Gentleman Conference

I know this post is super late, but at least I'm getting it in during the same month as General Conference, right? Or, as Caitlyn calls it, "Gentleman Conference." :)
A few weeks before Conference weekend, a sister in our ward gave a talk about preparing for Stake and General Conference and gave some really great, practical tips for making it a special weekend that your whole family looks forward to. I loved her ideas! And Caitlyn is old enough now that I can do fun things that she really enjoys and appreciates. So I got online and found printable coloring pages, crafts, and other ideas for during the sessions. Here are a few pics of some of the things we did:

A "Conference Tree"

Caitlyn LOVED finding the picture of the person speaking and gluing it to the leaf after I had cut the picture out. I used Conference Bingo printouts I found for the little topic squares.

So now every week for Family Home Evening, whoever's turn it is to give the lesson chooses a leaf from the Conference Tree and bases their lesson on that talk. It's so nice to have a built in FHE lesson plan for the next few months!

We also a had hidden "Musical Treat Bag" for Caitlyn and Nathan to run around the house and find during the songs. I did this because I liked the idea of having special treats (fun food makes anything special), but I didn't like the idea of just having a whole table full of food sitting there the whole time during Conference for us all to pig out on and feel stuffed and groggy afterward. So we just did simple little treats, like a lolli pop for each person, or a little snackbag of cheerios and mini-marshmallows. Simple, but the kids thought it was amazing! :)

After the Saturday p.m. session and before Quinn went to the Priesthood session, we had a treasure hunt and the treasure was homemade oreo ice cream shakes. While we ate our shakes we looked at all the leaves we'd made from the day's talks and talked about things that stood out to us. Then we did the same thing over dinner on Sunday evening.

It made for a really successful and meaningful Conference weekend! And for a couple weeks afterward Caitlyn kept asking, "Can we have Gentleman Conference today?" So hopefully we are starting a family tradition of making Conference something our whole family loves and looks forward to.