A trip to General Conference

Ray's Aunt Darlene from PA is serving a mission In Salt Lake City.  She works in the Joseph Smith Building.  She offered to pay for our gas to come see her for General Conference, so we jumped at the opportunity! We have never been to conference before and have always wanted to go.  We got 5 tickets for us all to go to Sunday afternoon session.  The kids weren't sad at all that it meant missing an extra day of school. (When we left it was still spring break).

We left Thursday and drove and stayed with our good friends The Reddings who live in Meridian Idaho.  They are so good to us to come let us stay with them when we travel.  We love them and are glad they are our lifelong friends! Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of them this time.. next time.  It was fun as always to visit with them.  We even got to celebrate 2 birthdays with them.. Kims and Mackenzies!

Friday we went to stay with our good friends The Herbert family. (We sure are blessed to have lots of good friends!)  We have known them for many years.  Ray & Cathy grew up in the same stake together, so they share a lot of fun stories about youth activities growing up.  Ray met Shaun soon after he came home from his mission.  I met Shaun soon after I met Ray. We were all in the same ward at Ricks college.  Shaun was a witness at our wedding at the WA DC temple.  Cathy was there, too. And we were at their sealing several months later.  Below is a picture of their family now.

Cathy, Seth, Jessica, Aaron, Shaun, & Sarah Herbert

A funny thing happened while we were there, when we came out to our car the 1st morning, someone had egged it!

We had never been to conference before.  Even though it made for crazy traffic, it was fun to see the crowds of people coming and going to the conference center.

 We watched the morning sessions with the Herberts and Sat. afternoon at Aunt Darlene's apartment.  She is across the street from the conference center.  It is really fun to be in walking distance! It was a little tricky finding a parking spot...

 I love that they are snuggled up together to watch conference!

 Waiting seemed to be the name of the game... This is outside Darlene's apartment.

 We wandered around Temple square area for a couple of hours.  We went in the Church History Museum. It was pretty cool.  We didn't get to see all of it because it was closing soon.  Here is a replica of the podium at the conference center.

 It was suppose to rain all weekend.  Someone told us that in Salt Lake it was raining. Near the conference center, it didn't rain at all.  It was a little gray at times, but mostly sunny.

 The statue of the restored priesthood.

 The trees are just starting to blossom.  Aunt Darlene told us that the workers have been busy planting flowers for conference.  It was beautiful!

 Here is Aunt Darlene.  Behind her is the Joseph Smith building where she serves.  Her office is the 3rd row up, over on the right.

We went into Deseret Book.  It was crazy!  There was someone singing in there and Michael McLean was there!  We heard that we just missed Marie Osmond.  It was a little too busy for us, the kids didn't like it much in there, being that busy.  They were showing me they are not amused faces.  (They have these faces down good!)

 I told them that they had these faces down good & that maybe that would next year's Christmas card picture, this is what followed.  :)

 This is the lobby outside Aunt Darlene's office (cubicle).  The work area was locked.

 The temple is soo beautiful!

 Sunday afternoon session of General Conference!  I didn't take my camera because I thought I read somewhere that they weren't allowed, so luckily I had my ipod to take some pictures.

 It was an amazing experience!  I love how quiet it got when the prophet walked in and we all stood!  I love our prophet President Monson!  We had really good seats.  We were in the middle section, Terrace 6.  We got there early enough to sit in the 3rd row.  The only problem was that we right in the middle so I didn't know which big screen to look at.  Darlene brought her binoculars.  It was fun to watch the apostles walk in and greet each other.  You can tell how much they love each other!

We were so tired of driving!  9 hours to Boise, 5 hours to Salt Lake City and then back again.  Poor Ray wasn't feeling well most of the trip, so he didn't drive much.  Thank goodness for a 3rd driver.  Melissa drove quite a bit.  When I got my ipod out, up above is some of what I got.