General Conference "Fun"

My family has several General Conference weekend traditions. I wrote a blog about them last April, so I won't bore you with them again. This picture was taken on Sunday in between sessions when most the family went up the canyon. I stayed at my parents' house & took a nap. After you hear the story about the night before, you'll probably understand why:

While the boys were at Priesthood Session, the girls did their semi-annual tradition of going shopping. It would have been great fun...except for a few incidences (which I'm sure will be funny at a later date...but, at the present time, are not very humorous). Here's a little background--Connor has acid reflux disease really bad. He's usually on Prevacid, but the pediatrician decided to take him off a few months ago to see how he did without it. Anyway, he had been having a hard time with his stomach all day. So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when, about 30 minutes into our shopping trip, Connor announced that he had to throw up. FABULOUS! Just what a mother wants to hear in the middle of a jam-packed mall! I left Aiden with my sister and her two kids, and Connor & I took off to find a bathroom. I was almost frantic! I kept having visions of Connor throwing up right in the middle of the mall corridor. I started looking for garbage cans along the way...just in case we didn't make it to the restroom. All of the sudden, Connor stops dead in his tracks. "Oh no!" I thought, "Here it comes!"

You can imagine my surprise when, instead of throwing up like I thought, Connor said, "Look Mom! A toy store! Let's go in here!"

"What?" I said in shock. "I thought you were going to throw up!?!"

"Oh yeah..." He said, "I forgot!"

"You forgot? Are you serious?" I then start grilling him about lying & then told him the story of the boy who cried wolf.

"But, mom!" Connor said, "I do have to throw up! I promise! I just want to come to this toy store after!" So, we continued on to the bathroom.

Once we finally got there, Connor went into a stall for about 15 seconds, then came back out and said, "I guess I don't have to throw up after all! Can we go to that toy store now?"

Ohhhhhhhhhhh...by this point, I was not a happy mama. "No!" I said & we walked back to the store where we had left Aiden with Ashlee.

I entered the store, only to be greeted by my sister & Aiden with the dreaded words, "Linz...he's poopy!"

At this point, I realized I had left the diaper bag in the car...halfway across the mall. So, I left my "faker" with Ashlee & hauled "stinky man" about a 1/2 mile out to the car where I proceeded to change his diaper in the pouring rain! And, it wasn't a nice diaper either! After walking around in the rain for about five minutes looking for a dumpster, I hauled Aiden back into the mall 1/2 mile & met my sister and all the boys in the "magical toy store" (I call it "magical" because it had OBVIOUSLY cured Connor's sick stomach). We let the boys play for a few minutes & then went to meet the men for dinner.

As I walked into the restaurant with the two boys, I handed them to Mike & said, "They are ALL yours! I am off-duty for the rest of the night!" I think I definately earned a little break! --Lindsay