Gearing Up For a Sleepless Weekend

This weekend is our Junior High group's fall retreat, Frequency. It is also the weekend they're calling for 20-40cm of snow and crazy winds. And we're getting on a bus and heading 2 hours north. That makes sense.

But I am really looking forward to it. I've been a small group leader of the same girls for several months now, so I feel like I know them pretty well and the weekend could be like a 2 night slumber party. Minus the slumber.

It will be a weekend of games and music and food. I LOVED retreats when I was younger and I think it's really fun that AJ and I still get to go on them and act like kids again.

Praying for safe travel, good weather and a fun weekend!

Visiting Narnia

I never read the Chronicles of Narnia series when I was a kid. I'm not sure why. I even have the full set on my bookshelf.

It's been a couple weeks since I finished my last audiobook at work and I decided it was time for a new one, when I remembered that we have the Focus On The Family radio theatre version of the Narnia series. Perfect.

So far, I'm about halfway through the third book, A Horse And His Boy. Focus decided to put their dramas in order of chronology, rather than the order C.S. Lewis wrote them in. What's kind of cool is that the guy who intros the books is the step-son of C.S. Lewis so he has some pretty interesting stories to tell.

The other great part about this series is that it's done like a movie with voices, music and sound effects, not just a guy reading through the book. It's very entertaining.

It's beginning to look like Christmas

Usually, I am an adamant subscriber to the idea that Christmas music/decor doesn't begin until December 1st.

But this past weekend was so beautiful out, it was really the perfect time to put up Christmas lights outside. And if AJ got to decorate for Christmas, I wanted to too.

I spent the afternoon listening to Christmas music and putting up all the decorations I've been making for the last week or two. It was a nice way to spend a Saturday.

No tree yet - that definitely doesn't come until December begins. But it's going to be a REAL tree this year, which I'm very excited about.

Risk Takers

Tomorrow night is another Junior High even with my church. A fan favourite, Risk Takers.

It's basically a live-action stock market game where the kids can buy and sell stocks as they go up and down in different rounds.

When I played it for the first time last year, I really wasn't sure about it. It sounds very complicated for a bunch of 11 and 12 year olds to pick up on. There's a lot of strategy involved and I wasn't even sure I totally understood it. But it was a huge hit! The kids got it right away and did a really great job playing.

This year, AJ was writing the scenarios that caused each stock to rise and fall and let me help him. I love creative writing like that so I had a lot of fun with it.

Not sure if I'll be on a team tomorrow night or selling stocks or being the banker like last year, but I'm looking forward to a fun night!

Thinking Christmas

It's after November 1st which is when I officially allow myself to think seriously about Christmas.

Of course, I work in retail Advertising and we've been working on Christmas material for over a month now.

We have a new house this year, which means lots more space to decorate, but on a pretty small budget. No worries. This year is going to be a homemade Christmas. I've been doing research for a little while now and am planning on making a Dollar Store trip for supplies and spend the month of November Christmas crafting.

We'll see how this turns out...

Shark attack!

We don't have kids, so of course we dressed up our dog as we handed out candy this year. She wasn't a huge fan of the hood, but she didn't mind the rest of it. Cutest shark I've seen.

The great Halloween debate

In the church community there is a long-standing debate about Halloween and whether or not Christians should take part.

As a child, my parent's let us go out for Halloween. We dressed up, went door to door and shared our candy with them when we got home. We were never allowed to dress up as something scary or evil, which really didn't bother us. There are so many other harmless costumes to choose from.

We did sometimes attend the "Hallelujah" parties churches held. Usually, everyone there was some sort of Noah's ark animal and you got WAY less candy than you did from Trick-or-treating.

I understand the reasons for people not wanting to take part in Halloween. There are a lot of evil costumes and movies and stories surrounding the occasion. But generally, kids who are trick-or-treating aren't thinking about any of that. They're thinking about their fun costume and the candy they'll get.

This year, we're handing out candy at home. And when we have kids, I'm pretty sure we'll let them go trick-or-treating, with certain stipulations about costumes. I think it's mostly harmless fun for kids and not something that will shake the faith we are trying to instil in them; it didn't for me.