Getting Ready for Conference

General Conference is a biannual conference given by the leaders of my church. The President of the church and a bunch of leaders high up the rankings give awesome talks throughout the weekend of conference. This Saturday is the women's session, and the rest of conference in the 4th and the 5th of April. If you want more information, feel free to ask questions in the comments, or you can do some poking about here.

Saturday. Women's session. 5pm local time. 

I'm pumped. 

It works out well for our schedule, too, since the Mister is partaking in a vitual LAN party hosted by AMD all day, so that means I will actually be able to go to the Stake Center to watch the broadcast - and I've heard there's cookies after! 

But, at the same time, I've never actually been to Conference before. 

I mean I know what it's like, I've read previous sessions, and I've watched videos of talks before, so I know what goes on, but I've never watched it live. 

So, what does one do for live Conference? 

This I'm not sure about. 

Of course, I'm bringing Lydia with me, to take notes in. I have an insert ready to go for it (and depending on how much it gets filled up Saturday, I may be making another one for the general sessions on the 4th and 5th), and will be switching out some colors in my Coleto, and bringing a back up pen or two, just in case! 

But is that enough? 

I've been thinking about it so much, I'm pretty sure I'm over thinking it. Because, realistically, all the talks will be available in print (well, online print) much sooner than later. There's no need to worry about getting it right while watching it. 

I'm fairly certain that the idea of Conference is to hear the words and take them in and think about things, not take notes and miss the next three sentiments while you're trying to organize your thoughts on the sentiment five minutes ago. 

While there are plenty of links on Pinterest about how to keep kids entertained for the multiple hours, and that's great, but at the same time...there isn't much about how best to take everything in. Except for one link that I've seen quite a few times...which involves studying it after, when it's in print form. 

Now, that post doesn't explain how she learns during conference, but I'm guessing it's more enjoying conference than studying it. 

For the past few months, I've been trying to decide (in the back of my mind) how I'm going to do my notes for Conference. Do I scribble a ton, or do I do a quick synopsis at the end of each talk? Do I try and catch everyone's names, or hope that the next issue of the Ensign will help me put the names to faces? Do I watch at home in my pajamas and try and be comfortable, yet distracted by the pups and the Mister and everything else, or do I watch outside of the home as much as I can in order to focus on it entirely? 

Except now my plan is this: 

Go. Watch. Listen. Write when I feel prompted to. And just ENJOY listening to the inspired words and messages being given.
Yes, Lydia will be with me. And yes, I will have an extra pen. But I will not worry about getting everything down the first time. 

Conference should not be stressful. It should be awesome. 

I'll let you know how it turns out.

~Havok