Thou Shalt Not Beat Thy Children Whilst The Prophet Speaketh At Stake Conference

We had a combined stake conference at the Conference Center this Sunday. Sister Cheryl C. Lant (Primary General President), Elder M. Russell Ballard and President Thomas S. Monson all spoke. Wow - what an experience it must have been to be able to hear the prophet speak.

That's right. We missed it. No, we didn't sleep in. We were so there. We were even on time.

Here's how it all went down.

At the beginning of the very first talk, both kids started acting up. By acting up, I mean head butting the parents, crying, kicking the chairs in front of us, wiping their snotty noses on our neighbors, and making a general ruckus. We used up all our diaper bag resources (Read: books, coloring books, crayons, finger puppets, stickers, Noah's Ark boat ensemble, you name it, we brought it) during the first 2 talks. By the beginning of Elder Ballard's talk, I had taken both kids to the cry room. By the middle of his talk, even the parents in the cry room were giving us dirty looks because Mia was banging her head against her chair, and then the floor, and screaming at the top of her lungs, while Jackson was crying and whining that he was hungry even though he had just eaten breakfast. So we left. We left with mom carrying Mia by her pigtails and Jackson by the scruff of his neck all the way out of the conference center and Wee-Wee-Wee-All-The-Way-Home. I was beyond infuriated that I had missed seeing the prophet speak in person.

I'm sure Heavenly Father was proud of me for not beating them in the presence of the prophet. I did it in the privacy of our own home instead.