A Peek at Our Hallowtide

Happy Hallowtide! I love this time of year and I love celebrating the next three days. Here's a bit of a photo dump along with some of our plans. 

We have been pre-gaming for awhile, eating lots of popcorn mixed with candy corn, building fires in the fireplace, listening to my Halloween playlist, watching The Great Pumpkin, and more. 

Like decorating,

and carving jack o'lanterns

and fluffing the scarecrow after kids sit on its lap. And they always seem to sit on its lap while adults are always the ones who are startled by it.

Over the weekend the whole family went to a local park for a "Not So Scary" event so you get to see the kids in their costumes before the neighborhood. Lucky you. 

L and Ben's costumes go together and if you can figure them out then you're the best. Do you want a clue? Okay: Raggedy Man. 

It's a family tradition to have chili for dinner on Halloween, this year with cute little pumpkin biscuits on the side. After trick-or-treating we'll probably have popcorn and hot chocolate.

On All Saints Day the family will attend the All School Mass, where JF and all the first graders will dress as saints. It's the sweetest thing ever. They process in with Father and once Mass is done they each stand in front and give a little bio on the saint they are representing. Can you guess who JF will be?

Since the day is a Solemnity we'll be having a family favorite (and slightly labor intensive to make) meal for dinner: sweet and sour chicken. It has nothing to do with the theme except that everyone loves it. Dessert will be Halloween candy. :)

Last year I gathered all our saint peg dolls and lined them up on the buffet aka family altar but this year they're being loaned out to my friend Katie. We'll gather holy cards for this spot instead and pray a litany of family saints at bed time. 

In case you're in charge of your child's All Saints' Day snack here's a little something I made up last year. Each baggie had this little rhyme typed up and slipped inside. 

All Saints have symbols to help us connect: 

Animals for Francis, firewood for Bernadette. 

Green for St. Patrick, Yellow for Mary's Heavenly Crown.

Royal Purple for King Wenceslas, Food for St. Isidore who farmed the ground.

Tomorrow we'll pray for all the poor souls. 

Today we'll celebrate Saints who reached Heaven's goals.

animals = Teddy Grahams

firewood = pretzel sticks

green, yellow, and purple = Skittles

food = Motts fruit snacks

poor souls = marshmallows with faces made from edible markers

I have no idea if it helped the kids or not, but I sure thought it was cute. ;)

The Feast of All Souls is a busy day for our family, but an important one. In between parent teacher conferences and all the regular busyness of a school night we will be attending our parish's Mass of Remembrance. I want to take some time to remember and pray for our grandparents who have passed, along with all the souls in Purgatory. We may work through these little booklets my friend Katie made, too.

So that's our upcoming week! Tell me your plans!