the elephant and his peanut.

I love Halloween. Not the scary stuff. Just the opportunity for kids to dress in costume and go door to door to the neighbors asking for candy. It's a fun childhood memory for me. I also love to see all of the little ones come to my front door and I get to help fill their pumpkins with candy. So yes, we have NOTHING against this kind of Halloween. And as a side note: just this morning I read 2 GREAT blog posts about Christianity and Halloween. How it's a way to serve, love and build relationships with your neighbors. One of those posts even asked something like: Would Jesus turn off his porch light and cut that connection from the community around him rather than take the opportunity to love on strangers? Probably not.

Anyways, this was the first year that Holden was into trick or treating. And it was so much fun to watch him. It didn't take long for him to master the phrases "trick or treat" "thank you" and "happy halloween". I thought he would immediately want to tear into the candy after leaving the first house. But really he was ready to go onto the next house. He enjoyed the game of ringing the doorbell, waiting for an answer, saying "twick or tweet" and holding out his basket. Sometimes they offered him the bowl to choose a piece of candy. That was entertaining as his temptation was to grab an entire handful. We only went to about 10 houses last night, but it was a joy to watch. Holden loved it. Pax was clueless. It was everything I hoped it would be! :)

On our way to small group. And the reason we only made it to about 10 houses. We didn't get home until 7:30, which is bedtime. But we still made it down the street to those sweet and friendly neighbors that left their porch light on for us.

Holden checking out his little loot!