my favorite weekend of the year

Twice a year, our church has what is called general conference. Instead of attending church, we spend the weekend at home watching a live broadcast of our church leaders in Salt Lake City speaking to us and members throughout the world and sharing spiritual messages and counsel. Conference weekend has always been like a holiday to me, right up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving (really!). We always come together as a family, eat lots of food (including traditional favorites like scones for breakfast, Mama's tacos and Marie Callender's pies), and partake in a great spiritual feast as we listen to our Prophet and the apostles. And the music, oh the music! It is one of my favorite parts. I love hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing, and am so grateful for beautiful music that inspires and helps us feel the Spirit. Conference is a chance to receive encouragement and inspiration, and to ponder on the things we can do in our lives to improve and be better.

I have always loved general conference, and now as a young mother look forward to it even more. The first general conference after my husband and I moved to Texas, so far away from all of our family members, as the broadcast started and the pipe organ started to play I got a little teary-eyed with joy at the opportunity to receive counsel from my Heavenly Father. It felt like coming home!

This weekend was wonderful. We had lots of fun with our little family. We made a giant board game (Candy Land) - haha, we are nerdy - and played hide and seek with our kids! They loved it!

We watched general conference on Jonathan's fun projector and basked in the joy and inspiration. We were so glad to have friends come over and watch with us during a couple of the sessions.

The kids colored and played the "I Spy General Conference" game that I made up as we watched. It helped us to pay attention and listen for different topics that were discussed! We also got points for finding things like certain colors of ties, the organ, and my Aunt Ruth singing in the choir. We racked up enough points to earn ice cream cones!

We fried up some tacos (with my secret family recipe that goes back three generations) and ate with our good friends the Blairs. 

The men went to Priesthood meeting while the mamas watched a chick flick at our house (and the children ran around like crazy, turning off the lights and shining flashlights and screaming and playing with every toy in our playroom - such happy chaos!).

We ate an entire apple pie with our good friends (hot out of the oven with ice cream, yummy!) and then stayed up late playing the Wii. Oh, and all 5 of the children were still awake when they left at around 11:00. Talk about grumpy children in the morning, but what a fun memory :) We are so grateful for wonderful friends to celebrate holidays and conference with :)

Find all of the general conference addresses here!

Comfy Conference Weekend

Conference was just wonderful, as always. We watched the morning sessions at home while drinking hot cocoa and eating cinnamon rolls, then headed over to my parents' house for the other sessions.

James kept his Daddy busy playing blanket games together. In my family we call them "blanket tricks," and they consist of the child laying in the middle of a blanket, while the Daddy grabs all four corners of the blanket and swings or spins it around. This has been one of James' favorite activities lately, and he will often ask, "Baby? Blanket? Guy?" Translation: "I want to lay in the blanket like a baby while Daddy swings me up to the sky!"

As you can see, they also had fun hiding from Mama in the blanket, and riding on the blanket like a car.




What were your favorite talks at Conference? There were so many good ones; I especially enjoyed:

Elder Bednar's talk. He talked about three ways to become more diligent and concerned in our homes. 1) Express love & show it, 2) Bear testimony & live it, and 3) Be consistent.

Elder Scott's talk. He talked about learning how to be led by the Spirit.

President Uchtdorf's talk. He said, "Love is the way of the disciple."

President Eyring's talk. He talked about becoming more like the Savior. He said, "We can and must expect to become better as long as we live."

President Monson's talk. "What did you do for someone today?"

And of course Elder Holland's talk where he bore powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon.

I can't wait to re-read all of the talks!

Family Fun & General Conference

I love my family - we definitely know how to have a good time and have always been very easily entertained. Growing up, my siblings and I loved to do all sorts of random things together. For instance, when we were little we used to always make a newspaper during General Conference - we even had a typewriter that we used (and we thought it was the coolest thing ever!). We used to put on these big productions for my parents - we'd put on plays, we'd make a "restaurant" in our room and dress up as waiters, we'd make "dummies" with our stuffed animals and put them all over the house for when my parents got home. Well, I guess some things never change - we are still nerdy as ever and love to do random things, like make life-size board games!

