Halloween, A Philosophical Opinion, and an Uncertain Future

 1.) Trick or Treat

There were TWO nights of trick or treating this year. 

The first was at Little Boy's elementary school two days before Halloween. Their "fall festival" consisted of several different departments from all three campuses, several community organizations, and EMS (for some reason) setting up booths out of the trunks of their cars and handing out copious amounts of candy. 

EMS won for spookiest.

A couple of clubs and organizations from the high school sold drinks, snacks, and the FFA club sold something called a "brisket sunday" made with brisket, rice, beans, BBQ sauce, and potato salad.

 A big sound system was set up and there was also some guy blaring music the whole time. It was loud, colorful, and CROWDED. Lots and lots of people. 

The second trick or treat happened at our annual family get together at my SIL's neighborhood. We usually meet up, take a big group photo, and then walk around the usually pretty quiet neighborhood. Usually only about one house in four is handing out candy. 

This year, it was probably one house in every two or three. It still wasn't what I would call lively, but it was more alive than I've ever seen it before. Lots of young families out and about too; we didn't have the streets to ourselves like in years past. 

There was also a house handing out full sized candy bars with an evangelical message attached. Much better tactic than handing out Chick Tracts (anybody else get a couple of those in their candy as a kid?). 

2.) Candy!!

Here's the candy/seasonally packaged snack food haul.

Two gallon pickle jars, and a Sam's club sized coffee canister. All full. 

Not pictured is the cake we won at a cake walk at the elementary school festival. 

I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do with it all. Some will probably be repurposed for Christmas in some way, shape, form or fashion. 

3.) I Did Some Writing This Week. 

By some minor miracle, I managed to write liturgically appropriate reflections and publish them ON the feast day they were pertinent to. Two days in a row. 

So here's a very short (but hopefully still good) reflection on All Saint's Day, and a somewhat longer reflection on All Soul's Day. 

4.) All Saint's Day Party 

All Saint's Day was on a Monday, but Little Boy didn't have school thanks to a teacher in-service. So I loaded up all three of the kiddos and headed into Corpus to my OTHER sister in laws house for an All Saints Day party. 

Now, I was a homeschool kid. I've been to some of these parties that were pretty lame, and some that were pretty good. This one was decent. The kids got to play with their cousins, they learned some saint facts, and we got to decorate cookies with Halloween candy. 

The cookies got a little... interesting. The kids started making up saint names instead of making them look like known canonized saints and we ended up with gems like this one. 

5.) All Souls Day

We kept it pretty simple this year. 

I live in an area where Día de Los Muertos is a thing, as evidenced by this booth at my son's trunk or treat thing...

 but no matter how many calaveras I decorate with, I'm not going to be able to pull off sitting in a graveyard partying all night with my family. Just isn't going to happen. (I don't think many people here do that either, to be honest. They might go clean the grave and have an altura at home, but that's about the extent of it). 

So we went and visited the cemetery where my grandfather is buried, walked around, said a prayer for the souls in Purgatory, and then went and ate supper at a Taqueria. 

Maybe next year I'll have my act more together and have a display at home with pictures, but I think for this year it was plenty. 

6.) We Brought the Trolls Movie Home From the Library

I absolutely hated it with every fiber of my being. 

Now, to be fair, the animation on it was well done. I thought it was interesting how absolutely everything seemed to be made out of felt, the colors were pretty, and I can tell someone put a lot of effort into the song sequence animation. 

But, good grief, why did they have to make the central message of the movie, "happiness comes from inside you and also kinda, sorta, (but definitely) having a romantic relationship." 

That's a really bad message for kids (and for grown-ups). It's just one of those things that if you try to base your life on it, you get miserable. If you make your happiness reliant purely on your romantic relationships, or even on how "happy" you feel, you're relying on things you can't really control. A fulfilling life is found in pursuing virtue, because acting virtuously is the one thing that you can control. You can choose to stick to a moral code you believe to be valuable even if you don't feel "happy" in a particular given moment. You can't usually control your emotional reactions to things, only your responses. 

Am I reading too much into a kid's movie? Probably. But what the heck else am I going to do with my philosophy degree? 

7.) Prayer Request

I'm not going to go into detail because it's an ongoing situation, but could you spare a prayer for the school my husband teaches at? 

There's a lot going on, work is particularly stressful, and it's bleeding over and effecting our home life a bit. 

All right, that's all I've got. 

Kelly just posted on her page that she's ending the 7 Quick Takes link parties. I don't know what that'll mean for the future of my blog-- most of my traffic comes from these (all 100 something of you...love you guys!). I guess that's the price you pay for coming late to the party to a dying platform. I've played with idea of changing to a podcast or video, but I just plain don't have the resources  I need to do that at the moment (you can't record or edit a podcast or video on your phone while breastfeeding). Social media does really horrible things to my brain, and stay at home momming is hard enough. So this is where I'm at for now. 

I'll still keep writing. This is something I'm moderately good at and enjoy doing, so I think it's worth keeping up. Be sure to bookmark my blog page or follow me on Facebook  if you're interested in keeping up with what I'm up to. 

Here (for the last time ever) is the rest of this week's takes.