After our weekend of the gender reveal and Jackson's birthday party, Tyler began 2 weeks of work travel. Monday morning he flew to Utah and was there for 36 hours before flying to Vegas Tuesday night. He worked there for a few days and then met up with Tom & Mike for a couple days of boys fun. He went to the temple, went golfing, played tennis & just lived it up with his college buddies. He didn't fly home until early Sunday morning Vegas time, but with the 3 hour time difference and cross country flight he didn't get home until Sunday evening, right after the Sunday afternoon session ended actually!
So home on the ranch, I had a fun week with the kids who normally behave really well when Tyler is out of town which I am so grateful for. We had some nicer weather so the kids and I were able to play at outside again which always makes for more fun days.
Last General Conference we were in Vermont with the Cooks for our leaf-peeping trip so it wasn't the norm. We attempted to watch on Sunday but Jackson didn't watch much at all and it was frustrating for me since the Cook kids were coloring and listening and Jackson just wanted to run around and play on the iPad.
Oh the difference 6 months makes. Things that we did that made a great weekend:
I brought the picnic table into the family room. This is normally in the basement and having it in the middle of the family room was a special treat.
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| Saturday morning session starts at noon for us. |
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| They ate lunch during the "morning" session. |
I also had three buzz words to listen for "Jesus" "Family" and "Temple." We started with 3 blank pages and as soon as they heard that work, they got to pick a sticker to stick on that page. I should have taken a picture but by the end, the "Jesus" page was overflowing with stickers! That was all we did for the first morning session and then about halfway through Abbie needed a nap and Jackson went upstairs for quiet time.
For the afternoon session, I knew they'd be awake and ready to play at 4 pm eastern time so this is when I brought out the big conference packet. Most of it was too advanced for Jackson but since it had the A-Z theme he liked picking out a letter and he'd color on the pages that were tricky. I made him right his name on each page when he was done. Then he was still listening for the buzz words and would get stickers from me if he heard those words said.
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| Abbie even helped color a few pages |
He really stayed engaged for basically the entire 2 hour session and I have to say that was our most successful session! He would get so excited if he heard a phrase he knew, such as "holy ghost" "Child of God" or just words he recognized like baptism, resurrection, or state names obviously :) Abbie even heard her friend's name "Mariah" mentioned in a talk and would get excited when she heard it repeated. I didn't even point that out to her, she noticed it on her own.
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| So proud of my sunbeam |
As soon as that session ended we went out to dinner at 5 Guys for a special treat. A whole week of Tyler out
of town and that was our first meal of eating out - props to me! ;) Then we stopped by the grocery store real quick to get some easter candy that we would use the next day.
Sunday morning, since conference didn't start until noon, we got together with some friends for a brunch at 10 am. It was perfect weather so we were even able to do it outside as a picnic! I made this California Breakfast Casserole that I pinned years ago and finally got around to making. It was a hit and I've already made it again since, Tyler wanted to try it of course! But it was a great way to start the morning, Jackson got to play with friends, Abbie got to see Alice & Mariah and had fun smiling and flirting with all the adults like normal, and I got to spend time with adults which is always nice when you are husband-less.
When we got home we had a little snack but the kids were pretty full from the brunch so no lunch was needed. That day I busted out the church bag, so special books, color wonder books, puzzles, etc that they only see once a week. This session also happened to be the one that my entire family was at since my Aunt Jean was speaking! Jackson spent a lot of the time scanning the audience trying to find Grammy, Grandad, Paige, Ben, Michael, Annika & Steven. No luck sadly.
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| Where's my family!?! |
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| Still loving that the table was in the family room luckily. |
Sunday afternoon they got a little distracted, but who could blame them. The highlight was Jackson hearing the MoTab perform I Stand All Amazed, he was thrilled they were singing his favorite song and even sang along. They stayed in the family room for most of it but then I
sent them upstairs to play near the end so I could start preparing
dinner and actually listen for a bit. We ate dinner as the session was
ending and then Tyler got home about 15 minutes later.
We were all very excited to see Daddy and show him what we'd been working on all weekend, especially the sticker pages!
The next day (Monday) I put the picnic table back downstairs and Jackson was sad to see it gone, I told him that was only something we did for conference. So when he got back from preschool that day he dragged it back up the stairs and requested to watch conference again. He even requested a talk he had remembered about the Oklahoma Storms - they sat and listened to the talk and I was so happy to see that they have an understanding already about the importance of conference and listening to our prophet and apostles speak :)
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| Monday morning Session :) |
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