Living Blossoms

Yay for a normal post!

+ Our Halloween night was fun, but felt nothing like Halloween. We had fun though.

+ Saturday morning we woke up early to go with Isaac's coworkers to the Florida Baptist Children's Home. We cooked a meal on the grill and then served it. Sadly, we didn't get to interact with the kids (some orphans, some temporarily there till a parent gets their act together) much. This was my first visit to an American orphanage. I felt bad for the kids there, of course, but it just reaffirmed my desire to adopt kids from other countries. To the orphans in El Salvador, the FBCH would be like heaven. The kids don't go hungry, and they have house parents so they get attention and affection, and they're taught the Truth, not the cult of Mary.

Saturday afternoon I slept for 4 hours on the couch! That was not expected, but much-needed. We watched Ghostbusters, which I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. That night Isaac went to play football with some friends, and I watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I hadn't seen since it was in theaters last year. It is amazing that that movie is 2 hours long and there is SO MUCH left out of it.

+ Sunday was pretty much engulfed by our Olympian Fun Fall Festival. After lunch we set up for it, which took so long we only had about an hour and a half between it and the actual festival. We had 13 kids come, though, and 6 of them don't attend church anywhere; their only exposure to God is through our club. We had a ton of candy left over again, so that was great. Hehe. I did face painting, and tried a few new things this year that went over big.

+ Monday's activities have slipped my mind, save for watching SNL's Presidential Bash that evening. Very entertaining.

+ Tuesday I voted in the morning and did not have to wait in line at all. Bwaha. I then went out to lunch at Olive Garden with Grams, Ange, and the kids. It'd been ages since I'd been there. I do love their Five Cheese Ziti al Forno, breadsticks, and raspberry lemonade. *licks lips* As mentioned the other day, we went to AAAC's house that night for a small election party, which was a total blast and an excuse to use the chocolate fountain again. =oD I was up way too late that night though, and I've paid for it since.

+ Yesterday I spent the day cocooned in the house. I felt like crap for staying up so late without being able to sleep in, and I was still royally ticked about the election results, so I did not want to see any news or newspapers. I was able to take a bit of a nap in the late afternoon, and I convinced Isaac to join me. We skipped the gym in favor of something more fun, and then finally went to see Fireproof. (We've been saying we were going to see it ever since it came out.) We were both pleasantly surprised by it. I had no idea it was funny, and I was expecting nearly all the actors to be bad, like in Facing the Giants. Instead, only a few of them were really wooden, and the rest, while not likely to win an Academy Award, were quite good. It was well-made too - as good as any indie film I've seen. And of course I bawled my eyes out. Hehe. I also had fun spotting people who were in Facing the Giants. We went to the movie at 7, and still hadn't had dinner, but thankfully it was free small popcorn day for people in their Movie Watcher club, so we snacked on that and then went to Steak 'n Shake. We hadn't been there in months, and they have 4 meals under $4 now - and they're good ones - so that was awesome. It was a great little impromptu date night. =o)

Oh yeah, and when we were on the highway heading down to the theater, we kept seeing all these cops go by very quickly, some with lights on, some without. We got around the bend and saw the cops (now all with lights on) blocking the entire highway. We were right behind them. We still don't know what was going on, but we saw them arrest 3 girls in their late teens/20s who looked stoned. We're guessing they were driving recklessly and, to have so many policemen there, probably refusing to pull over at first. Isaac was pretty freaked out, because the cops had their guns drawn and we were so close to them, but I figured any bullets would've had to go through 3 cop cars to get to us. Anyway, it made us late for the movie, but it was pretty exciting.

+ Someone in Greece bought one of my Supernatural shirts! That is so cool. What will be even cooler is if when we're there in June, I see her wearing it. Yeah, yeah, Greece is a decent-sized country, blah, blah, blah. It would still be cool.

+ Off to watch Survivor and then Supernatural. Happy almost-Friday!

I thought y'all might enjoy this Halloween treat. =o)


Stuff Christians Like: Hating Halloween

Last year, at the first house we visited on Halloween night, my two year old daughter McRae walked inside the minute the door was opened. Before the 75 year old man at the door could react, she had juked passed him and was deep into his living room exploring the place.

In her defense, Halloween is kind of confusing. For 364 days of the year we tell her not to accept candy from strangers. Then on Halloween, we dress her up as a big blue M&M and encourage her to use her hand as some sort of crane device to pick up the maximum payload possible when strangers offer her buckets of treats to choose from.

It would be a lot simpler if our church had a Halloween alternative event. They’re pretty popular these days and come in a variety of shapes and colors. Some churches hold fall festivals or harvest hayrides or Trunk and Treat, an event that combines both strangers with candy and a place usually best suited for a spare tire. I think those are great. I appreciate that different Christians handle the whole trick or treat thing in different ways. But since my dad, a minister, a church planter, a former member of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention took us trick or treating, I don’t have much experience with Halloween alternative events. (Sorry to throw you under the Halloween bus dad, but that’s what you get for making me be a “hobo” for 6 years running, a costume that involves wearing old clothes and charcoal from the grill. Easiest/worst costume ever.)

I was going to create my own version of a Halloween alternative event, complete with a fantastical acronym and name. (In the original post I actually named my event "Junk in the Trunk" because I figured I could hire Sir-Mix-A-Lot because he needs the money.) But then I got an email from my friend Bryan about a Halloween event he went to as a child at the First Christian Church of Hixville. (He runs the great site Prayers for Blowouts.) I was instantly reminded that fact is stranger than fiction and that you readers are funnier than me. Want to guess what the name of the event was?

HATCH

On the surface that is probably a B- idea. I mean at least they named it after something car trunk related. I didn’t think it was that awesome until he told me what it stood for.

Hixville's
Alternative
To
Carnal
Halloween

I heart that. If that was a bumper sticker I would mail a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope to request one. I would dress up as David or Samson (no one ever goes as Enoch) and go to that event in about 2 seconds. I would expect to eat some “alternative oreos” that didn’t get eaten at VBS and drink forearm-stirred orange drink and use the smoke machine the youth minister tricked the church into getting and sing Friends are Friends Forever when the whole thing was over. That’s just how I get down.