Not the Applegate's you've been a-costumed to

The last couple of days have been all about costumes... Not that this is too out of the ordinary, considering that one of the last few days was a certain holiday known as Halloween. Now, the origins of Halloween - THAT is an interesting topic - Talk about your intersection between the secular, the sublime, and the surreal.

Anyways, we spent part of Sunday restfully beginning the process of organizing the costumes for Bethlehem Village. Kat is in charge of 100+ costumes for our church's annual Christmas festival. Its a huge job, for sure, but one that her super-organized powers can certainly handle!


My good buddy Hankster helped us out and did some modeling of the Roman guard outfits. I, incidentally, am in charge of the guards, which is a heck of a lot less work than the costume person, though it does involve wearing a skirt in public... Hmmmmm?



Fast forward a couple of days to Halloween. My good buddy Gordon and his wife have started an annual tradition of transforming the large front deck of their home into a haunted graveyard for Halloween.

You walk by tombstones, there are big caves, a smoke machine pumps out fog, and they have this creepy soundtrack. To just SEAL the DEAL in kid's impressionable minds, though, is the fact that we dress up as monsters and try to scare the be-jeebers out of em!




This year Kat got to get into the act as well... Though to be sure, we ARE fairly conscientious monsters. We use a code "Oh, what a cute costume" when we see a little kid, so we don't traumatize them TOO bad... And we try everything in our power to avoid making kids (or adults) cry. But some collateral damage is to be expected. Best line of the night? Mom shouting up from the street: My daughter remembers your house from LAST year and she won't come up!" Gord was so proud!

Here's our "Couple's Picture" from the evening. I'm thinking Christmas card, for sure!