Happy Anniversary to you and Russ……..may you have 33 more years! Wow, love your wedding picture too………and getting married on Halloween……ahhhh the life of a singer!

I’m ah-tellin-you, that took a whole lot of work and several baloons to make our precious little Madi into Beth. I hope you reminded her not to bend over.I have a feeling, when your girls are married and repeating this tradition with their children…you will be dressed up and going ’round with them, too. And Russ will still be handing out the candy.

And happy anniversary Mr. & Mrs. Russ Taff! You may kiss the bride again, Russ = )

And hope everyone had a really nice 31st me October = )

And also – you girls have fun tonight.

Can’t wait to see the snaps of our “MUMMY BLOGGER”…too funny.

Have a great time tonight!!!!

We had our trick or treat on Thursday with a fun parade to follow. The marching band always comes up with the coolest costumes.

Have fun tonight – can’t wait for pictures!!

I found this website a few years ago, and I LOVE IT. you should try it.
This is your Halloversary Present.

http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/cFoPPnMytxvrvw19

(And all this talk about Satan worshippers are making me think of that movie from the 70s…what’s it called…Race with the Devil. That was a very…uh…diffrent movie.

HAPPY HALLOVERSARY MR & MRS TAFF!!!

rachelbaker and delighted – Yes, our Halloween is different; more “fun”. I personally don’t see alot of the ghosts/witches/monsters/devils at my door anymore; more “characters” and imitations of real people. It gets very creative (as you can see from jd2008’s pick this year). The question we ask here is “What are you going to be for Halloween?” Meaning, what are you going to dress up as?

The casualty. I’ve never heard that before.

LindaB – “a friend told us not to drive up into the mountains on this one particular road because Satan worshippers gathered there and it’s not safe. That’s scary!” Where were you in California? I lived in Martinez in the east bay of San Francisco and heard that very same thing. A girl in our church was out riding her horse in the hills and came upon a ritual in progress. She knew exactly what it was and got out of there quick! And this wasn’t at Halloween.

On a slightly weird and off-topic note, I have just noticed that my daughter has a deformed thumb – how do you miss that?! Obviously I know it has not always been like that but when exactly did it happen? She has hurt her hand a couple of times over the last few months, once when I thought I would have to take her to casulaty (thats the ER to you guys), but abut an hour later she was moving it fine so I didn’t. I could be a very bad mother!! Anyway we’re off to the doctor this aftenoon but she is very grumpy about my discovery, and may refuse to show him!!!

Jess, that is a hilarious costume. Halloween must be different over there – all the costumes people wear over here are ghosts/witches/vampires/monsters etc etc. You guys have way more imagination!!

http://www.halloweenexpress.com/lost-dog-adult-costume-p-8766.html

IT IS THE BEST EVER. (..ever…ever…ever…what? its for dramatic effect?)

I just ran into an interesting on-line video segment of public, and/or recorded proposals gone wrong. One poor guy even got slapped upside his head, and left abandoned in the baseball bleachers with strangers around trying to comfort the poor, devastated soul.

When we were in California years ago, a friend told us not to drive up into the mountains on this one particular road because Satan worshippers gathered there and it’s not safe. That’s scary!

Oh and…..we definitely want lots of pictures of you three!!! And I’d like a few of people’s faces when they answer their doorbell and see Madi “Beth Chapman” Taff standing on their porch!!!

Mostly Sunny – I think I’m right, (but may not be, haven’t done any resarch or even googled it) that there is a big difference between Christmas and Halloween. Its true the Christians hijacked a pagan day of celebration and used it to celebrate the birth of Christ – and we use a lot of the same symbols because they’re pretty. Halloween is called Halloween because it is ‘all hallows eve’ – eg the day before All Saints Day on the Christian Calendar. I believe that Halloween is therefore not an ancient pagan festival (or not as ancient as what came before Christmas), but a more recent invention. Basically those into satan worship and all things occult try to stir up as much trouble in the spiritual realm on this day because it is the day before the Christians traditionally upheld the godliness of saints who had gone before. So I think its a bit different. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with candy and pumpkins – but I think this is the reason Christians in the UK refuse to celebrate ‘halloween’ but will happily provide alternative celebrations that only promote the opposite of what halloween stands for. BTW I do think some UK Christians are a little extreme in their stance because the average kid trick or treating does not know anything of what I wrote above. One church I know of made up activity and colouring books for kids for people to give out with chocolate, the books included a little gospel message and invited them to clubs at the church – I thought that was an excellent idea.

rachelbaker, you described it very well, halloween is being replaced by ‘church nights’ (I’m afraid there’s no ‘candy part’ included…) around here organized by the more modern-thinking Christians. Others seem to be afraid they could be ‘infected’ having in the slightest way contact with occult things. That reminds me of a speaker whose preferred phrase was “our GREAT BIG GOD (with sounding deep voice) and the teeny-weeny devil (with queaky high voice)”.

