I should be a big fan of Halloween. I love chocolate. I adore chocolate. I NEED chocolate. That fact alone should be enough to make me love Halloween. I mean, how cool is it that every year on the last day of October, you can knock on someone’s door you don’t even know and they will open it, smile, and hand you a free Hershey bar. That’s just good living in my opinion. Of course, sometimes they hand you the cheap stuff like Tootsie Rolls and Blow Pops, but that’s not a huge problem because there’s probably someone in your family who likes that junk. You can just pass it along to them. Or trade it for their chocolate.

My real problem with Halloween has to do with the costumes. And the decorations. And the staying up late on a school night to go running around the neighborhood begging for dessert. I don’t need a bloody, mangled rubber hand in my house. Not at Halloween and not ever. I don’t care for plastic skeleton heads hanging from windows and I definitely don’t like fake witches with warty faces playing spooky music. I’m a pumpkin and mum kind of girl. Maybe a hay bale or two on the front porch with some cute scarecrows smiling out at the world, happy to be enjoying the crisp fall weather and the smell of burning leaves in the air. Instead, there are inflatable spiders the size of my car sitting in the yard across the street.

My children love Halloween. God has a sense of humor like that, doesn’t he? My kids will pore over the catalogs that start arriving in the mail the day after school starts, searching for the perfect costumes and the best decorations for our house. Their top pick in the decorations department this year? A bag of rats. Not one rat people. An entire bag. Of rats. They actually asked me to shell out good money to purchase this particular decoration. It’s the middle of October and I’m still holding out for the bag of rats “to go on sale.” Because then I’m going to buy them. Wink, wink.

Last year, we hosted a Halloween party I had absolutely no intention of hosting. My kids began talking about the party we were going to have the moment October rolled around. I kept listening and nodding my head, telling them what great ideas they had and then quickly changing the subject. When October 20th arrived and my children had made a guest list, created handmade invitations, and planned both the party menu and entertainment, I figured there was no way out of it. I played along with their fun and we hosted a gaggle of kids in costumes for a fabulous little soirée in our backyard. There was pizza and candy and even a haunted trail. There were no inflatable spiders.

This year, my eight-year-old son decided to break tradition when it came to his Halloween costume. In the past, he has allowed me to persuade him to wear what I wanted him to wear, usually something that turned him and his little sister into a matching pair. They have been Minnie and Mickey Mouse, a cowboy and cowgirl. You get the drift. This year, my son was determined to have a scary costume. And by scary, he meant completely and totally inappropriate for a child.

I asked around for advice on the costume dilemma and my friends had some stellar ideas.

“Show your son three costumes you approve of and let him choose the one he likes best.”

“Explain to your son that you don’t want his costume to be so scary he frightens his little sister and any other small children he might run into while trick-or-treating.”

“Tell your son you tried to order the scary costume he wanted but, what a bummer, it was sold out.”

That last one was my personal favorite. It was a win, win – he didn’t get the scary costume and it wasn’t my fault.

I think my real problem with Halloween is that it exposes my children to the fact that there is a dark side to this world we live in. It might not come in the form of ghosts and goblins, but evil does exist. I realize scary costumes don’t automatically inform children about crime and rape and murder, but costumes that include fake blood and sharp accessories, and which have names like grim reaper, evil phantom, gothic vampire, crypt master, psycho clown, and wicked werewolf bring up terms I’m not ready to discuss with my eight year old. And how do you explain the fact that we teach our kids not to eat any candy they get while trick-or-treating until after we have inspected every piece to make sure it’s “safe.” One of my strongest memories of Halloween involves my parents teaching me this same rule. It was how I learned there were people in the world who might intentionally want to hurt children. That’s a big lesson in the life of a child. A necessary lesson, no doubt, but one that is life-changing.

Our family will celebrate Halloween on October 31st along with everyone else. We have made our annual trek to the local pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkins, one for each child, and there was a great deal of photography involved in the outing. We will carve our pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns on Halloween Eve while the seeds roast in the oven. Orange and black decorations sit out around our house and the kids’ costumes are hanging in their closets ready for a big night of trick-or-treating. I was able to talk my son out of his first choice costume with honesty. I told him I didn’t think it was appropriate for an eight year old and he had to choose something else. He was mad at first. I even got the ol’ “I’m not going to dress up as anything” line for a few days, complete with a very smug look. Eventually, my son came around. It might have had something to do with the fact that I told him children without costumes wouldn’t be trick-or-treating on my watch, but either way, we went online and found a costume my son loved. He’s going to be a warlock. I have absolutely no idea what a warlock is and, frankly, I don’t think my son does either. Basically, the costume looks like a wizard from Harry Potter, which is okay with me. There is no blood, no suggestion of death. I suppose a warlock is some sort of human like creature who performs magic spells.

You know . . . I wouldn’t mind being a warlock myself. I could perform all kinds of amazing magic spells. I could make the scary costumes and decorations disappear. I could turn the lollipops and gumballs into Butterfingers and Milky Ways. I could make the blow up spiders vanish into thin air.

Most importantly, I could make my son’s innocence last just a little bit longer.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

It’s official. I made the mistake I suppose all parents are destined to make. I blinked. I blinked and the tiny newborns cradled in my arms were suddenly crawling towards me with silly grins on their faces. I blinked and the babies crawling towards me suddenly walked and talked and asked me a thousand questions a day. I blinked again and the chubby toddlers grew long arms and long legs and big opinions. I must have blinked a few more times because this morning I found myself sobbing in a carpool line as I watched Charlie, our third grader, and Libby, our kindergartner, walk into school together. As they walked away from me, I realized one of the most important and special stages of my life has ended. Now, they are as much the world’s as they are mine. And I’ve decided I simply have to stop this whole blinking thing. It’s much too hard on my heart.

