Conference Traditions

This year we combined the old with the new.

Old tradition:

M&M's given out during MUSIC. We can't watch General Conference without M&Ms. A few weeks before Conference I start watching for a good sale on them because I know I'll need a few bags. This year our grocery store had the BIG bag on sale, buy one get one free (a BOGO - love them). This is actually more M&M's than we'll need, but I'll use the leftovers at FHE on Monday for a game (and any left over after that will get eaten with all five kids home this week for Spring Break. Trust me, no M&M will go wasted).


By the way, the kids have to "earn" their M&Ms by telling us what they learned in the previous segment of conference. THEN they get a colorful handful.

the official m&m passer out-er

New Tradition:

It was so nice of Walmart to have not five but SIX different colors of notebooks for Brady to buy for our new Conference tradition. That way when two children were fighting over the same color, we could take the PURPLE one back that no one wanted, trade it for a YELLOW one so that the one who originally wanted GREEN would give it up to the second one who wanted GREEN and take the YELLOW one and everyone was happy. Follow that? It doesn't matter. What matters is that this new tradition was a success! Everyone actually loved taking notes in their new notebook. They weren't writing feverishly the whole time (except for Tucker). There was still plenty of coloring going on in separate coloring books, but I'm telling you, they were listening and taking notes.

There's an incentive for taking notes. On Monday for FHE we'll have a Conference Quiz. Each person in the family is responsible for submitting three questions from what they heard during Conference that we will use for our lesson. (I'll be throwing out m&ms for correct answers!) The incentive to take good notes is that this is an OPEN NOTEBOOK test so whatever they wrote down will help them tomorrow night.

My favorite notes were those taken by Jordan. My five-year-old who is learning to write. Each sentence runs together and many words do too, but my favorite part is in the middle of the page where it says, "rafael E. Pino I like his hair." He did have good hair, you have to admit. Black and slicked back. Jordan has good taste in hair and takes a lot of care to make sure he has a good "up" each morning before going to school. (pictures of his "up" would be a good post for another day. He has a "school up" and a "church up." The school up is a little more wild).

my meticulous note-taker. He counted 11 pages of notes after just the Saturday session.

This is a small sampling of what our family room looks like during Conference: It's a mess, crayons, markers, colored pencils, coloring books, computer-printed coloring pages, TV trays - all strewn about the room. But the kids are listening and that makes me so happy. Happy enough to ignore the mess.

p.s. for more great ideas for Conference weekend see the article in the March edition of the Ensign. I read a few of these there and just adapted them a little for our family.