Conference Conundrum

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have the opportunity to watch a thing called General Conference on TV or stream it on the internet every six months. Not all people know all about General Conference, as my sons found out the hard way a few days ago.

We happened to be in the store looking for a new car seat and ran into a family in the car seat aisle who were willing to sell us their old one for cheap. So we followed them to their car to check out said car seat, which I then decide to purchase. As I was doing the looking-over, my sons were sitting in the cart talking to this family and I hear my oldest son yell to me, "MOM! They don't watch General Conference! Can you believe it?! They don't even know what it is!" This proved slightly embarrassing to myself, because...really...what am I supposed to say to that? So I got the chance to explain to this nice family what religion we belong to and the basics of General Conference. Nice. I'm always astounded at the knowledge that seems so obvious to us as adults. That not all people belong to the same church as we do was, apparently, a novel idea to my young offspring.

Back to the point. The point is, that General Conference is 8 hours long, spanning 4 sessions and 2 days. This is a problem for parents of young children. Parents like myself. How the heck do you get your kids to sit through all that? Or even some of it? Or even be quiet for a short amount of time so you can listen? There are TONS of ideas on the internet that one can implement, so for the past few conferences I have been doing this deal where we have activities in baggies. Each baggie gets a face of one of the conference speakers taped to it. Then, when that person comes up to speak, we pull out the activity in that baggie and do it, hopefully quietly. So far, it's worked ok. Here's what it looks like at our house:

But I have to say, after attempting to sit through all these hours and hours of general conference this weekend, and doing all these prepared activities: it's a lot of work. And I'm not exactly sure it all pays off. Next time, either I will be modifying the activities that go in our baggies, or choosing a new idea to implement. An easier one.  An idea that takes WAY less planning and WAY less effort.