Catching up!

October was a busy month!  Novemeber is goig to be pretty busy too!

I never did a Halloween post or an All Saints post like I usually do so I guess I'll combine them into one!  The kids went to a party at a friend's house on Halloween.  They had fun trick-or-treating with their friends.  They were a pretty big group...

My kids were Dorothy and Perry. :)

 



Before Halloween my son's bookclub read Frankenstein.  I made these rice krispie treat monsters for them.  The original recipe says to make them green, but in the book the monster is NOT green so I stayed true to the book even though they would have looked cuter green!

Our homeschool group has an All Saints Party every year.  This year Claire went as St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  I love that there were "princess saints" because with all I had going on we had to throw the costume together at the last minute!

 

Nathan's teen youth group puts on the All Saints Party for the little kids.  He doesn't dress up anymore, but here he is working the St. George and the Dragon game...

 

Wordful Wednesday

This is Claire as St. Helena at our Saints Party this year.

She carved a pumpkin with symbols for St. Helena too.



She was very excited when she won first place in her age group for the pumpkin carving contest!

And, fittingly enough, she won a cross!

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Parenting by Dummies.

All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day. Our homeschool group has an All Saints Party every year. Since All Saints fell on a Monday we had our party on Saturday. Nathan dressed as John the Baptist and Claire dressed as Blessed Kateri Tekawitha.

The kids play saintly games and have lots of fun!

Some of the games we have are:

St. Peter's Fishing game, St. Anthony's Lost and found, St. Helena's Search for the true cross, St. Nicholas' coin toss, St. Brendan the Navigator's Spin & Win, Choirs of Angels halo toss, St. Therese's Little Flower Toss, St. Francis' Duck Pond, and a few that I'm sure I'm leaving out. They play saintly bingo at the end. If anyone has anymore game ideas for saints I'd love to hear them. I'm always looking to add something new.

We also have a holy lantern carving contest where we carve religious scenes or symbols into a pumpkin. Nathan didn't want to do one this year, but Claire did. Here is her entry:

The party is really cute. The kids are all so cute dressed as little saints!

Homeschool Talk: All Saints Day

Our Homeschool group has an All Saints Party every year. One of the things is a Holy Lantern Carving Contest. These are my kids' entries for this year...

Nathan's is a rosary and Claire's is a church. Claire came up with hers all by herself so she is very proud!

This is Nathan's entry from last year. He won first place with it. Claire didn't do one last year.

Here are the kids in their costumes last year. Claire is St. Clare and Nathan is St. Ignatious Loyola. My mom made Claire's costume and when I sent her the picture she said, "you forgot to wrap the white part around her face!" So, being the perfectionist that I am, I've been bothered by that for a whole year now!

This year we modified Claire's costume and she is going as St. Therese. (We took the white part off all together so hopefully I won't forget anything this year!) Nathan is going to be St. Luke. We put his costume together last minute. I bought a navy graduation gown at a thrift store for 3.50 and I had a curtain tie back rope that we've used before that we are using as a belt. A friend of mine gave us a pirate costume for my husband and we used the belt from it as a sash over the robe. It looks good and only cost 3.50!

If anyone else out there has any other costume or pumpkin carving ideas I'd love to hear them!