conference surprises

I love Conference weekend. But who doesn't?

We did have a few surprises this year. (let's see how many times I can use that word in this post!)

What was not a surprise was how wonderful the weekend was. It was great to listen together as a family to direction from our prophet and apostles. And not surprisingly it was fabulous.

The first surprise was from my cousin, Randi who I haven't seen for several years. She called on Thursday night to let us know she was on her way back home to OR and wanted to stop on her way to visit with Janice and I. She came right in between sessions of conference on Saturday. We had lunch with all of our families and visited. It was great to see her and her beautiful daughters again.Another amazing surprise from conference was the announcement of the Meridian ID temple! We were so overcome with excitement and surprise at this news that we didn't even hear where the last temple was being built. Wow! What an amazing experience to have another temple built in our valley here.

More surprises....How well behaved the kids were this year. I did nothing different than the usual and they did surprisingly well. They had their moments but all in all they did great. We always listen to all four sessions of conference together. And I know that it can get tiresome for the kids who are young and don't understand it all. I hope that our conference traditions teach them the importance of conference. That by being together to listen, they catch the spirit of the meeting even if they don't understand all that is said. I try to make it fun with conference treats, and fun pages to color, we even put up a conference fort on Sunday to listen in.

On Saturday night while Steve was at the Priesthood I was surprised by a phone call from a friend to go to Deseret Book's conference sale. Her older daughter watched all our kids and we took off to catch some great sales and hopefully to win door prize too. I generally never win so imagine my surprise when my name actually got drawn this year. I won a book about the last week of the Savior's life that I am excited to have for this upcoming Easter season.

I got a couple of great piano books too that I hope will surprise Matt with new confidence and enthusiasm in his lessons.

Sunday was a wonderfully relaxing day with just our family at home soaking up the conference spirit and messages. No big surprises but that's great too.