Back on October 30th

For some reason, our town held trick-or-treating on Tuesday night, rather than on the 31st. Last year we went to the Harvest Festival that Lakeview Baptist put on, so we had no idea whether or not anyone came by our house hoping for candy.

Last year at this time we'd been here only nine months and of the 3,000 or so residents we knew maybe 30 or 40. Now we're approaching our 2-year anniversary of moving here, and we probably know a couple hundred people - at least by sight, if we can't always remember the names.

Last year our elderly neighbors came over on November 1st bringing candy they'd saved for our children and telling us they'd looked for us the night before. (I laughed today when I read that Cindy and Carmon both had similar experiences.)

This year I asked Steve to please pick up a few bags of candy on his way home from Birmingham. Steve is never one to do things by halves, and he brought home over 15 pounds of candy. Marley was allowed to go with Scout and Adeline to the neighbors' homes - all three were dressed as princesses - and Sam, as a little pirate, went to the elderly neighbors across the street, our neighbors on both sides of us, and his Uncle Chuck and Aunt Kim's house. When he and Joan came home, we were already out of candy, despite Tom's excellent job of handing out the candy to make it s-t-r-e-t-c-h. Our porch and front yard were filled with little children and parents, and Sam promptly dumped his candy into the bowl to be handed out to the children still arriving.

On Tuesday morning, while going over the catechism we got off track on Halloween. We talked about it, the origins, why we did not do certain things/activities, and what we did do. All-in-all we had a great day.