old for naps, but she was SO in that phase of almost never napping, but really needing a nap after several days of not having one. Sundays seemed like a perfect solution! That seemed all the more obvious when TWO so desperately NEEDED a nap after church every week. There was really NO functional way in our tiny house to GET sleep to come for TWO (not keep, that we could do, but getting her there was another story) if ONE was wound up after church and noisily telling all about every detail of what she did in nursery or primary.

Shhhhh

Hence the introduction of “Quiet Time!” ONE and TWO were sent to bed with quiet activities – books, issues of the Friend, characters from their Noah’s ark set, lacing cards, quiet books, etc. – and the requirement that they play with quietly so the other sister could sleep if she needed. 9 times out of 10 (in those early days) both girls would be sound asleep after just a short time playing quietly in her bed. I LOVED IT!

Then I realized WHY I loved it so much. It was NOT just because both my girls got their naps in happily. It was because I knew they were being edified with their play time, getting needed sleep, AND I got some honest to goodness time to ponder things of the Spirit. Perhaps I’m the only mother that has ever struggled to feel like she has enough time to pray or study scriptures or write in a journal or ever ponder anything without distraction or interruption, but I sort of doubt that I am alone in that challenge. Either way, I was LOVING the feeling of renewal I started being able to gain on the Sabbath like I had when I was in my high school and single college days.

I had always LOVED Sundays! That was absolutely my favorite day of the week! As a mom, I was starting to feel stressed rather than rejuvenated on Sunday. I did not like that one bit! I honestly don’t think I had even noticed how bad it had gotten until we started Quiet Time and I started to feel that replenishing of my soul again each week. I knew that I NEEDED that! Since then, we have had more kids and moved into a home with more space, but Quiet Time has remained.