Conference with Kids...

I  LOVE this time of year when the weather (at least currently in Texas) is perfectly warm, the flowers are starting to bloom, and we get to welcome spring by celebrating Easter AND (for members of our church )  we get to listen to  General Conference. I always love the feeling of having my spiritual batteries fully recharged and getting to hear and learn from inspired messages from our beloved church leaders. As wonderful and spiritual as it can be...with kiddos it can sometimes be a little bit of a challenge...
We have done a few different things over the years to help our kiddos look forward to and get something out of conference...Some of the things we do for conference are:

Conference Crepes (we have done this for the past 12 years since we first got married and it's one of our all time favorite family traditions) --the morning of conference, before it starts, we make and eat crepes filled with fruit, pudding, fresh whipped cream, peanut butter, nutella, lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar, eggs...every year we try some different combos- it's awesome and our kids love this!  We make sure to finish up before it starts and everyone is full and ready to listen! we usually eat what's left for a lunch snack, and have an easy crock pot dinner.

Conference Bingo- is always a must! this tradition has stuck around and we do it each time. We use candy as the bingo pieces, the kiddos place a piece on the pictures that show what the talks are about. We do the black out version to help it go longer...they try to black out the board before eating any pieces...this is harder for the littler ones;) Get yours HERE ( I love this one because you can mix up the categories by refreshing the page, that way everyone gets different bingo cards with out having to go to multiple websites:)

Conference Packets- Another tradition we can't do with out! I know there are many different versions of this, but we always get ours here  I like to punch holes and put them in binders to keep the pages together and make it easier to work in. I have the same binders that I've used over the past years, and it's always fun each conference to go through them and see what the kids did 6 months ago while I  replenish the sheets..

I love what this gal did to get her packets ready for conference:

(this pic is from her post here-- she has other great conference ideas too)

Conference Tent (idea from the Friend magazine and recommended by Grammy:)- we've done this twice and love it...but we decided it's a once every year, or every other year tradition as it can be time consuming if you have a ginormous, hard to assemble tent, like we have. But the kids LOVE it when we do it...we hope to do it for the next conference in Oct. (this pic of our tent below was taken last year...I can't believe how tiny Lily looks and how cute she looks with her arms folded)

This year we are going to try doing this in lieu of the tent.....

Conference Wall- (PDF and idea found here)-- you post different topics on a wall and cut out pics of the First Presidency and the quorum of the 12 Apostles. After a talk, one member of the family puts the picture of the person that spoke under the category. It helps kids and adults alike to pay attention. I like that we can do this as a family and it gives a great visual on what the over all theme was for that specific conference. I also love that, if laminated, you can use it over and over each time (just need to print and laminate new pics as new members of the quorum and presidency are added) 

Happy Conference Weekend Everybody!! Enjoy it!!!