A few years ago while watching General Conference one of the kids asked if we could go to general conference one day. I did the math and said, "in October of 2019 all 4 of you will be 8 and we will all go to General Conference." (you have to be 8 to go to general conference). Well.... since then we have had a baby - so it wasn't "all of us" but they held me to it and last month we made the trek to Salt Lake for general conference. It was hard getting tickets. Apparently our Stake never gets 6 tickets to one session. So I called up the Murdocks (the old Denver South mission presidents) and asked if they could get any. They got us 6 tickets to the Sunday morning session. It was a fast trip. We left Friday morning and came home Monday morning. We enjoyed watching conference at grandma's house and appreciated her watching Dane while we went to conference. The Murdock's even had us over for a bunch after our session (they were living in a condo behind the conference center).
On Friday evening, after driving all day to Salt Lake, Brock and I went to do baptisms in the Salt Lake Temple. We had planned it - but when it came time to go we were both a little tired and just wanted to stay at grandmas. I told him it was his choice and I would take him if he wanted to go. He decided he wanted too. I am so glad. It was a wonderful evening. These are pictures before we went in.
Then after we got out. We weren't the only ones with the idea to go to baptisms the day before general conference (and the temple is closing for 4 years at the end of the year). We waited for 2 hours and we actually got pushed to the front of the line on accident by a temple worker - or we would have waited for 4 hours! Brock was so good to wait and had a great attitude. We had quite conversations, read New Era's, looked for symbolism, and pondered a lot.
Afterwards we walked around the the reflecting pool and as we stood there Brock said, "I am glad we came, it was worth it. Thanks for taking me." Parenting win!
Sunday morning we left grandma's house about 7:45. We had to be in our seats by 8:45 for Music and the Spoken Word. We got there in PLENTY of time so we sat in the car in the mall parking lot and talked about general conference and prepared them for the protesters. There weren't too many but the kids were pretty fascinated by them. While crossing the street from the mall to temple square we ran into Michelle Craig. She had just spoken during the Saturday Morning session. The girls were thrilled to meet her! It was a great conference treat.
It was pretty magical being on temple square during conference. My dream is to one day go to all 4 (or 5 sessions). We would stay at the plaza and just be there all weekend! The spirit is so strong and I just feel at home there.
Right before we went in.
It was a long time to sit (8:45 - 12:00) so after finding our seats the girls and I walked around until conference began.
They wanted their pictures by Sister Aburto. She is their FAVORITE. They love her talks and her LDS videos about her conversion.
The kids were great during conference (except Noah fell asleep for a speaker :). On the car ride to Utah we all named one apostle we hoped we would hear live. All the kids got their top choice (Uchtdorf and Stevenson) - it was a conference miracle! Both were deeply personal experience for my kids and I know they felt seen by the Lord. Elder Uchtdorf opened his talk relating the story of The Hobbitt, a book we had just finished reading together as a family and Elder Stevenson was an extra special treat because last year he came to our stake conference and he told us 2 stories during his talk and related them to Satan. Well... in his conference talk he gave those 2 stories again! We couldn't believe it. My kids felt like "insiders" and he was telling the story just for them, like he knew they were there. I told them, he didn't know, but Heavenly Father knew.
