costumes

I don't remember Halloween being so much work as a kid. Oh, yes. That is because it is only a lot of work for the parents.

My mother will say it is payback for me because I once asked her to make me into a pink flamingo. She spent hours on a costume complete with a beak made from a recycled pinata and a tail stuffed with balloons to give it shape.

I bought ears and tails on Amazon for my little zebra and Dalmatian and still found it a lot of work.

By the way, whoever thinks that pumpkin carving is an activity for children is wrong. They can't draw well on pumpkins. They can't use knives without carving off their fingers. And my kids can't even help scoop out the pumpkin guts because they aren't strong enough. They sure enjoyed watching Daddy and I do all of the work for their kitty pumpkins, however.

The challenge with impressionable little people at Halloween is to have fun but avoid all of the scary. We are still figuring out this balance. This year we joined a group of Annike's friends from kindergarten and trick-or-treated around the staff housing at the local Christian high school. No creepy dark porches. No weird people walking around. No scary masks. No cars flying down the road we needed avoid. It was perfect for us.

I also appreciated Annike's school's choice to celebrate Reformation Day in lieu of Halloween. They invited all of the students to dress up in Medieval or Renaissance type costumes to commemorate the day. I found it refreshing to be given a healthy suggestion for how Christians can participate in this holiday. Instead of being given a list of "what not to wear" on this day known for its dark costumes, kids were given direction and a positive outlet for how to be a part of the fun.

Annike was a little Renaissance maiden in this beautiful period dress borrowed from a friend whose mother handmade it. She complains whenever I want to put her hair back, but this time I insisted. After all, if the parents are doing all of the work putting costumes together, then don't we get to insist on some of that parts that bring us pleasure?

Oh yes, and Baby Karsten, you ask? What was he doing during all of this on Halloween? Sleeping, of course. Like the sweet little glowworm that he is. In fact, he slept so much that I didn't actually get a picture of him in his costume until a few days later.

We will end this post with another comparison photo of my little children who have all worn this very same costume for their first Halloween, somewhere between 5 and 6 weeks old. Just so you know, my husband had trouble telling the babies below apart.

Top to bottom: Annike, Sommer, and Karsten. Love these little buggars!

garden goods

Our garden hasn't done quite as well as it did last year. I suppose we have been focusing on growing little people this year, instead of vegetables.

Still, we got a large crop of tomatoes, quite a few handfuls of peas, many ears of corn and some delicious carrots. Tip for other parents of a super-picky non-eating toddler:  have a garden. There is nothing like pulling something out of the dirt to make a 2-year-old want to eat it.

We lost a lot of our plants to mold, or birds, or a family of 6 baby turkeys that discovered the raised bed. The one crop that seemed to be immune to the animals were the pumpkins.

If you want to plant one thing for the fun of watching it grow with kids, I highly recommend pumpkins. These grew like Jack's magic beanstalk. We could practically see the vines stretching out over the earth with each passing day, the gourds getting bigger, turning green, then orange.

I've been seeing pictures on facebook of everyone with their cute kids at the pumpkin patch. Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch too. Except that we didn't have to get in the car. We walked out the front door to harvest our pumpkins from our very own side yard!

I admit our little patch is not quite as artistically displayed as the professional lots, but the kids had just as much fun in this one. In fact, they have been having fun in it all summer long. The girls each "claimed" their pumpkin months ago while they were still green. They watched them grow, and were excited to finally pick and place them on the porch.

I always love the idea of having a large pile of pumpkins on my doorstep, but at $10-$15 dollars each it can really add up! Is anyone else shocked at the price of pumpkins these days? Someone is making a lot of money on this Halloween commodity. We can now tell you from experience that they don't cost a lot to grow. The $3 spent on the packet of seeds was well spent.

The little guy even got in on some of the action!

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Another great joy we find in our garden is the opportunity to give of our abundance. My husband teaches me a lot about this, and I guess I have a lot to learn.

Every time one of our little friends comes over, he suggests that we let them pick a pumpkin to take home. I was selfishly excited about putting all 15 of the pumpkins we grew on our porch for the fall. But it is such a good feeling to share the joy with others. So much better than feeling pride in an overly decorated porch. Seriously, who needs 15 pumpkins on the porch?

Especially when the things that matter most are already there.

community

Every year we celebrate Halloween a little bit differently. With little ones, we are still figuring this out. How do we find a healthy way to get in on the fun? Obviously, for us it is not about scary things or candy or death. It does seem to be an awful lot about the adorable costumes I can squeeze my children into.

(These might look like ordinary leopard costumes to you... but no. My girls went as extraordinary serval cats. Annike has been planning it for months. For a little help with what a serval cat actually is, see this post.)

Someone wise pointed out to me that Halloween is fun because it is all about community. Community.

It makes sense. The best part about this rather ghastly night is seeing the costumes that our friends wear. Having an excuse to laugh together. Taking pictures and making another memory. Giving a treat to someone we love. Community.

The trouble is that living out on this farm means we don't have a neighborhood, hence a community, to trick-or-treat in. And if we did have a neighborhood we might not want to walk around in it at night, which is an unfortunate reality in this day and age. When I was growing up, all of the kids in my friendly neighborhood went to school together and all of the parents loved seeing us come to the door for trick-or-treat. I am wondering if that will ever be the case for my kids?

