Happy Halloween to all

Happy Halloween to all.  May ghosts and goblins excite you tonight.  May all your kids have a great evening.  I can't wait to get started.  LOL I did say that I liked Halloween too.

Here's a little story that I found on the internet a while back.  Enjoy..

Happy Halloween

Halloween Safety Procedures

It's here tomorrow night my skeleton and Phat Cat are ready to go trick or treating.  Since I started out the season with a warning.  I figured that I would write about precautions to take for trick or treating.

1. Have the kids pair off into group.  If you can, one parent stay with each child.
2. Take a flashlight with you and wear reflective coats.  Remember it does get dark. 
3. If you can, put glow necklaces on the kid.  Faith is tickled pink with her light its pink.
4. Tell the kids not to approach any strange vehicles and if someone gets out to come to you at once.
5. Remind the kids they are not allowed to eat the candy until you get home.  I always take a drink for each child and a treat.  Trick or treating is hungry work.  This gives you more chance to be able to check the candy out.
6. Only go up to the houses with their porch lights on.. Well lit houses are the best.
7. If its cold, dress warmly.  But they will get hot since they most likely will be moving fast for more candy.
8. Take a cell phone with you.

Have a great night trick or treating.  The pictures are from the haunted house at school this week.  Hopefully they look good tomorrow night too.

Halloween - The Good and the Bad

When I was little I would have told you that I love Halloween.  I loved dressing up and going trick or treating.  I loved the getting all that candy.  I was a goblin, Billy Idol (don't hate me), a cat, Peter Frampton (it was the time of year), a tampon, a witch (well I finally got to dress up like one), and whatever else was so popular that I had to do it.  I remember getting all excited beforehand.  And driving my mother nuts.  Is it Halloween yet?  Mommy, what about tonight?  Do we go trick or treating?  Just like my kids do to me today.

I even remember going into houses that were set up like haunted houses.  Yes it was safer back then.  There's always the guy up the street that decorates his yard like a graveyard.  Or someone is jumping out of the bushes to scare the kids.  All of this is done in good faith.

I love how excited Faith and Jason are about Halloween.  Jason is already set up with his skeleton outfit.  Faith has her Phat Cat outfit.  They are both so incredibly adorable in them.  I can't wait to take pictures of them.  We are planning on trying to carve jack-o-lanterns this year as well.  That makes me nervous.  I'm not crafty at all.  It might look like the grim reaper when I am done.  Wait is it suppose to look like that?

I love ghost stories.  I can even handle a few horror movies during the season with my husband.  Not with the kids.  They are too young.  We will do the cartoon ones with them.  I can't wait to see Linus waiting on The Great Pumpkin.  I can remember watching that cartoons with all of my siblings.  Such great memories.

And I thought it was incredibly cute (and stupid) that my husband taught Jason at 3 years old to say.  "Trick or Treat, Smell my feet, give me something good to eat."  It was cute because Jason was saying it.  It was stupid because my husband truly did not think that Jason would actually say it to someone else.  I walked Faith last year.  Ken told me that he told Jason like 15 different times not to say it.  He said it at every house they went to.  Hmmm is that egg on Ken's face I wonder?  I am always telling him not to teach them these things.  (giggles)

Now having said that obviously I like Halloween.

But....

As a parent, I worry for the following reasons:

1. It was a lot safer back when I was smaller.  Or we just didn't know it wasn't.  I mean I even walked into stranger's house.  Did my parents realize the danger that put me in back then?
2. I worry about my kids eating their treats before they get home.  What if someone put something in them?  We are being warned every year to check the candy for needles and razor blades, drugs, arsenic or strychnine.  Don't eat it if there is a hole in the wrapping.  So I take juice and treats with me that I know are safe.  But what if I don't see them sneaking.
3. Hospitals are seeing a lot of bad things on Halloween to simply feel the thrill of Halloween.  Devil worshipping kind of activities such as self-mutilation.
4. This is the biggest one of all..  The thing that scares me the most.  I am there with my kids.  Ken takes one child.  I take the other one.  We might be walking together.  But our eyes never leave the child that we are taking.  You see, it's normal for kids to be screaming because of scary things they see.  I can't believe that kids aren't kidnapped that night more than any other night.  What's one more scream?

Having said that.  Yes I will be taking my kids trick-or-treating.  I will be taking them to the pumpkin patch.  I will let them be involved in this wonderful time for kids.  But I will worry all the same.

This is simply thoughts.  Anyone have others?

5 Costumes for $5 Dollars Every Morning

I'm just like everyone else am now thinking about Halloween.  What oh what will my kids be this year?  Will they stop asking if tomorrow is Halloween?  Every day when they realize that Halloween is coming.  The treats are coming.  Candy is running free through the neighborhood.  The kids drive me insane with is tomorrow Halloween.  And the sighs when its not. 

I just found this site Moms Need to Know.  She is advertising about a company called BuyCostumes.com.  They sell 5 costumes for $5 Mon-Fri at 9 am CDT (that's 10 AM EST).  Its worth checking into.  Anything to save a few bucks.  See you there. 

Simple Ponderings

--You know God created us to have someone else. We were not meant to be alone. We need that physical contact and support. Most of all we need love.

--I was given a gift of being connected to someone that I care about. Of knowing when something is wrong. I feel it in my heart and usually I am not wrong. It could be as simple as someone having a bad day. My friend, Cricket, will think of me because she needs my attention on something. I always receive the message and not by phone. My poems from my grandfather are a testament that things happen that are not always understood.

-- I got really involved in the Jaycees.

My very first function was a Halloween party in the lower Rhine area. That’s a really bad part of town. So being a Halloween party I got dressed up. It was not required. I got dressed up as a witch. And I didn't know the neighborhood well and ended up lost. Well I pull up to this house and I couldn’t help thinking I’m going to be killed watch and see. Anyway I asked for directions from this little girl.

She looked at me and asked, "Are you a Jaycee?"

Of course, I replied, "Yes, do you know where this is?"

Her face literally lit up and she said, "Yes, you go... well to suffice to say she gave me directions.

I wasn't to know that I would later see this same little girl at the party. She came in dressed as a jelly bean bag. She was so cute and her mother was fortunate enough to come. Anyway during the party, I did my scary voice and told a wicked horror story to the kids. I literally had them spellbound... they were so rapt on my words. One of the other Jaycees tried to put input into the story. I tried to tell him but he just kept going. It didn't work. He wasn't aware that I wasn't reading from a book. I started to read from the book originally. But I could see the children must have heard it before so I changed it and made it into my own story. So I continued after he made a comment that there was no way he could take over. Two of my gifts from God are my writings and my voice. Its not that my voice is beautiful...its that I can change it sometimes to reflect different things such as a wicked witch...Australian accent...English nanny...Scottish...even a frog. I have always been able to change voices in the middle of a story and it does me well when I am telling stories to the kids now.

So any way while I was at the party, the mother of that little girl came up to me. It still makes me get teary eyed when I think of that conversation. I hadn't realized her daughter had won the costume contest... or that there even was one. So this mother tells me how very excited and blessed she feels that she was able to attend the party because she had to take off from one of her three jobs that she works to support her kids. That happiness and love that this woman showed to her child instilled in me that I wanted to continue to do the good work so to speak.