On Friday night we hung out with my siblings while my parents were at their traditional Gibbons family "adult" get-together. A couple of years ago we were bored and randomly decided to make a life-size Monopoly game:


Last year it was Settlers of Catan (made out of foam - we cleaned out the dollar store's foam supply):


This year? Connect 4! It was pretty awesome.





We love General Conference! We had such a wonderful weekend listening to the Prophet and Apostles speak and spending time with family. There were lots of wonderful talks, some of our favorites were President Uchtdorf, Elder Bednar and Elder Oaks. And, as always, the music was beautiful!


Here are some pictures from General Conference weekend with my family:

Liz and James wore matching outfits!

Another one of our silly antics - making a family out of balloons. The "baby" in the green outfit was pretty creepy...

Trying on Uncle Josh's hoodie

Watching conference

What cool dudes!

Create

I just found this video on the Mormon Messages Youtube channel and just had to share it! I LOVED this talk of President Uchtdorf's, and this video clip of it is just so neat!

I love what he said about us as women and our amazing potential as daughters of God:

"You might say, “I’m not the creative type... If that is how you feel, think again, and remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe."

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

Updates

My family will be very happy to know that I finally posted a couple of pictures of our boy! It has been tricky without high speed internet, because I have a lot of cute pictures I have been wanting to put up!

We are doing well and have a few updates. As you probably know, Jonathan had to quit his job (see previous post) and has been job searching in the Boise area, and we are staying with his family in Adrian, Oregon. It has been a bit frustrating and we have been applying to jobs and sending in resumes like crazy. Well, he did find a job! We were way excited, obviously, however it doesn't pay nearly enough. We knew that it probably wouldn't pay quite as much as we wanted when we applied (it is one of those "depends on experience" things), but we had our hopes that he had enough relevant experience for us to at least be able to scrape by with it. It is a job in an optometry office (ironic) and it is mainly a sales job (selling glasses), but since there are only three people who work there (including the optometrist) he will be doing all sorts of things, including probably making the glasses, which is way cool! We also thought that since that is the case, he would probably get paid an ok amount, since opticians, we have heard, make pretty good money. Well, like I said, he got the job, but he was only offered the BARE MINIMUM amount that was listed. Jonathan was able to talk him up a little, but only 50 cents higher. When Jonathan called me and told me that he got the job, I said "Yay!!" and then when I asked how much they would pay him, he said "you don't wanna know." My husband knows me all too well. :) But, any job is better than no job, so of course we took it.

He had his first day today and really enjoyed it. It is a bummer that the pay is so low - it is definitely enough to pay all our bills right now, but definitely not enough to pay rent. And we are so dying to get into our own place and figure things out. So, he is working there as of today, and we are continuing our search/hoping he'll bring in TONS of revenue for the company and get like a five or six dollar raise. Hey, it could happen, right? :) Anyway, we are really grateful that he at least has A JOB right now.

I have lots of fun pictures of a fun little spontaneous "photo shoot" we had the other day down the road in a pretty little area with some pretty leaves. I actually got a couple of the pictures to load, and will definitely load more later. Isn't he just the sweetest boy? Like my Dad always says, "he's a dandy!"



James is growing like a weed. His favorite thing lately is to look out the window to try and see the dogs and the cats. He gets SO EXCITED when he sees them! He is a great waver and will wave on cue whenever we say "bye bye." Today he was "talking" to my Mom on the phone (aka listening to my Mom talk to him!) and he waved "to" her, it was adorable.

He is my little buddy, and I actually think that in some ways he is a little miniature me! He has this new smile where he smiles so big and squints his eyes shut - which is exactly the way I used to smile when I was little (except my face was a bit more chubby!) I wish I had a picture of me to put next to this one so you could see the comparison!


