General Conference Review Game

* This post is about General Conference. We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (aka Mormons), General Conference is a world-wide conference held twice a year where we listen to talks given by the leaders of our church regarding Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father, raising a family, serving others, etc.
It is for anyone and everyone who would like to listen.
You can find the videos of the speakers at lds.org.

So General Conference wasn't even a week ago and I feel like I have forgotten a majority of the talks and topics already.
That is, the talks I actually got to listen to.
Sitting through 4 sessions of conference with 3 kids at such varying ages means we hear maybe half of what is being said.
We have been able to get our kids to sit and listen to the morning sessions while doing a quiet activity, but even then there is still some talking and distractions going on.

That's kind of how this review game was born.

I realized even if we were getting a chance to watch all of the talks, I myself am not very good at remembering what they were all about.

An Extra Stocking

Christmas is my most favorite time of the year.

It's even more magical with children :)
With all of the exciting things going on it's really important to us to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas.

We want our son to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

When I was growing up, every year at the beginning of December my parents would take my doll's cradle and get some hay. Throughout the month of December we would do acts of service for each other, and each time we did we would put a piece of hay in the cradle.

On Christmas Eve we would place a doll (representing the baby Jesus), in the cradle with all of the hay.

The hay was symbolic of us giving back to the Savior by serving others.

Last Christmas I decided I wanted to start a new tradition, I liked what my parents had done for us, but I didn't have access to any hay.

My son had just turned 4 at the time and on the first Monday in December we had a Family Home Evening where I explained to him that Christmas is when we celebrate Christ's birth. The Wise Men took gifts of specific importance to the baby Jesus because they knew who He was. I then told my son we needed to give a gift to Him as well.

I then told my son that when Jesus was on the Earth he told the people to love one another. So a gift to we could give to Him was to be kind to one another, love one another, and serve one another.
I wanted to somehow keep track or our service to one another, so this idea was born.

Valentine's countdown craft

My son is really into counting down to things.
He LOVED counting down to Christmas, and then once that was over he got all excited for the new year.
I thought this craft would be perfect for him to get excited for Valentine's Day.
I've never decorated for Valentine's Day, but maybe this is the start of something new...

This was such a fun craft to make.

My son actually helped me do more than half of the cutting. 

He loves using 'his size' scissors :)