conference weekend

Aahh... Conference weekend.  Love it.  Nothing to do, nowhere to go, just hangin' with my family.

I think my top three talks were from, in no particular order since I can't decide: Elder Uchtdorf, Elder Perry, and Elder Holland.

The boys enjoyed conference weekend, too.  It meant a break from the usual Saturday routine of chores and yardwork, for one thing.  :-)  My boys are actually very good listeners and were fairly engaged in nearly every talk, as far as I could tell.  Between sessions, they kept themselves busy.  Brigham started a pyromaniac craze among the boys yesterday and today.  He had all sorts of things going.  He's burning a skewer here-- earlier he was burning yarn fuses which make a very satisfying sparking as the flame moves along the yarn.

Joseph used his burned skewer sticks to write messages.
All the boys also worked on their ships.  On Friday afternoon, Brigham started making a ship to float in the pool, and his brothers quickly followed suit.  They used up all my extra foamboard, a bag of skewers, and almost a whole roll of aluminum foil.  I think all of them made at least two different models, some more successful than others.  This is Brigham's first model, which looked like Noah's ark, but which unfortunately tipped over in the pool.

 And here's Joseph's.  His floated pretty well, but he didn't wrap it in foil and it quickly became waterlogged.

Ben did a lot of gardening, making a big lattice wall for behind our garden-- he's going to grow kiwi vines.  Ben's been doing an incredible amount of work on our yard recently, planting around 20 fruit trees around the perimeter of our yard and working on the garden.
I folded a lot of clothes while watching conference.  Thrilling, I know.
This afternoon between sessions we went on a walk out through the old golf course.  Our neighborhood is built around what used to be a really big golf course-- 18 holes?  Whatever the biggest one usually is.  I guess there haven't been enough golfers recently to sustain a course that big, and so last year half of it was closed down.  Now it is just this incredibly beautiful green belt with wide meadows and a winding path that goes up and down hollows, in and out of stands of trees, and round lakes and streams.  It made me ache to be able to go running again...  Next time I'm going to bring my camera and force my kids to pose for some pictures.  :-)
The rest of our week was really pretty good.  I had seminary this week which meant I didn't sleep enough, but I also think I am figuring out how to streamline lesson prep, or maybe the content was just easier this week.  Unfortunately, our attendance was really awful this week.  The school has STAR testing this week, so I think some of the kids used that as an excuse not to come.  Also, three of my students are apparently now going to the seminary their church classmates are going to, so that cut down on the attendance.  I'm trying not to take it personally.  It makes sense that they would want to be with their church friends, but I'm insecure enough that I can't help but take it a little personally...
Thursday night was so exciting as my sister Eva opened her mission call--- she is going to Russia!  The Rostov-on-Don mission, to be precise, which is in the southern part of the country basically on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea.  Brigham was especially excited since he was the ONLY ONE out of our whole entire family who guessed Russia.  :-)  She leaves July 31 and I'm so excited for her, although sad because I will miss her so much.  She will be my very last sibling to go on a mission-- when you add up all the years of missions my siblings have been on, it is 14 years of missing a sibling!  (Well, more or less-- Brigham and Naomi overlapped.)
The boys had good school weeks, for the most part.  I can't believe how close we're getting to the end of the school year.  Where did the last few months go??
And a couple more pictures.
I think this is from Friday-- Mosey laying on the hammock doing Rosetta Stone German.

 Oh, and we got our Sonlight catalog for next year, and I was pretty excited to see this:

I had submitted the picture and little blurb last Fall sometime, and had forgotten about it.  Brigham and Mosey were really excited to see their names in print.  I think Joseph was a little embarrassed, and glanced at the picture for about half a second and grunting a little when I showed it to him.  :-)

Here it is on the full page:

Otherwise, we really enjoyed the weather the past few days.  This time of year is truly paradise in central Texas.  Everything is incredibly green and the temperature is perfect.  I could be outside all the time.  The boys went hiking down in the boulder park twice this week and said it's the prettiest they've ever seen it, which doesn't surprise me after the rain we had this week.  They've come back with soaking wet shoes and pants from wading in the river.  And Brigham brought back a bouquet of wildflowers for me on Friday which are sitting in a vase on the kitchen counter right now.