Conference weekend...

I LOVE conference weekend... my only complaint though is that it seems to end far too soon.  Why is that?!  When I was little it always felt as though General Conference went on and on but now that I'm an adult and I actually enjoy listening to the talks given by the apostles and the prophet it comes and goes too fast!

We didn't do much over the weekend, which in my opinion was just fine.  I like a lazy day or two of just hanging out around the home.  Spencer's older sister Laura flew in from D.C. on Thursday night, so we all gathered at his parents house to hang out and eat Friday evening.  The following morning, after enjoying doughnuts for breakfast (a rare treat in our home) and listening to some of the first General Conference session talks, we dressed the boys in their Sunday best, threw on something nice ourselves and hurried down to Orem to meet the rest of Spencer's family at UVU to have family pictures taken on the hill there.  I wasn't exactly thrilled to be taking family pictures--- I mean seriously, who feels pretty or wants to be remembered for all time in a family portrait at 35 weeks pregnant?!  That whole thing about having "the pregnancy glow" is a myth- there isn't such a thing! I have permanent black circles under my eyes and a blotchy dark pigmentation across my left cheek, if I remember correctly it's called Melasma and my entire body aches and feels like that of an 80 year old woman! As if the BIG belly isn't bad enough, keep in mind I have cankles in place of where my ankles once were, swollen feet and fingers AND my face is also starting to look pretty chunky.  I'm not exactly looking my finest right now, if you know what I mean.  Anyhow... the pictures went pretty well... I only nearly toppled down the hill we were standing on 3 or 4 times- whose idea was it anyhow to take pictures on such a steep hill?!  Don't people understand that a pregnant woman's center of gravity is totally thrown off because of her ginormous belly???... The boys behaved pretty well, with the exception of the MAJOR tantrum Ian threw just because he was in one of "those" moods that day.  Fortunately it didn't last too long. 

I'm done complaining now- I really did appreciate that Spencer's little sister Megan arranged to have her cousin take our family pictures... perhaps now, that last family picture the Campbell's had taken YEARS ago with Spencer's ex fiance Kelly can be tossed out and this new picture with actual spouses and children in it can be proudly displayed in the Campbell home... Just saying. ;-)

I haven't seen all of the pictures yet; this is actually the only one I have yet to see but as you can see it's not too bad, right?  With the right positioning of Bentley's head, you can't even tell I'm 9 months pregnant!  How awesome is that?! Sure the cheesy expression, smiles and squinting on all of the boys faces isn't too hot, but it's classic.

It was nice to hear the prophet talk along with the other apostles and leaders of the church... I'm still in the process of trying to re-watch snippets of conference I recorded since I missed a lot of what was said... before you assume that I skipped out on watching conference, I didn't.  I was present, watching all the sessions of conference at the actual time they aired however my problem was I couldn't HEAR most of what was said.  We even had the volume on our t.v. raised to the highest level!!!  Note to self: We'll have to work on teaching the boys how to whisper.  They don't seem to understand what whispering is... especially Cohen... that kid is LOUD!  From bits of talks here and there that I DID hear, I get the impression that the leaders of the church were really trying to address and emphasize the importance of FAMILY and MARRIAGE.  I really enjoyed Elder Robbin's talk about "Being" and not just "Doing"...  It reminded me of President Hinckley's  "6 Be's".  He addressed the "6 Be's" 10 years ago in a talk written for the Ensign--- I remember it was HUGELY important when it came out but over the years, it seems like perhaps we've forgotten the "6 Be's"... it was nice to have that reminder this conference that we shouldn't just have our list of things "to do" but better yet we need to have a list of things "we need to become".

Below are a couple of pictures I took during the Sunday morning conference... we printed off some General Conference Activity Packets for the boys to color in--- they actually stayed quiet for the first half hour because they were busy coloring but it didn't take them long after to loose interest. We tried!  Oh well, I like to think that what we DID hear of conference are the messages we personally NEEDED to hear for that time being. 

(sorry, they're not the best quality pictures--- I took them on my phone)...