Dog school is so fun when one of the dogs is real! My other two girls had to just use their stuffed animals to play dog school when they were this age. Eliza set up all the toys and got Missy's treats out. Missy was really good and got lots of treats.
Yet again....Todd had a birthday! They just keep coming these days and I'm not far behind him. The years keep passing and the hair line keeps receding but I love him even more on his 34th than I did on the 33rd! 
Why do I let things like this come home? 
Emma Grace was all too excited to take of the squirmy little millipede. She has quite a love for all creatures which I'm proud of to a certain extent. One day she ran home crying from the neighbors house because her sisters and their friends had killed some bugs that were in the garden. It took me a while to calm her down. A few weeks ago I finally had to tell her that flies pooped every time they land so that she'll get over her kind hearted instinct towards flies. I'm sorry but if a fly is in my house, it's got to GO.
Look at these girls huddled around this thing. They passed him around and around. 
Before the show started, you would have thought Charlie was the star of the show. I didn't even bother trying to make him stay of the risers, it would have been completely useless. But he hurried off the stage as soon as it started.
Emma Grace had a little speaking part and did great! She spoke up loud and clear.
We found a box. Went to his bedroom and gathered any remaining pacifiers. Put them in the box. Got the tape out and taped up the box. Then Charlie said, "name on it". Apparently he knows a little bit about mailing a package. We put Santa's name on the box. Then we had to draw on the box a little bit and top it off with a stamp. He put it in his back pack and we were off to the post office. Well, as soon as I got ready for the day which took way too long in Charlie's opinion.
I couldn't resist taking my camera for a quick pic and a stool for him to stand on so he could open the mailbox himself and put the box in.
Friday night (the night before conference) Todd and I set up the TV in the living room instead of it's usual place in the Family Room. Our living room is a little bit more formal. This is where we have all of our Family Home Evenings each week. So I felt like this would help the children to not feel so casual about conference. We moved the couches closer and faced them toward the TV. We set up a banquet table right next to the couch. I made a "quiet zone" sign. I had a different SIMPLE craft that wasn't messy and didn't make noise ready for each session. I prepared everything for a picnic at the park. I hung up all of the topics on our conference wall(I'll explain). And I had a little notebook and cards with the apostles pictures on them for each child.
That kind of sounds like a lot. But it really isn't...I promise!
(All three girls working on those beads that you put on the little "frame" and then you iron to make a picture)
We got up and got ready Saturday and Sunday morning at least thirty minutes before conference was to begin. This helped us to have enough time to have family prayer and to talk to the children about what we were going to do and the "rules" of our conference room. The rules were...this was a quiet zone. They were welcomed to leave the conference room if they needed to but while they were there they needed to be reverent and show respect for others who were listening. We talked to them about the activities we were going to have for them to do quietly at the table and about the conference wall.
Several days later when Eliza had a friend over to play, I heard her say to him, "we had a conference day and it was so fun!" That made all of it worth it!
Of course the afternoon sessions were a little bit better simply because we didn't have the two year old recking havoc!! NAPTIME!
In between Saturday conference sessions, we went to the Park to have a picnic and run around. It wore them out and they were ready for a second session. Megan (our adorable babysitter) went to the park with us. We like having Megan around anytime! The girls had a blast running around with her while I snapped pictures. They saw a duck with a dead fish in it's mouth and thought that was simply disgusting (but cool).
This is a picture of part of our conference wall. I'm not sure who this wall helped more...me or the kids. By putting a picture of the apostle who was speaking up next to the topic they were speaking on, we ended up with a visual reminder of all of the talks. I'm a visual learner and I was able to tell you almost exactly what each speaker talked about the next night at Family Home Evening when we went over all of them.
The girls loved it! They each had a stack of cards with a picture of the apostle on one side and information about them on the other. On our largest wall in our living room, I posted pictures about different topics that might be talked about during conference (examples: sacrament, temples, word of wisdom, gratitude, prayer, etc). I got all of the pictures by going to http://www.lds.org/ and going to the Friend magazine section. Then I clicked on the section for coloring pages. I printed off a bunch of pages that the girls and I then colored. Then I laminated each of them. When an apostle got up to speak, the girls would get out their cards and listen to what they were talking about. Once they knew the topic, they would go and put the picture up on the wall. When Elder Bednar gave his talk on prayer, the girls all quickly put their pictures up on the picture of prayer. About midway through his talk he said the word "gratitude", Eliza quietly looked up from her picture she was working on and whispered, "gratitude...should I change my picture?". So she got up and changed Elder Bednar's picture to the gratitude picture.
Honestly, I can't believe how well it helped us to learn from conference. So the conference wall is a definite keeper in the Hall family traditions.
