General Conference Puzzles

So these next few posts will be a bit out of date--let's face it, my posts are always a bit outdated! I still take pictures with a regular old camera and I only download them once or twice a month onto my computer, so pictures of things that happened a couple weeks ago are just now arriving on my computer.  And I usually don't remember to post about things that I didn't take a picture of, so there you go--my posts are always outdated. 

These pictures are from General Conference weekend.  It was shortly after we moved into the apartment, and you can see the giant mess of boxes and random stuff all over the place in the picture with Hallie.  Thankfully, I have now finished moving in! (Which means that tons of our stuff is in storage, but everything that is staying in the apartment is here, and there is no more mountain of boxes in my living room--that deserves a woo hoo!) So our apartment is not that giant mess anymore!

Every General Conference, I struggle with what to do with my kids while I watch conference.  I love conference and I don't want to miss a single session, but my kids are bored to death.  We've used the Conference Coloring books before, and they work for a little while, but it seems like many of them are too advanced for my beginning readers and it hasn't been a wildly effective strategy for us. Well, completely by accident, I happened upon a fabulous solution!

I was cleaning and unpacking on Saturday as I listened to conference.  I wasn't making the girls sit and watch, but I was listening.  I started unpacking the game box, which had all our puzzles in it, and Claire asked if we could do a puzzle.  I love puzzles, so we pulled one out and started working on it.  Hallie and Claire loved it (and even Evie helped here and there), and as soon as we finished they immediately asked for another one.  It was a quiet, brain-building activity that we could do together as a family that didn't detract from conference--on the contrary, I found I was able to focus on the messages better when I wasn't sitting still (and falling asleep), but had my hands busy doing something.  It was an addictive and highly popular pastime! I sense a General Conference tradition in the making!

We are busy puzzle-assembling!

Lots of fairies and princesses around here.

Claire working on another one!

We'll have to get a few new puzzles for the next General Conference.  I loved spending the time actually with my children, doing something we all enjoyed and being spiritually fed at the same time.  Plus I didn't have to hush them constantly, like I usually do when they get bored and start being disruptive.  Thumbs up!