Conference Weekend

Before I had kids, General Conference Weekends were two of my most favorite weekends of the year!  I always came away feeling like I had gotten the answers and inspiration I needed and I was ready to do great things and be my best self.  I know everybody learns in different ways, but I'm one of those people that loves to sit in peace and quiet and watch the tv while I take notes for 2 solid hours.  I don't even like to get up to go to the bathroom because I feel like I'll miss something.  Well, here I am 3 years into this mommying business and General Conference weekend isn't quite the same anymore;)  Don't get me wrong, I still love General Conference, I just wish I could hire a babysitter and then lock myself in a quiet room by myself so I could enjoy the talks without distractions.  This April General Conference was especially hard because both of my kids got sick.  Some people's kids nap better when they are sick and that's how they know that they are getting sick.  Mine are the opposite.  When they get sick, they don't nap.  Ellie woke up on Thursday super congested and had a fever.  Then Thursday night after she'd been asleep for a couple of hours, she woke up with a nasty cough and was crying because she couldn't breathe.  We got a little nervous because her cough was kind of barky, and sounded a little bit like it did when she had croup.  She woke up super early on Friday and felt pretty miserable all day.  Parker napped for 45 minutes or less 3 different times that day, so I knew he was getting sick too.  Saturday morning Parker woke up with a fever, was congested, and started barking too:(  

 His fever hadn't started yet, so he was still pretty happy!

 He really gets into everything!

 More often than not, this kid has food stuck on his face! ha

 Trying to watch Conference with two sick grumpy kids.

We had tickets for a gymnastics meet that night at the University of Utah.  I've been wanting to go to one of their meets all season, and we promised Ellie that we'd take her to see the "gymnastic girls" as she calls them.  But since both kids were sick, we were thinking we should probably just stay home and not go downtown for the meet.  Neither of our kids napped more than like 20 minutes at a time all day, so we were all going a little crazy.  So like the awesome parents that we are, at the last minute we decided to load up our sick kids and go to the meet.  Both kids fell asleep the minute we put them in their carseats and slept for like 45 minutes while we drove downtown and found parking.  Minus the few nasty looks we got when our children were coughing really hard (I don't blame them for the nasty looks.  I mean nobody likes to be coughed on.), it ended up being the highlight of the day.  Ellie loved seeing the gymnasts flipping all over the place!  And Parker was actually pretty content to just look around at all of the commotion. 

 We left early so we could get the kids to bed on time, and luckily they both crashed and we all got a good night's sleep.

Sunday Ellie seemed to feel a lot better, but Parker was still super whiney and just wanted to be held all day.

 

 I put Parker down for a nap and he woke up 20 minutes later crying and wouldn't go back to sleep.  I could tell that he just felt miserable and was SO tired, but probably just couldn't sleep because he was so congested and coughing so hard.  So Steve took him for a ride in the car and he was able to get a good hour long nap in.

 When the afternoon hit and Parker was in need of another nap, we decided to cruise up to the state capitol to see the beautiful cherry blossoms and let Parker sleep in the car again.

 This was my first time ever going inside the state capitol building and I thought it was beautiful!  I'd love to go back up there and go on a tour.

 Ellie thought it was pretty great too.  When we first walked inside she said, "Wow this is so mazin Mom and Dad!" haha

 The beautiful blossoms!

So that's how we survived Conference weekend with sick kids.  I didn't get a ton out of the talks when they were actually given, but I have been reading through them already and I'm so grateful that they are published so quickly on the internet so that I don't have to feel like I missed everything.