My Favorite Part of Fall

        

We often share answers to ice-breaker questions at the beginning of staff meetings at work.  For the most part I enjoy this practice since it helps us to get to know each other a little bit better, and it makes for a fun and interesting few minutes in a sometimes stressful work day.   This last week the question for the day was "What is your favorite thing about Fall?"   This took me a few minutes to decide, since Fall really isn't my favorite season.  Yes, I enjoy the cooler weather and the beautiful colorful leaves.  There is some excitement with back to school and finding new treats in the garden.   Halloween can be fun, but I don't like to celebrate the gory or wickedness or evil in the world, so I usually don't do much other than share some treats with family and co-workers and children in the neighborhood.  I might put out a scarecrow and some pumpkins on the front porch and hang my old witchy door decoration up on Halloween. 

    So what was my answer?  Celebrating family birthdays, since we have a few September and October and November birthdays.   The week of Halloween has been "birthday week" for many years, and we always over indulge on cake and ice cream and then Halloween treats too.   And this year's fall birthday season is already off to a good start since we were able to celebrate DD4's birthday this past week.  The celebrations are a bit more low-key these days since there are fewer of us living close by, so we had a dinner and cake and ice cream and presents with DH, and DD1 and DD2 and DD4.    I ended up baking two different cakes since the first one fell apart while taking it out of the pan, so dinner ended up being a bit later than planned, but I thought the cake turned out pretty cute!

Since then I have realized that my favorite parts of fall are our church's semi-annual Stake Conference (which was this past week) and the Semi Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is traditionally held the first weekend of October, which is this coming weekend.    Both events include uplifting messages and music from church leaders, and they are the real highlights of my year.  The spring conferences often coincide with the Easter Season, which is also wonderful in and of itself, and the fall conferences add comfort and hope to a time of year that is often hard for me as the days become shorter and the temperatures colder.  

Here is a YouTube trailer message for this year's October General Conference, including a message from God's current living prophet:

Here is a link to where you can watch General Conference on October 5th and 6th:

Ways to Watch or Listen to General Conference