Harvest Festival

Let me just start by digging into the name of this event...."harvest" festival. As Andy put it, "Do we have any agricultural families in our church? What exactly are we harvesting?" Our friend Kyle reminded me today that we all eat, so we're connected to the agriculture culture and it is the season of harvest. That made it a little more understandable, but I know it's just a great way to avoid saying Halloween!

We all had a great time. There were about 100 more people at this year's event than we had last year. The kids all enjoyed the games (and the candy) and looked so cute (especially eating the candy). Theo, Andy, and I had a family costume theme. We were all characters from the Wizard of Oz. Andy was the Scarecrow, Theo was the Tin Man, and I was Dorothy. Wearing our costumes was fun, but the best part was coming up with the idea (Andy), shopping for the costumes and supplies (all of us), and making Theo's costume (mostly me, but Andy cut out the hat and the heart). We were the emcees of the event, so we were in charge of drawing the raffle tickets and steering people toward games that no one was using at the time.

Theo was a real trooper. He never really cried while we were there. He slept for the 1st 1/2 hour and then enjoyed being carried around by either me or Andy for the rest of the time. He did start to lose it around the last 1/2 hour, but he sucked on Andy's shirt instead of crying for me. I fed him before we left for home, but once we got home all he wanted to do was nurse and rock. I didn't mind at all. He konked out at about 8:00 and is still sleeping peacefully now (it's 8:45).

On actual Halloween, I will be teaching my dance classes and Andy and Theo will be hanging out at home and passing out candy to any trick or treaters who stop by our house.

There are several Halloween traditions at our house: the harvest festival, watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, carving a pumpkin, and roasting the pumpkin seeds. One down and 2 or 3 to go (I'm not sure if we'll go to the trouble of roasting the seeds when I'm sure it will be different enough to carve a pumpkin with a tiny baby around, but we'll see).

It's wonderful to share old traditions with our son and to start new ones. I can't wait for next year when he is up and walking and able to enjoy more of the fun games (and the candy! No wait, are we going to let him have candy?????? I guess that's another case of "we'll see").

Ask my parents what "we'll see" meant to me as a little girl. There are stories of me asking for something, my parents answering with "we'll see" and me crying while announcing that "we'll see means no!". We'll have to wait and see what "we'll see" ends up meaning this time.