Halloween and All Saints' Day 2015

Halloween and All Saints' Day have proven to be a difficult time for our little group of homeschool families. Six years ago we lost our dear friend Kelly on Halloween, after a long battle with breast cancer. This year, Beverly was home on hospice care and I'd just seen her for the last time on the 30th. But her kids (and even her husband for a few minutes) still joined us for our annual Halloween party with chili and trick-or-treating.

Thomas was upset about not being able to find the plastic pumpkin bucket to hold his candy.

The girls all dressed in poodle skirts, after shopping together and sewing together in the days before. 

50s girls with Mike the Knight and Aragorn

We also prayed an All Saints Litany before eating. I thought it was interesting how our group was praying while some Halloween movie was playing in the yard of the neighbors across the street.

Some of the crew didn't make the first photo, so here they were after the candy-trading!

The All Saints Party had to be postponed several weeks due to rain. We ended up missing the big parade since we were running late, but I got a few photos of the kids.

Santa Lucia!


St. Philomena


St. Francis and St. Joseph

St. Martha's Cookie Decorating!


Dads hanging out


Saint Dymphna


The stone rosary station


Bowling

Thomas' favorite booth...CHESS!

Ellie with her friend C as St. Kateri


Hayride


This was some kind of game where they had to shake ping pong balls (7 deadly sins) out of a box on their back.


The big kids


Everyone ready to pray and eat!




Lovely moments out at the farm.

More Fall Moments

November Homeschool Park Day honoring All Souls.

We made a banner with the names of our loved ones who've passed away, then we prayed a Litany for All Souls and blew bubbles up to Heaven!

Typical day on the homefront!

Thomas loves maps!

Lost his first tooth!

MC took some beautiful pics of Ellie.

The previous owners must have had a little garden here, because the kids keep finding tiny carrots!

The day after Beverly died, a huge group attended daily mass together. Then some of us went to lunch and let the kids play at the shopping center park.

My parents came by for a little visit!

The family dance

And a lovely Sunday after mass and lunch

Fall Ball Ends

Steven Joseph had a great baseball season this fall! He played first base and made a lot of important catches for the team!

This season was a little better than the spring for me, since there weren't as many rainouts, but there were definitely more practices! There were even one or two scheduled after they had a bad game for extra practice, and they were asked to be an hour early for every game and 15 minutes early for practice. This is a good thing to do, but hard when you're carting around 5 kids, including 2 that often had dance class at similar times and one that never likes to leave the house. Not to mention all the behind-the-scenes things that were going on as we said goodbye to Beverly.  She was always the best sports fan, so I tried to remember that when I was distracted.

So we had fun watching him and the exciting games. They were first place in the regular season but then lost their first playoff game. It was kind of nice to end the season a little early and get ready for Thanksgiving! He received a game ball at the last game, which was a nice way to end it. Then we had a team party at Fuddruckers to end the season. Go Braves!