My parents tell me that when I was little, at mealtime after awhile I would just kind of sit there, not eating much, until they tried to get me out of the high chair - then I would start shoving food in my mouth like crazy! James often does the exact same thing! Just when I think he's all done, I try to take the food away and he just wants more!

Another thing I did when I was little (and I actually have a memory of this) - when I was taking a bath I couldn't STAND for there to be dirt in the bathtub. I would FREAK out and yell "DIRT! DIRT!"and my parents would scoop out the dirt. (Makes me sound like a clean freak or something, but that is totally not the case, anyone who knows me well can attest to that!) Well, the other day I was giving James a bath and he was sitting there playing, when he all of a sudden stopped what he was doing and looked into the water. He found a little speck of dirt and pointed at it! I just had to chuckle to myself.

The other day I went and visited our cute friend Karli, who is in Jonathan's parents' ward. She was so sweet and uploaded some digital scrapbooking software on my computer for me and showed me how to get started. It is SO much fun, I am totally hooked and have already made like 15 or 20 pages. Thanks so much, Karli! Our little boys are close in age and played so cute while we did the computer stuff.

In other news, my best friend Janina had her baby this past week!!! I'm not going to give any of the stats or info, because I know she'll want to tell everyone on her own blog and stuff, but I just can't contain my excitement for her ANY longer and just HAD to say something about it! :) I talked to her on the phone today and it was so much fun. Love you, Janina!

So, all in all we are doing well. :) This has been quite the interesting couple of months for our little family and I have to say that I definitely have learned a bit about faith and relying on the Lord. It is hard sometimes but I know that things will work out somehow. I've been reading the conference talks and they help SO much! I just love Elder Perry's talk and it has actually helped me a lot. I just love this part -

Those of us who have been around a while—and Elder Wirthlin and I have been around for a long time—have recognized certain patterns in life’s test. There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: “The best is yet to be” (“Rabbi Ben Ezra,” in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103). We can’t predict all the struggles and storms in life, not even the ones just around the next corner, but as persons of faith and hope, we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and the best is yet to come.

Wii Fun

After Conference on Sunday we had some fun times playing the Wii, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take some pictures - it was just so funny! Some of these are great and I may get in trouble for putting them up on my blog - but I just can't help it :)

General Conference Weekend

We LOVE General Conference! Conference weekend has always been like a holiday for my family, we spend the weekend together and have fun traditions, and I just absolutely love being able to hear the prophet and apostles speak. It is always so inspiring and uplifting.

The talks during conference were great. Some of our favorites were Elder L. Tom Perry's talk ("the best is yet to be," he talked a lot about the book Walden which is one of Jonathan's favorites!), President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk about hope, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk about angels, Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin's talk ("Come what may, and love it!") and President Thomas S. Monson's talk about change and enjoying life as it happens, and not letting important things in the present pass you by while you plan and wait for the future. We can't wait to go back and read the talks.

We spent a lot of time with my family over the weekend and it was so much fun. James got to see his Aunts Liz and Abby who are away at BYU. We hung out with all my siblings on Friday night while my parents were at a Gibbons family gathering with my Dad's parents and siblings. We ate dinner, played an exciting game of Nerts, and made milkshakes and french fries. It was so much fun! Aunt Abby even got James a new book to read -


James reading some fun books with his aunts -


James learned some new things this weekend. He learned how to roll a ball. He also learned how to say "Liz!" His version sounds more like "Iz" - it is way cute. He also can say "Josh" - but his version is "Jish." He is getting really good at repeating sounds that we say - he likes to whisper when he is practicing saying things. This weekend Aunt Abby taught him how to lift his hands up high in the air! He had a fun time playing at Grandma's and Grandpa's house.





While the boys went to Priesthood Meeting, we had a girls night at home. Mom made her famous tacos, Grandma came over and we ate dinner and watched a Doris Day movie.

Here are some fun pictures from watching conference on Sunday afternoon. My whole family was there, as well as two of my sisters' boyfriends, so we had a lot of fun.








We finished up the weekend by eating a yummy dinner of beef stew that my Mama made and playing a board game. What a fun weekend!