"Fall Carnival"- the New Halloween

My little guys in their matching outfits on Sunday morning.

This is the best picture I could get- out of about 10!

I have issues with calling Halloween or Trick or Treating anything other than that, but so many churches have taken up the cause of anti-Halloween while still getting the good stuff (candy and costumes) in.

That's where "trunk or treat" came in to play- you line up a bunch of trunks (cars and trucks) and people pass out candy to the line of kids that come by. Where's the adventure in that? You don't have to guess whether or not to eat the questionable candy from the sketchy old man who handed you (what could be) Easter candy. And you don't learn the proper etiquette of waiting a second after another group has just hit up a house for your turn. You barely have to even say trick or treat. They just hand out candy and smile at you.

Our kids will have no concept of that scary house that you kind of want to go to because you heard they had good candy, but you're a little bit scared, so you decide that a Butterfinger isn't worth it and just keep walking. I don't even know if they'll learn about the slobber that accumulates from trying to breath/ talk inside a plastic Wonder Woman mask with a flimsy piece of elastic string stretching it across the back of your head. Now everything is trustworthy and in the daylight- dang it.

I guess being over protective is okay for my 3 and 1 year olds.

I understand why people want to take the devil out of Halloween and return it to a fun carnival-ish type atmosphere. I'm all for dressing up as Spidey and not Satan or some scary varmint, so I guess I can get on that bandwagon.

I HATE being scared. (Surprised- okay, scared- not okay.) I have only gone to a haunted house once- in high school- with a CHURCH youth group. I couldn't wait to get out. Ugh. I cringe and look away when we even cruise by scaryness on the tv. The sound of that music from Unsolved Mysteries makes my skin crawl. I have never seen those scary movies that every else has seen, and I'm okay with it! Look how normal I am (twitch, twitch)!

Our church had "Fall Carnival" this Sunday afternoon. It was truly a big carnival with trunk or treat, BBQ dinner, inflatable slides and bounce houses, games (all with Jesus- identified names: e.g. Hole in "Holy" One- okay I'm making that one up, but they were in that same vein), prizes and many, many sweaty kids. It was wonderful. Nice, safe, perfect weather and a lot of fun. :-)

Harris was a Tiger and hung out in the stoller for most of the time. We let him crawl around inside some and he was a cute little Tiger. He even kept his ears on.Don't ask me why Jason and I feel compelled to dress up, but we do. I threw together a last minute Rubix cube (super easy, but ask me if you want to know how) and Jason was so proud he could still fit into his flight suit from working at Space Camp 9-10 years ago. Owen has a couple of outfits (all bought at consignment sales) and he chose to be a dragon for this event. Here is the front of his cute little dragon:And here is the back:Owen was put to shame, though, by his friend Hannah Grace who came as their shared favorite hero, Buzz Lightyear. Debbi, her mommy, somehow found this outfit and I am questioning whether or not to forgive her. Look at Owen's admiration. To be emotionally drop-kicked like that- and by a GIRL, no less! I think he managed to get over it, though.

We have 3 more Halloween events, believe it or not. We've got Trunk or Treating at Jason's parents church on Friday night, a family party on Saturday afternoon and an adult party on Saturday night. You'll have to keep posted to see what the Dunhams will show up as next!