Fun, faith, and . . . ummm . . . fruit loops? I'm sorry. I must have read that wrong.

Nope. You read it right. Fun, faith, and fruit loops. It's the perfect title for this blog. Let me tell you why.

The fun part is easy. I like to have it. As often as possible. I'm sure you feel the same way. Fun is just so much . . . FUN! And it's incredibly interesting to think about the many ways people go about creating their fun. For me? Baking chocolate chip banana bread is fun. So is a night out with my husband, coloring with my kids, and having a good chat with a close friend. Lying under an umbrella on the beach is fun. Taking a long walk with an Ipod full of Chris Tomlin and Rhianna songs is fun.

Yes, I have both Chris Tomlin AND Rhianna on my Ipod. I'm full of contradictions. Or maybe I should call them conflictions. They certainly aren't convictions . . . yet.

My ideas of fun could fill up pages and I'm sure you have your own lengthy lists of people, activities, games, and hobbies that can make you smile when it's the last thing in the world you feel like doing. Fun is one of the great gifts of life. We should all try to have more of it, if you ask me.

Now what about the faith?

Wow.

How do I cover this one in a paragraph or two?

The dictionary defines faith as belief not resting on logical proof or material evidence. Hmmm. I get it, but I think it sounds a little boring and a lot tough to swallow. In the Bible, faith is defined as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That's from Hebrews 11:1, if you're interested, and that's the definition I'm going with. It just makes sense to me.

I realize not everyone claims to have a specific kind of faith or even to be particularly faithful. Still, I bet most people will admit to having hopes. Most humans look for the hope in all situations, especially us women. We hope it doesn't rain for the picnic we planned. We hope our husbands remember to pick up the milk we asked for. We hope to lose five pounds before bathing suit season.

We have hopes for our marriages, our families, or friends, our careers, our lives. And most of the time, we believe the things we hope for are going to happen. Well, maybe not losing five pounds, but the other stuff. We wouldn't plan a picnic if we didn't think the sun was going to rise. We wouldn't ask our husbands for help if we didn't expect them to come through for us, even if only to pick up the one item on the grocery list we forgot. We wouldn't accept new jobs or fall in love or bring children into the world if we didn't truly believe such enormous decisions would have positive consequences.

So you see, you might not consider faith to be a part of your life, but I'm guessing it is. In some form.

When I think about faith in my own life, I think about God. For me, He is the creator of my faith and He is all that is good and faithful. I believe God is at work in my world. I believe He will lead me down the paths He wants me to travel. I know some of those paths will be filled with mistakes and sorrow and pain, but I believe God is using every experience in my life to make me a better wife, mother, and friend, and most importantly, to draw me closer to Him. I have faith that my life will have meaning because it belonged to God.

Finally, the fruit loops!

Can't you just picture of big bowl of fruit loops in all their sugar coated glory? Truthfully, I can't eat fruit loops anymore. They're too sweet for me. I used to love 'em though. Craved those suckers. My mom only allowed me to eat them when we visited my grandparents' house and boy did I look forward to those trips with mouthwatering anticipation.

I still desire fruit loops today. Only now, my fruit loops have specific names and, on bad days, they aren't nearly as sweet as the fruit loops of my past. Today, my fruit loops go by the titles of Adam, Charlie, Libby, and a host of other family and friends who serve to make my head spin with every emotion in the book on a regular basis.

Yes. I call my people fruit loops. As in, "Husband, did you really take our children out of the house in those outfits? You are such a fruit loop." And "Son, are you seriously trying to tell me you want another box of legos when you already have ten-thousand in your collection? You are a total fruit loop." Or, "Daughter, do you honestly think I'm going to answer 'yes' to that question because it's the fifth time you've asked me in the last three minutes? What a fruit loop."

Fruit loops are the perfect way to describe the people I know best, love most, and need more than I'm often willing to admit. Fruit loops are SO like the people who inhabit our lives. They come in all kinds of colors and flavors, yet, when you put them all together, they create this magnificent collection of wonderful goodness.

Sometimes, I wake up and think I don't want fruit loops today. I'd like to try something different. Something new and exciting and completely unlike the life I chose for myself when I got married, had children, and put my career in a self-induced holding pattern.

But most of the time, when I look around and see the fruit loops in my life, they make me smile. They fill my heart with a pleasure I can't possibly describe. They ARE my pleasure. They ARE my heart.

I couldn't live without my fruit loops. I also couldn't live without my fun and my faith.

So there you have it folks. Fun, faith, and fruit loops. The perfect title for a blog about life . . . from my vantage point, at least.

Okay folks, here goes nothing. Or everything. Hey, it's gotta be at least something, right? Something new. Something exciting. Something I'm sure to have plenty of second thoughts about because that's what people with type 'A' personalities and a healthy touch of OCD do. We think about things. A lot. Then we think about them again. And just to be sure our minds never have a moment to stop racing, reevaluating, recalculating, and replaying, we think about them one more time.

Yes, I've been thinking about this whole blogging thing for a while now. It seems pretty interesting. I can make the random and enormously messy jumble of chaotic thoughts that enter my brain on a daily basis available to the whole wide world. At no cost, other than the cost of my own vanity, of course. Wow. I'm not sure it's really necessary, but it sure sounds like a good way to get some free therapy, doesn't it? And who doesn't need a bit of that these days?

So, like I said, here goes.