44/52: All Saints Day!

For the third year in a row, we had friends over for chili & a big bonfire on All Hallows Eve, although this year we kicked it up a notch with games & lights and other fancy things, thanks to a sweet friend who has MUCH more good ideas about hospitality than I do! I wish I had gotten some pictures, but I was too busy with the actual party details! We figured we'd have the kids dress as saints and do a litany during the party, and of course almost all of MY children refused to dress as saints until the next day. Edith wore her St. Rose of Lima costume for approximately 30 seconds before insisting on changing out of it. Cecilia, Mary Claire, and Peter were characters from Ronia the Robber's Daughter, John Paul was Tom Brady (which just involved wearing his Patriots hoodie because kid is LAZY and does not care about dressing up), and Elizabeth was the winner as St. Scholastica, because she really loves wearing a habit.

All the *other* kids at the party looked great and played along, though!

(And no, I'm not going to get into why we don't really do Halloween right here - suffice it to say, we live in the middle of nowhere where the kids couldn't trick or treat if they wanted to, and I can't make Halloween AND All Saints Day happen without short-changing All Saints Day, so we focus on the one that's an actual Holy Day of Obligation. If you do Halloween, great! We can still be friends ;) )

The next day we still needed to clean up from the party, get to Mass, get to the library, get John Paul to choir, and OH go to the homeschool All Saints party at church! Well, I was so exhausted by the time we got back from Mass that I asked the kids if I could just give them each a bag of candy, take a picture of them in their costumes, and call it good... It took a little convincing, but they decided they were okay with it! So from left to right we have St. Scholastica, St. Francis, St. Dominic Savio (in his Mass outfit, just with a bow clipped on as a bow tie because once again, lazy), St. Kateri, and St. Bernadette. I told them they didn't get candy if they didn't smile, which explains the different expressions in the pictures! Cecilia was grumpy because she'd been planning on wearing that shirt for her costume for ages, but it's size 5T so I moved it into Elizabeth's drawer and she was INCREDIBLY angry that she couldn't find it... So I said she could wear it one more time, and we can see just how much too small for her it is.

And that's a wrap for All Saints Day 2018!