SHEAR JOY

This was "Break the Rules Day" at school, which included wearing pj's AND CRAZY HAIR DAY!!! Emily was thinking about getting her hair cut short again, and when crazy hair day came, she decided sh'ed be REALLY crazy, and only cut half of it for Friday.  I started cutting, and we both slowly realized it was a TAD shorter than either of us wanted (how many times do I have to learn this lesson???).  She was a good sport though, became something of a celebrity at school for her boldness, and got a REAL haircut from our friend up the street after school.  She was still a bit put out with me for the first day, but once Maddie helped her style it, she decided she might like it after all (I've decided I LOVE it, but I was so nervous for a while, and just glad she got mad, and not crying-in-her-room-for-days-SAD like I would've done).  Here are the after shots:

And while she rejoiced in shortening, Spencer was getting excited about growing.  Since Conference is so close to his birthday, one thing he wanted to do was attend there in SL and see the prophet live.  We waited to see if our stake got any tickets, but they were only for the Priesthood Session (which Brent and Brian enjoyed).  I thought we ought to try doing the standby thing just to see how it goes, and since it was snowing that morning, it looked like our chances would be good! We left w/ sandwiches right after the first session, slowly found parking, and walked up w/ the masses to find the line for Standby Tickets.  Aside from my answering dishonestly that he was "barely 8"(he was a week away!) to someone handing out tickets for Tabernacle Seating (which I QUICKLY repented for, and explained to Spencer was SO wrong--oh brother--when will I ever learn if I'm lying at General Conference!!!!)--we did have a great time.  They Standy people said there were no tickets left b/c it was totally full today, but we gave it one more try, walking in front of the Conference Center holding up 2 fingers (for how many tickets we needed).  RIGHT AWAY, a young man handed some to us to enjoy, after which we got at the end of a VERY long line wrapping around the Conference Center w/ only 15 minutes to go, and DID eventually get seated, albeit in the very back row, just in time for it to start.  Spencer was thrilled, and just FULL of great joy--he's easy to enjoy :). 

We loved all of Conference.  Poor Brian missed Saturday sessions due to a City Council "Budget Retreat," but Brent printed off Conference Booklets, we had skittles for Conference Bingo, and could watch it from nearly any place in the house b/t computers and tvs.  SUCH an uplift!