Our General Conference Adventure!

I have five boys, and what I want more than anything in the world, is for them to grow up to be righteous priesthood holders. We had a big year, #3 was baptized, and #1 was ordained a Deacon. #2 is only half a year from being ordained. I felt so strongly that I need to do everything I can to give them every opportunity to get a strong testimony. President Hinckley first felt the Spirit as a deacon in priesthood meeting, so I figured if it worked for him.....When I found out my husband couldn't come, I panicked. Then I girded up my proverbial loins, took fresh courage, and DROVE BY MYSELF TO UTAH! Correction, by myself and three boys. We drove through wind, rain, snow, fog, and bladder disasters. We mastered the Salt Lake freeway system, the light rail, parking for Conference, and discreet disposal of emergency bottles of liquid waste. We had a ball!
I bought each boy a journal and special color coordinating pen to document their adventures, thoughts and feelings.

We stopped by my sister's house near Logan. My nephew wants to kiss me. Sorry Babe, these lips are taken!

Here's my spunky sister on her hip pink four wheeler. She's way smaller, but very tough. She could beat the crud out of me any day of the week. In fact, there was this one time in high school......never mind.

This is what I had to drive through on my way to temple square. See, I'm used to just driving to Winco and back, and only rarely at freeway speeds.

This is how I looked during that drive. Note the white knuckles, the eyes focused and tense. I actually took this picture of myself. Just kidding! It was during this drive we had the great bladder disaster. A child, who shall remain nameless, was sitting behind me chugging one juice box after another. We were in rain, snow, construction, with semi's freaking me out right left and center. There was no way to pull over. We did what we had to do. I'm not proud. Well, not really proud anyway, we did get some video of said child with his very full bottle. The problem was, what to do with the tainted cargo we bore? Where do you drop something like that? One simply can't carry it in her purse to drop off at some random garbage can on Temple Square. It was a dilemma that haunted us for days. For days, the offending bottle lay lurking in the van.

With the help of very nice people, we figured out the whole train thing.

We Ooed and Aahed over the beautiful Joseph Smith memorial building.

This guy waxed eloquent when he was invited to speak. We get that all the time.

The Christus was so neat. I'll always remember sitting there with my boys while the Spirit was so strong.

We had great seats for the Sunday morning session. So great, that I spent a large amount of time in terror that the binoculars the boys were using were going to land on someone's head below. Thankfully, no one below encountered any falling objects.

It was a trick to not get separated in this crowd.

This chick was nice, singing Amazing Grace at the top of her lungs. The boys had never seen anti-mormons before, and although they were instructed otherwise, couldn't resist throwing acorns at them.
This is Grandma's baby sister. She has ten kids, the youngest just got married this summer. She's awesome. She didn't even strangle me when I accidentally set off their fire alarm at five in the morning.
We ended our fabulous trip with a stop at Chuck a Rama. Here was a very special event for me, that I will always treasure. An old man was watching us, and turned and asked the boys if their big sister always took them out to eat. Sniff.