Our Halloween...

Last year, we didn't do anything on Halloween weekend... other than move all our belongings from one house to another. =) Yep, this weekend was the first anniversary of being in our new house. It seems like just yesterday that we moved in... until I think about all that has happened in my heart and life since we signed the contract.

This year, we decided to check out the harvest festival at church. Seth was a lion, and Evan was a 5-month-old punk rocker. I had originally planned for him to wear his baby bear winter outfit, but the high of 82 that day nixxed those plans. So I put him in a belly shirt that said "Party in my crib- 2 a.m.," striped pants, gave him a baby mohawk with gel, and put a cross earring on one tiny lobe with eyeliner. He was a Christian punk rocker after all. Ahem.

I have mixed feelings about Halloween. I don't want Seth and Evan to be involved in anything that glorifies death and evil. I don't want them celebrating blood and gore and guts. My family didn't do anything for Halloween when I was little, so this is new territory for me. But David's family did do some non-scary Halloween stuff, and he has much less mixed feelings about it. So, we went to the harvest carnival, and then we went trick or treating in the neighborhood.

I didn't live in a neighborhood growing up, so I'm still learning that dynamic, too. But walking around and knocking on the neighbor's doors, knowing they would be glad to see us, was a nice idea. Lots of lights were on, and there were plenty of glowing pumpkins on porches. Older neighbors that I'd never seen out before were on their front porches. And I didn't see any scary costumes. It was all little kids out in our neighborhood. And I realized something definitely good about Halloween. Unfortunately, there aren't many times in our American communities when people come out of their houses and welcome each other warmly. This is one of those few times, and I'm glad I didn't miss out on it. I don't know how we'll handle scary Halloween as the kids get older. That's still unexplored territory, but we found a way to do it that I can be comfortable with for now.

I sure would hate to miss out on the cute costumes entirely. And then there's the candy for Seth. He got to collect it, and we get to eat it. =)