General Conference

Not a picture of Aaron to be found this week. I promise he was here. This weekend was General Conference, which I always super look forward to. It also happened to be Cub Parent Weekend for Spencer's pack and I didn't notice the overlap until after I had signed myself, Spencer, and Genevieve up to go to it. So we missed conference on Saturday, but got back in time Sunday morning to watch all of Sunday and I watched the women's session Sunday night. So many great things from this edition of General Conference. I'm still processing. But first, here's some pictures from the overnight. 

 Spencer was super excited to learn how to use a flint and steel. I'm going to order him his own here soon because he loves it so much.

 He was a big fan of all the activities. Here is archery.

 We started out the day making pool noodle horses and doing races. Genevieve spent far more time coloring her horse than actually racing, and she had no problem with that.

 The camp was super nice. Lots of grass, nice trails, trees. The campsite was great.

 We stayed in these bunk bed lean to things. I was shocked how clean they were. Shocked in a pleasant way.

 We had a great weekend. BB guns, archery, slingshots, fire building, campfire, s'mores, sleeping out. It was perfection for my two bigs.

 Chloe still doesn't have a lot of hair, but the longer it gets the more it curls. She's my only one of the four that looks to have curls all over her head. You can see Genevieve in the background of this shot. She has big waves in the bottom half of her hair too. We'll see how Chloe's turns out if it ever decides to grow.

 Chloe has been huge into reading lately. She reads in her chair, in bed, on the couch. Pretty much anywhere is good.

 She lost her blankie, lovingly known as Whita, for three days. We found it in our freezer bag in the back of the van. That is an excellent hiding place. She was so happy to have it back.

Okay, so back to General Conference. I had a number of takeaways. 

First, it's time to be more proactive and intentional in living life and the gospel. We've been in a holding pattern in life in general for 18 months as we try to finish this PhD of Bill's, and it's time to shake off the funk per se and move onto being more decisive about how we're living our life. 

Second, two-hour church is just crazy! There have been wishful rumors for years and I was completely blown away when Bill texted me that news. 

Third, I'm doing a 10-day media fast like President Nelson challenged us. So good luck even finding this blog post because I'm off Facebook and Instagram for now. Makes for lots more productive time in my day. I already get less distracted while I work in the morning and at night. That's a huge bonus.

Fourth, I'm also taking the challenge to read the Book of Mormon between now and the end of the year. I like to listen to my scriptures on the LDS app, and I've spent the morning breezing through seven chapters. I like so far that I'm getting the cohesive story better than just my typical one chapter a day pace. 

Fifth, I'm taking the challenge to refer to the Church by its full name. I feel like it falls under the category of I can do hard things. It's not that hard, but saying I'm Mormon is kind of the lazy method and doesn't lead to any conversation, so I'm going to push myself to be a little more forward in that. 

It was an excellent weekend. I still need to catch up on the Saturday sessions, but what I heard already was wonderful.