Conference Weekend

It's conference weekend! That means that there was a lot of this goin' on... 

Our family has much room for improvement. Thankfully we have been extended the gift of repentance. I fell asleep a little bit at the end of yesterday afternoon but didn't doze off at all today. I think Sophi slept through every session yesterday and today. She is that dark head that is collapsed dead on Corey's lap in these two pics. 

She and Natalie served as nice and heavy weighted blankets on Corey's lap. It did not look comfortable to me. I didn't take any notes this year, just listened as I did stuff in the kitchen (dishes, sweeping). Yesterday I missed most of the first session cause I took Owen to his soccer game at 10:15. I did catch Elder Christofferson's talk on gambling at the end. Listened to that while we were at the frontrunner train waiting to pick up cousin Seth. I'll catch up on that session this upcoming week. After Seth arrived, I brought Owen and him home, and then Corey took Daniel to his game at 12:45. Hyrum's roommate Sebastian and his sister spent the night here last night and I got up and made them some fresh sourdough for breakfast before they went downtown to the first session of conference at the conference center. They went by Daniel's game on their way back here. Daniel asked him to come, cause they are buddies after Daniel went up there last month. Cousin Seth went to Daniel's game too, and Katharine. 

Seth and Hyrum have tickets to go to conference tomorrow morning so Seth stayed over last night. Yesterday morning was also busy cause we went to breakfast at my parent's house to visit with Camilla. She came in from Indiana to pick up her boy Nate who has been serving a mission in the Utah Saratoga Springs Mission. We visited for a bit before they flew out at 10:30. We forgot to get a group photo, but Beka snapped this of a few of us as we visited outside before parting ways. Neil, Beka, Corey and Mom were all there too.

Corey and I didn't have a chance to exercise yesterday until the afternoon. We decided to do a ride and were going to go to Millcreek, but as we were on our way we remembered the construction in the canyon, which meant no road access to the upper trailheads, and I didn't really want to do Rattlesnake, there are no fall colors there yet... then we checked online and remembered that on odd days (which was yesterday) the upper trails were closed to bikes anyway, boo - so then he drove us to Park City. I don't think he really wanted to go that far away, and didn't seem in a great mood about it, but that's what we did. It was very pretty and I enjoyed it. 

Started at 5:45 pm and we went up Armstrong > HAM > Seldom Seen. That's a simple and quick ride, just took us 1 hour 13 min, and so we finished right at sunset at 7:05. I've been keeping track of the sunset and sunrise times lately for some reason... I spent this Sabbath morning at the creek and watched the sun rise (7:27am). I was able to take my sweet time (2+ hours) cause I didn't have to get back to hurry and get anyone ready for church, cause church was General Conference and we were all staying home in our pjs.

Mel and Christian came over for some of conference today. She is very full term with her pregnancy, next month her little bundle will be here! They just got back from a last chance trip to Florida and they had a good time relaxing at the beaches there. After conference they made some vegan creamy pasta for dinner for everyone and I snuck away with Hyrum for a drive up the canyon before he goes to Iceland in a week.

My brother got in his Guardsman drive with my parents today, and I wasn't able to get away in time to join them, but I still wanted to go, so we did, just me and Hyrum. Had a nice visit as we drove. The trees are beautiful up there!!! SO SO yellow! I am going try to get up here again asap.

After we got home he cooked up some duck meat for us. He went duck hunting yesterday with some friends for the opening day of duck hunting season. Around 11pm Friday night, as I was finishing up sourdough dough, he was trying to decided if he should sleep for two hours or just stay up. Since Sebastian was here, he ended up staying up visiting with him until 1am, then he left to go sit in the reeds and wait for sunrise so he could shoot ducks. He shot two, but only was able to find one. He was surprised how little meat was on his duck. He doesn't think he could feed a family by hunting ducks. It wasn't even enough to feed him for one meal.

He cooked it up and shared it with everyone before family prayer. We talked a little bit of logistics this week, including moving FHE to Tuesday so we can hike the Y. We brought up the facebook video that featured Katharine when we hiked the Y three years ago. 

So that will be fun to do that again, and assuming everything going to plan and we make it down, this will be our 4th year in a row! Go team. Past years: 2012, 2013, 2019, covid, 2021 not on my radar, 2022 didn't go (Natalie had a party), but 2023, 2024, and 2025 we've been good at keeping this tradition.