Conference Weekend

This is always an interesting weekend. How do you "attend" four hours of church two days in a row without going insane? There are bonuses: you don't have to dress up (unless you want to pursue the right frame of mind--which is sometimes easier when you dress appropriately for this occasion) and you can snack like sometimes your kids do in church. But you have a tightly controlled time limit in which your kids can be noisy and work off all the pent up energy they have. Our plan was simple: travel to the houses of family members who have t.v. reception (easier to sit around than a computer), have the kids be in the room watching conference while keeping hands busy doing appropriate activities, and make the kids run around the yard inbetween sessions. Unfortunately, I did forget the "busy" activities I was going to bring the kids (a matching card game of the prophet and apostles that gives a little info on each so they can get to know them better). My mom saved me with puzzles and our lincoln log set, and my in-laws saved me with an appropriate sticker book, another scripture hero book and we brought our logs to their house. As for the working energy off---didn't really happen. I wanted to go to Costco for garbage bags and batteries between conferences on Saturday (I miss Costco!!!), so the kids were just in shopping carts the whole time and on Sunday, we did jump some energy off on the trampoline for a short while until they came in to play inside. They did simultaneously work off the sugar they consummed that evening during a joint family b-day dinner. It's impressive to watch how much energy kids can have from sugar. I think my in-laws still have footprints on their walls.
P.S. Yes, we did enjoy conference and we did hear most of it :).