I WAS hoping to have that new song ready for there two gigs, but there wasn’t time for it.

Our church is trying to use Halloween for God’s Kingdom—-we have “Trunk or Treat”. We have 3,000 to 4,000 kids file through the parking lot of the church while about 50-60 of our folks decorate the trunks of their vehicles and hand out pounds and pounds of candy to the community’s kids going from car to car. There’s so many people there that the police come to direct traffic. The Fire department bring their fire truck and let kids climb all over it!!! It’s SO MUCH FUN!! And we have several families that decided to attend our church after coming to “Trunk or Treat”. Also, the kids have a safe place to trick or treat.

My role on Halloween has been the stay-at-home-candy-hander-outter the past few years, but I have to take part of the baseball team trick-or-treating for the food bank this year. They have to do community service hours and this is their project.

Yay for anniversaries! We are going on 24 years. Actually, I’ve spent my last couple of anniversaries with… um…you guys. At Family Fest. So much for romance.

I’ll bet my proposal story beats everyone’s! My kids love to tell this story. My husband has never been what you would call romantic
and we got engaged in my apt. in Apopka,FL. We were going out somewhere and I went to the bathroom to brush my hair one last time. He was in the LR. I had just ‘flipped’ my hair (to get maximum volume,you know–this WAS the 80’s)and looked in the mirror and there he stood with a ring. And he said these memorable words: ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ (Don’t ask me-I have no idea WHY that seemed appropriate to him.)Yep–we got engaged in the bathroom.

And speaking of costumes…you know how the shopping malls do their trick or treat thing early? One mall around here (Pittsburgh, PA) did that already and the cutest kid was dressed as “Sully the Pilot”. Remember the USAirways plane that he landed in the Hudson River in January and everyone survived and were standing on the wings of the plane until they were resuced? Well, this child had on a pilot’s uniform, then attached to him were these big wings with cut-out people on them! Very cleaver and creative!

We’re like you – my husband does the candy giving thing, I take (took) the kids out and about. It was always fun. We’ve got our bags of candy and we’re ready to go!

I think it’s interesting that Halloween is so “demonized” and December 25th is not. I mean, early, early Christians stole December from the pagans who worshiped their “gods” and spirits and made it into a celebration (somber and happy) of the birth of Jesus, even though He wasn’t actually born on that day, or possibly (probably) even in that month. All of this incorporated a lot of what the pagans did – garland, decorations, lights, gifts, trees. So let’s just steal Halloween, too!

Am I off the wall here? Somebody probably knows a lot more about this than I do…

I’ll hve to remember that!!

Well, my fave part of Halloween is it’s an excuse to watch old black and white classic horror/monster movies = ) A super heroes party sounds like my cup of tea as well,though!! = )

The Christian community over here does make sure our kids don’t miss out though. A lot of churches have ‘light parties’ as an alternative to halloween – we’ll be going to one on Saturday. The kids can dress up and have fun but all in honour of God, not his enemies. A lot of kids from the local community now prefer these to traditional halloween gatherings, and its nice to show them that Christians can have fun.

That wasn’t a sermon by the way, just thought it was interesting how different things are over here.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! That’s a long time. We’re going to reaach 7 years next month. There is nothing unusual about our wedding date but Jon did propose on April Fools Day! He forgot what day it was, but jokes that he did it so that if I said no he could pretend he was just joking!

You look so fresh faced and innocent, Tori! If you could tell that young girl something……….give her some advice about love and life…….what would it be? I’m just askin’….

Of course, I don’t dress up for Halloween anymore, but my kids ask to use my clothes for their costumes. One year, my granddaughter AND HER FRIEND wore my black stretch pants—–one in one leg and one in the other! (That’s a sobering piece of information there, isn’t it, Jonny! lol)

I think my little 7 year old granddaughter has a unique costume for her Halloween party at school tomorrow! She called me tonight to tell me that she’s going as “STATIC CLING”! She will be wearing a sweatsuit with socks and underwear stuck to it randomly, along with some dryer sheets! And her hair will be sticking straight up, with the help of her sister’s spiking gel and hairspray. Cool, huh? She’s very imaginative—–and she’s learned to use “Google”! LOL