Happy Halloween

For our first Halloween in Germany, we didn't really know what to expect. And true to form, things didn't happen in ANY way we'd expect! (more on that later)


Here are the girls, dressed in their Halloween finery for our AWANA Fall Festival. At the 9th hour, Ellie nixed the butterfly costume she'd been planning and decided to go princess. (We weren't totally surprised.) She was joined by her fairy princess sister. (And those wings you gave us oh-so-long-ago, Aunt JoAnn and Uncle Al, are still a hit!)



After consulting with our German neighbors about the scarcity of candy-ready homes, we decided to play it safe and trick or treat on post. Here's how most of our evening went:

Yes, Ellie is racing ahead with Kate and mommy in tow.




The kids did a great job saying trick or treat and thank you, and Kate especially loved seeing all the other costumes that kids were wearing. She'd say "Hi, Batman!" and "look, a scary mask!" Neither seemed afraid of the scary costumes, which was great. At the AWANA festival, Kate saw a girl dressed as Rapunzel. Kate made her night when she got Rapunzel's attention and said "Rapunzel, we have your movie at home."




Even toward the end, the pattern continued: Ellie, Kate, Mommy.

Showing off the chosen piece to accompany them home.

And here's Daddy and Ellie before the AWANA festival. Like I mentioned earlier, things didn't pan out as we'd expected. Poor Jon: on Friday night he was admitted to the hospital with kidney stones. Turns out he has two stones that will need to be removed by a procedure mid-November, and he is really hurting. So he had to stay home and take it easy while the girls collected their loot. But the certainly were excited to show him (as he was excited to see) when they got home. Thank you to EVERYONE who is thinking of and praying for us during this unexpected illness. We are so blessed by you! And Daddy, you are our Superman!