Stake Conference Weekend

This past weekend was our Stake Conference. For those of you who don't live "in the mission field," (I really don't like that phrase), we live about an hour and a half from our stake center which is in Bloomington. Every six months, we arrange for Mark to ride with some men Saturday afternoon for the leadership session, while I stay home and get the kids fed and bathed and arrange a babysitter, and then I ride with a bunch of ladies to meet up with our spouses for the adult session. We usually get home at about 11pm, and then Sunday morning, we wake our kids up, get them dressed and head on our way by about 8am to make the trek to the general session. It's always worth it, but a little bit nutty to take freshly rested kids in the car for an hour and a half and then arrive to have them sit perfectly still for 2 hours. It usually is a bit too much to ask and we end up in some overflow room listening as much as we can. After conference, we(all the Terre Haute members) pull out our picnic lunches and sit out in the grass and feed our kids, feeling a lot like pioneers.
Well, this time we had the brilliant idea of finding a very cheap motel 5 minutes from the Stake Center and staying in town! We invited our favorite Penwell Abby and another 16 year old in our ward to stay with us. So, during the leadership meeting, I swam at the motel with the kids and then bathed them and ordered pizza. I joined Mark for the very lengthy but amazing adult session, and when we got back to our room, those amazing babysitters had all of our kids asleep! Heaven! Mark layed down to watch some sports highlights (Go BYU!!!!) and I took the professional sitters for a late night ice cream run. Sunday morning the kids slept in till 7:30 and then we had a deluxe continental breakfast in our jammies and got ready for church. We actually arrived 45 minutes early feeling rested and relaxed and almost didn't have to sit in the over flow part of the chapel! Conference was so good. The kids still had to be taken out a couple of times ( they still are 1, 3, 5 and 7), but for the most part, it was well worth the 60 bucks for what we saved on gas, breakfast and that priceless thing known as sanity!
PS... I never took the camera out the entire time we were there, but I'm sure if you just imagine lots of happy kids jumping on beds in a tiny dumpy motel room, you've got the right idea!