But even if that is never a reality, we DO have community. We have an abundance of laughter, fellowship, and friends in our lives with whom we can share the fun. It just takes a bit more creativity considering they don't all live in the "neighborhood".

Every year we try something new for Halloween. This year it was a morning costume party for the kiddos who didn't have school...

... then some trick-or-treating with our friends in their neighborhood (which feels like cheating to me, but that is how it is done around here.)

It is worth noting that after examining her final collection of candy at the end of the night, Annike was most excited about the shelled peanuts in the bottom of her bucket. Instead of choosing a piece of candy to eat, she asked if she could just eat peanuts. Ah yes, things will one day be different.

All in all, we celebrated being a part of an amazing community. We shared silly costumes. We made some new memories. We warned each other about scary houses that should be avoided. We held hands and hugged. Community.

happy halloween

No homemade costumes this year due to a decrease in the amount of available time I have for being creative... and let's be honest, an overall decrease in creative energy.  Hopefully this energy will be rediscovered as soon as Sommer starts sleeping more consistently.  Instead, I nabbed a green fairy costume a few months ago, much to Annike's delight.

Sommer got to use Annike's old glowworm costume - one advantage of having their birthday 3 days apart!  Until I took these pictures, I thought they looked nothing alike.  Christian gave me a hard time for taking the picture on the same blanket because he couldn't tell them apart!  Any guesses as to who is who??

Did anyone get it right?  The top one is Annike, the middle is Sommer, the bottom one is neither of my children... just a picture of the original for those who might be unfamiliar with glowworms.

Despite the survival mode status of our current household, we managed to find some time for a little festivity.  The baby even got to watch!

Pumpkin carving

Halloween is definitely not my favorite holiday (though I sure love getting to stick my kiddos in silly outfits!) It looks like Annike might share my sentiments because she only lasted about 20 minutes at the church trick-or-treating festival.  She was clearly far more excited about carving a pumpkin with her Papa than she was about the scary crowd of costumed strangers.  I won't fault her for this... perhaps she has her priorities straight.

Until next year, Happy Halloween!

costumes

If you are not the mother of a Sesame-Street-watching toddler, you may be unfamiliar with Abby Cadabby, but that is who Annike played the part of this Halloween.

Abby is one of Elmo's newer friends who was probably added to create a stronger female monster presence for the preschoolers to look up to (did you ever notice they were all male when we were growing up?) She is actually a pink and purple fairy who does magic, and I am still trying to figure out what educational value she adds to Sesame Street. None-the-less, Annike is quite a fan, and her costume was relatively easy to put together.

While Annike is very attached to her tutus, for some reason she was resistant to putting on her Abby Cadabby costume until the very last minute, when I resorted to bribery (something I DO try to avoid with her.) This may tell you how girly she is, but the bribe was that if she put her costume on, then I would put make-up on her. She held so still for the mascara, and the lip stick, and the eye shadow, and the glitter. And when we were all done, she looked in the mirror and declared "I'm BEAOOOTIFUL!"

This is a word I have never heard her use before, and it came out with such oomf! "BEAUUUUTIFUL!" Of course it made me laugh and agree with her. But afterwards I contemplated where she picked up the idea that we are only beautiful when we put make up on. She sees me do it every day, but I make a big effort to tell her that it helps me look "awake" instead of using the word "pretty". I mean, there is no way I would go out without mascara on because no one would recognize me... but there I go again, unintentionally sending the message that it is the external applications that make us beautiful.

It is going to be a battle over the next 20 years fighting the impression our culture's image of beauty as seen in magazines, television, and even the Disney princesses will make on Annike. But the truth is that the messages she gets begin and end with me, at least for a little while they do. I have potential to be the best example of the difference between internal beauty and external beauty that she has. That means I have to wrap my own head around the way that God created ME to be beautiful first. Not with name brand jeans and just the right shade of lipstick. My true beauty stems from understanding all of the ways that God created me unique, and using those uniquities to glorify Him. I have to somehow show her that we are most beautiful when we are displaying fruit in our lives, showing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control to those around us. Yep, I have a lot of work to do! Maybe with Annike's help, we can embrace God's form of beauty in our lives together!

"What matters is not your outer appearance — the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes — but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. The holy women of old were beautiful before God that way..." 1 Peter 3:3-4 (The Message)


We had a kid's Halloween party to attend, and we gave trick-or-treating a go for the first time. We only visited about 8 different homes, but from the look of the picture below, clearly that was plenty.

halloween

Halloween came and went. We live in a town that takes Halloween very seriously. Witches and magic aren't the same friendly versions found in a Harry Potter novel.

As an adult, I now see the danger that is present for my child in growing up in a culture that celebrates the dark side of the Spiritual world. How do we remain in the world without succumbing to it?

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God,..." Eph 6:12-13

I found myself thankful for the friends we have who created an appropriate venue for my child to celebrate via family costume party. It is fun to dress up, but we have to remember what we are celebrating. In our home, we do not give power to demons by honoring them; we celebrate deliverance from them.

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Rom 8:38-39

Here is a picture of our little American Indian



I thought it would be cute if she went dressed in the "full armor of God", but the truth is that we get to wear that costume every day.