Halloween

We started out our Halloween week with reading a book called "The Pumpkin Gospel." It was a great book to read before carving a pumpkin... the gist is that we are the pumpkin, God opens us up, takes all the yuck out, carves us a new life and sets His light inside us.
We carved our first pumpkin. I love Avi Joy's expression here. Adam told her to take the top off and look inside the pumpkin- you can just hear her saying, "owwwhhh."
Nehemiah got to play with the top. He loves getting gooey.
We washed the pumpkin seeds and sprinkled spices on them. We toasted them and snacked on them for a few days.
Now on to the good stuff! Over the summer we went to TX with Adam on a business trip. We stopped at the huge Grapevine Mills Mall to play before we came home and they had this great ice cream truck toy. The kids had THE BEST TIME playing ice cream man- I was completely inspired for their Halloween costumes. Here they were in the summer...
And Voila! After some sewing... She is an ice cream cone and he is the ice cream man. Our new church had a Sunday (during kids church) dress-up party. I LOVE that my kids got to go to church all dressed-up. They got candy and did crafts.
On Halloween night we went trick or treating with the Homan family in their new neighborhood. Our sweet girls had a great time!
Here is the whole clan. Avi Joy, Sarah, Andrew holding Samuel, Coy and Nehemiah.
All the kids thought going up to someones house, ringing the doorbell and getting candy was THE.COOLEST.THING.EVER. They all had to learn not go grab more candy from the person's bowl, but let them put it in your bag.
Before we left we were playing in the living room. Nehemiah kept putting his ice cream hat over his head, running into everything and falling over. Then Repeat. Avi Joy was in stitches. You can see here he is running without eyesight (such a boy thing) and she is full of laughter.
I LOVED making their costumes. My mother always made my costumes... just a few were: A banana, Hershey kiss, gypsy, a stop light and (like I just read on my friends blog recently) I was also 1/2 man- 1/2 woman in the 6th grade. Maybe some day I could post some pics of them, but I would have to hunt at my moms. It would be a good laugh!

Most of my friends do not dress-up their kiddos. I only have two good friends who celebrate Halloween and go trick or treating. I have a few others scattered around that dress up their kids and do something churchy. I just believe that you can serve Christ and have fun dressing up without focusing on a pagan holiday. It is the Wiccan Holiday, Samhain or Witches New Year.

Something else I found interesting was they celebrate Halloween in Vietnam. I follow a guy's blog who lives in HCMC. Here is a post about Halloween in Saigon.

"I am the LORD; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to another or My praise to idols." Isaiah 42:8

The Perryman's