I must say, this year's Halloween was much different than last year's! On Friday night, we met with a group of friends from the international school to divide up into groups and go trick-or-treating. The kids had fun dressing up (although the group was put together at the last-minute, so we didn't have much time to prepare; just went with the easiest costumes that we had available!). So Karis dressed up as Fancy Nancy (from the book series), Eli was a kung fu fighter, and Hud was a baseball player. Noah was either a farmer or a train conductor (he just had on cute stripped over-alls!). The kids had so much fun going from apartment to apartment here in our community to teachers and other international school families who had volunteered, making about 7 or 8 stops in all. It was really neat to be able to celebrate this way here. I struggled with whether or not to "celebrate" Halloween each year in the States, because I felt that the dressing up was so fun for the kids but the holiday itself was definitely not something we wanted to promote in our household. However, here in China, there is absolutely NO frame of reference for Halloween; so it truly is what you make of it! We were able to talk with the kids and explain the difference in this holiday and the others we celebrate (which all focus on our faith in one way or another); but also be able to tell them that we can still have fun and enjoy the aspects that are not so "dark"! I think they got it, but maybe they were just excited to get to dress up and go ask people for candy!!
The difference in this year and last--last year we did have a fall Harvest Party with our homeschool group--which the kids loved! But I also ended the time of celebration by falling down our last two stairs and landing on the hard wood floor to end up with a broken bone in my left hand. So thankful that this aspect of Halloween ended up very different this year!
Hudson's quotable from this week: after watching the movie "Alvin and the Chipmunks" that was passed on to us by some friends, he clarified that the little animals were not squirrels, but rather chipmunks. Then after a moment of deep thought, he asked, "So do all chipmunks like Christmas?" (The main action in the movie centers around Christmastime!) I thought this was pretty cute, and wondered just how small of a separation there is between reality and fantasy in the mind of a three-year old!
