Stake Conference

I guess the plus (or minus) to living in a stake that is enormous, is that any stake functions equal a vacation. It's nice that our stake center is now in Minot instead of Bismarck, though. This last weekend was stake conference and Tanner and I both had to be at the leadership training they had Saturday afternoon. Tanner hadn't used his MDO (monthly day off) yet, so he took Friday off and we headed there after a fun game of racquetball in the morning to make a fun weekend of it. Even though it's the "big city" to us, there still isn't TONS to do. First stop was Hobby Lobby. This was in the parking lot there. Harvey LOVES him some steering wheels!

Then we got lunch at Panera and then headed to the mall. Actually I think we checked into our hotel in the mall (we stayed there when my mom came to visit a few months ago). Then we wandered the  mall. It was pretty fun. We hit up Barnes and Noble, Scheels and Target and Cold Stone. Basically the essentials. Harvey had some fun in the kids section of B&N.

I didn't realize at first my phone had some weird filter on the photo, and then I just kind of was messing with it. That's why the colors are different. Anyway - another thing we found he loved was the little mini rides. I set him in the boat and he was in heaven! He was not happy when we finally took him out.

"This. Is. AWWESOMMME!"

 

Dad even spoiled him and paid to make it work. He was happy. It was worth it. Santa was all set up in the mall as well and we decided that we'd get him his first picture with Santa. We passed by him first because we didn't want him to freak out and be grumpy the rest of our mall experience. But he was pretty tired and grumpy by the end anyway. Tanner still wanted to get it done, and no one was in line, so we went for it. I was CONVINCED he was going to freak out. He doesn't love going to other people right now (in his mamma's boy phase a bit), and he was grumpy so it didn't seem like a good combo. But we were wrong. I think he was too confused maybe by it all he just stared at Santa. We left him in his lap a good 5 minutes and he just chilled. It was funny.

There was one other picture that he was looking at the camera but not smiling, but we liked them checking each other out. Sweet :)

After that, we decided to go swim. He had missed his afternoon nap and he was grumpy but I didn't want him to go to sleep just yet so we decided to distract him for a bit with water :) It worked marvelously. He loved it!

He was splashing like crazy. And that yellow thing is the bottom of a small slide that he was loving going down. And you can kind of see a fountain at the back of the picture. He caught view of that and was OFF. Like speed demon army crawling through the water. It was hilarious. This pool also has 3 big water slides. We took him down a couple last time and he just acted like "whatever". So we went again a few times. I'm pretty sure I heard him giggle a bit one of the times. I'm just gonna say that's what it was ;) He didn't cry though. Until this...

It's all fun and games until mom tosses up a wet, slippery baby and drops him in the pool and has to catch him by his foot and pull him out.  Oops. I felt horrible. He obviously didn't like it. But he only cried for a second and then he was fine and happy again.
He went to bed pretty early and he and I slept in one queen bed (he's a mover sleeper so one of us slept more than the other) and dad had a more peaceful night in the other queen. Until he decided it would be fun to wake up at 5:30. Man I can't get this kid to sleep past 6 anymore! Ugh.

We wandered the mall and the hotel early in the morning because he wasn't being the quietest in the hotel room. That day was the training. We found a sitter for him and went to that in the afternoon. Mine was much more productive than Tanner's. He probably didn't even need to be there. Kind of lame. But oh well. We ended up not going to the adult session because of Harvey, so we went back to the mall for a short bit, grabbed some Coldstone and headed back to the hotel basically.

Dad went to dinner with Steven Mabeus while we hung out. I was hoping he'd go to bed but mostly we just played. He read me some books and dad got him giggling like crazy after he got back playing steam-roller with one of the pillows.

 He slept a titch better that night - in his pack and play. So that was nice. Then it was stake conference - which unfortunately - neither of us got tons out of. Between taking him out and keeping him quiet, church isn't quite what it used to be. But it was good we were there and the whole weekend was great. Love our little family!