Halloween Happenings

Those who know me well can attest to the fact that I do not like Halloween - never really have. As I've gotten older, I like it less. I don't like the witchcraft. I don't like the ghouls. I don't like the skeletons, spiders or gore. Halloween has it's origins in the "All Saints" celebration that was also a time to celebrate the completion of the harvest. If you look at the four major holidays - Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, all have their routes in Christianity (yes - even Thanksgiving). It would be hard for the pagans to hijack Easter or Christmas, and Thanksgiving is rather benign, so I suppose they needed something. For me, I would rather live:
whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
All that being said, it's an inescapable fact of life for us since our kids are in school. So - we go with it a little bit...

At Becky's school, instead of the "Halloween" celebration, they host a "Noah Parade". The kids dress as different animals and they march outside and sing "Let's go collect all the animals. After the parade, they sit and hear the story of Noah's Ark and sing more animal songs. 

My little cow.....

My little cow and her friend Nicholas....

This was Katie's first Halloween - I"m not sure she really understood it all. Her sister picked out her costume. 

Katie's school does the traditional Halloween celebration and party; her class looked so cute! 

I love this picture; Katie's school really strives to include the special ed classes in all the activities and the pre-school special ed led the parade this year (Katie is the adorable pink princess in the background!)

Friday night, the church where Becky's pre-school is hosted a harvest festival. Katie was overdone from the day, but Tia Annie took Becky and enjoyed all the festivities! 

 Very hard at work on her crafts! 

WIth her friend Kayla 

There will be more pictures of Saturday and Sunday's activities.....for someone who doesn't like Halloween, we sure did a lot of it!