Why My Children are Driving Me Crazy and Other Pointless Rants: Conference Weekend

This Conference weekend flew by in a blur.

Probably because I slept in both mornings, and when I sleep in, it seems my day is cut in half...at least the productive hours are.

Saturday I spent the day trying to catch up on cleaning the house (its now dirty again, so what did I do it for anyway!) and Steve spent most of the day working on his Land Cruiser in the garage. In the past few weeks he has spent most of his free time replacing the gas tank. The old one had a few small leaks which, besides making my garage stink all of the time, is a tiny bit unsafe. I'm happy to report my garage now smells better and so does Steve when he drives the cruiser. Plus, he's not going to spontaneously combust anytime soon. Win Win.

In the afternoon Steve took Grady and I to Kimberly to buy my Mother's Day flower baskets. They are safely in my non-stinky garage at the moment because it snowed today. April is tricky, and a little vindictive.

Yesterday was great. Simple, non productive and spent with family at home.

We had no agenda except watching General Conference with our offspring.

Steve got up with the kiddos and cooked bacon on the smoker. The kids were thrilled with their meat and carbohydrate breakfast. I was just happy I didn't have to make it!

12 year old breakfast of champions.

No really...he was happy.

Steve then got busy making the Conference Day fort for the boys.

This was a Dixon tradition for him growing up, and it has officially been passed down.

It involves moving ALL the furniture and getting out every blanket we own.

As you can see, the fort was huge and blocked the entrance to our home and the hallway to the closest bathroom. When Saylor needed help using the facilities, one of us had to crawl under to fort to get to her. I'm not posting the picture of me crawling out.

Here is proof that we attempted to listen to the best of our abilities.

Five of us are minors and the other two are sleep deprived...our abilities are few.

Once again, any pictures of me will not be posted. (I was trying to sleep on the floor during most of the afternoon session...we don't need pictorial proof of that lovely site.)

Other than the fort, the other Dixon tradition is what I'm calling, "I'll listen for candy." Each talk one of the kids picks a word and every time that word is said, the kids earn a point toward candy or in yesterday's case, girl scout cookies. 10 points = 1 cookie.

Here is Colby's tally.

I love how he wrote each of his words phonetically.

Let me translate:

Heavenly Father-2

Miracles-13

Love-4

Marriage-38

Gift-5

These words are supposed to be random, but by the end of the day, the kids listen to the first few lines and then pick their words. They cleaned house on Marriage. Little Cheaters.

Andrew cheating away.

Oh...I mean listening.

Saylor got into the action too...but I think she just colored.

Carter at one time was very disturbed that Saylor could get candy WITHOUT writing down how many times she heard the word. I told him not to worry about anyone else but himself. Third graders perceive injustice like nobodies business.

Grady got a lot of attention too.

Saylor likes to kiss him non-stop to the point of driving me batty.

I'm trying to remember that she loves him and to be grateful she doesn't want to beat him.

When she wasn't mugging Grady, she was pretending his bed was her own personal jungle gym.

It was a long four hours listening to conference...a long four hours.

(Don't get me wrong, conference was wonderful and the words we heard were uplifting and fantastic, however, you try listening with five kids and then we'll talk.)

Looking a little less yellow.

By Sunday night at 7:30, we were ready for our kids to be in bed. They were by 7:45. All Dixon children older than six were allowed to read instead of sleep.

But before they turned in for the night, they gave me these beauties...