The kids go to Awana on Wednesday nights while I attend my Seminary Wives Discipleship.  We decided that we weren't going to skip out on our church activities because Halloween happened to land on it.  Fortunately, the Sparks are having dress as your favorite Bible Hero Night and Cubbies are having dress as an animal so they are getting part of the Halloween fun.  Girl7 will be going as Queen Esther (went into JoAnn's looking for some fabric to put around her a few weeks ago and found that they were already marking down their costumes 50%! so I got her a queen costume for $8) and Boy6 wants to go as Jesus(will be wearing my white robe).  Girl4 has some ladybug wings to wear (beforementioned sale for only $4) and Boy2 has a spider hat to wear.  Although the kids are bummed about not trick or treating this year, I am pleased that I didn't have to worry about the expense of costumes, what neighborhood to trick or treat in, shielding my kids from inappropriate or scary costumes or purchasing any candy for potential trick or treaters that I would be tempted to eat, not to mention the loads of it that come with trick or treating!

So on our weekly trip to the library last week, I spied It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and convinced the kids that they needed to see it.   Before showing it, I told them about how when I was little this only came on once a year and we pretty much cleared our schedules(finished homework, etc) so that we could watch it because if you missed it, you had to wait until the next year - there were no VCR's, DVD's, etc.  Girl7 said, "Mommy, you mean when you were little you could only watch what was on TV?"    All of my children stared at me in disbelief and for what might have been the first time as a mother, I realized how much "older" I am than my kids and what different childhoods they will have than my own.  Then we watched the movie and I was the one amazed to find that it's only 18 minutes long when you take out all the commercials.  No wonder my generation has a huge need to buy everything in sight - Do you have any idea how many commercials we saw each day? 

-J