B.I.N.G.O.

I have a love/hate relationship with General Conference weekend. I love the obvious things about it - getting to hear uplifting talks from LDS church leaders, listening to beautiful music from the Mormon Tabernacle choir, having "church" in front of the TV in my jammies on a Sunday morning. The hate part (and I use the term loosely) started around 9 years ago. What happened 9 years ago? Jay and I became parents.

Being a parent complicates General Conference. When you have babies and toddlers, it seems next to impossible to hear more than snatches of a few talks. Now that our kids are older, we want to encourage them to pay attention and learn something from the speakers. However, there are four 2-hour sessions of Conference. That's 8 hours of church over two days. It's wonderful and we love it but it's alot to ask for the kids to listen to all 8 hours of General Conference and take away much more than irritation from it. So we compromise.

Saturdays are a little more laid-back. We don't make them sit down and listen to Conference. We cheated a bit this year and took the kids on a drive to Brigham City for milkshakes during the afternoon session. The results were mixed - they liked the milkshakes but didn't love driving 40 minutes to get them. Still, we listened to Conference on the radio.

The Sunday morning session is the session that we all watch/listen to as a family. To make this more palatable for the kids, we buy them treats and let them play Conference Bingo, where they put an M&M or other candy treat on a square on a Bingo card (squares include things like Family, Prayer, Jesus, Scriptures); when they get a Bingo, they get to eat the treats. This activity gets us through a good part of the session and encourages them to listen to what is being said. The Sunday afternoon session is iffy - the kids might be around and half-listening, but Jay and I try keep in on and watch/listen to it.

They seem to be slowly getting better about sitting and listening to General Conference. Jay remarked that the Sunday morning session seemed to go more smoothly this year and that the kids seemed to listen to the speakers more. I'm not sure about that. But if we keep plugging away, hopefully as the kids get older it will get easier. Until then, we'll stock up on M&M's every October and April. Whatever works.