Not exactly how I planned

I had a vision for this weekend. We would watch all sessions of General Conference; we would color and play bingo, and learn and feel the Spirit. We would celebrate DH's birthday with Raspberry Tiramisu. We would eat chile verde, crepes, and french dip sandwiches. We would spend time with friends as a last hurrah before they moved. I was trying so hard to prepare my family and myself. How did it really go down?
We made tents.

Day One


Day Two


DH ended up being stuck in Connecticut for work. He'll be home next Thursday. So, we didn't make the Raspberry Tiramisu. We had pizza and mexican food for dinner and in far away CT, DH had Popeye's chicken and went to the Priesthood session.
Dreading the weekend without DH and a family of picky kids, I shelved the chile verde idea and postponed the crepes. We did have waffles, french dip and way too much easter candy with our bingo. We hung out at the park with our friends between Sunday sessions, but a family emergency precluded them actually watching conference with us or assisting us in our tent construction or bingo playing. We watched conference, some of us paying more attention than others. I had prayed a great deal about how to teach and prepare my family. I feel, as usual, like the whole conference was aimed directly at me, like a fire hose. There were talks I missed because of tent and bingo mishaps, others that I heard, but need to revisit. I looked to the part of lds.org where it says when talks will be available in various formats. 24 hours I was told I would need to wait to be able to re-watch talks. But, I also watched talks pop up far quicker than that. Perhaps this is the first time I am sufficiently cognizant of the monumental work involved in bringing the words of prophets and apostles to millions of people in as many formats as possible. I don't have the skill set to do their job at all, but I am in awe and in debt that they do it, so quickly, so well.

Conference with my mangy brood is also a great deal of work (though not on the scale of producing and broadcasting the entire conference for worldwide consumption over multiple formats and in multiple languages). I'm getting better at planning for it, preparing us for it. The smaller parts of our bunch are also getting older, so that helps. In some ways, I wish we could have church like this every week, sitting at the feet of of our leaders, drinking from the fire hose. But then I realize that we need the opportunity to practice what they preach, to do what we're learning, to lead, and teach and learn and follow and that doesn't all happen in our living rooms under a tent made of quilts with a bingo card filled with pretzels and jelly beans. It happens when the husband is working all weekend, when there are family emergencies and general mayhem. Some days, some glorious days, are respites, days for passive learning, days for direct heavenly answers. But most days are workdays, days for on-the-job training, take home tests, teaching on the fly. I couldn't do the second without the first and the first would be meaningless without the opportunity for the second.