That Holiday In October

Yeah, okay, we are approaching Christmas and I am blogging about that holiday that occurs in October! But, I'm just trying to catch up on my blog posts. I am not a big fan of Halloween--I never have been, even not so much as a kid. We dressed up for school, and went trick-or-treating, but I hated HATED all of the glorified scary stuff that came along with all of that. I really did like the dressing up part, though. Ever since our kids have been little, I've been torn about whether or not they should participate in this holiday. Well, we have let them.

Our church does a great Harvest Party for the public every year and we have participated in that in a few different ways like helping to direct parking, bagging up cotton candy, etc. This year was the best one yet I feel. Yes, you do get the public kids, and sometimes even the parents, who dress up in gross or scary costumes. You would think they would think differently when attending something at a church, but that is "the world" for you. Evan is kind of getting to the point where he is growing out of little kids costumes, so this year he decided just to wear his soccer team uniform. Woohoo! Saved some money that way since we didn't have to buy him a costume.

 Lauren wanted to be Raggedy Ann. She already had a cute homemade rag doll looking dress that she wears to church that I had found at a garage sale, and she had some black dress shoes. All she needed was a wig and tights. I had some swagbucks sitting in my amazon.com account and was able to use them to buy an adorable wig hair/hat combo and some red/white striped tights. (If you would like to earn free bucks just by searching the web, then click on this link and sign up for your swagbucks account: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/risencakes)

The actual night of Halloween, Lauren went to a birthday party and Roger and Evan met up with some friends to go trick or treating around the neighborhood. Roger got to sit in the driveway and pass out the candy while the other moms took the kids door to door.

We also carved pumpkins this year using stencils we downloaded from the internet. They actually came out really well and were a lot of fun. Roger decided he want to free hand his carving and make a face. He wasn't thrilled with how it came out, and it was a little creepy. We talked him into making a smile so it at least looked a little better like a happy smiling pumpkin. They looked really neat on the porch at night with those fake flame candle lights put inside them.