This post is not ordered
chronologically or any other way.
Julia saw a bag of candy on
the kitchen chair (Halloween night maybe?). She hugged it and said, "Ah,
my best friend."
Halloween night. Damon as King Arthur, Julia as a
lady bug or dancer or something, Claire as the Wicked Witch of the West, Anne
as Ginny Weasley (You know, Harry Potter's wife. We tried to dye her hair red
three times with semi-permanent dye. It didn't take.)
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Halloween has broadened Julia's
horizons. Ever since she's been saying things like, "When I grow up, I
want to be a pumpkin" or "When I grow up, I want to play with the
kids" or "When I grow up, I want to be a princess."
She created this a few days ago and
called it a Halloween decoration:
Julia practiced trick-or-treating in
the house, but at the ward trunk-or-treat she was traumatized by the Halloween CD
I played. It has songs like MJ's Thriller. So she wouldn't go trick-or-treating for real. Jake tried, but she
refused, sobbing. "No! I scared!" Mike Royko would have
understood.
Side note: I may have
traumatized the bishop that night. I'm in the primary presidency, and the
primary is in charge of the trunk or treat, as well as the primary program
which was 3 days prior. I've been feeling frazzled for most of 2016, so after
the chili dinner/trunk-or-treat when we were cleaning the church kitchen, I
seconded someone's suggestion that we just have a trunk-or-treat next year with
no chili dinner: no decorating + almost no cleanup = awesome event for everyone
involved. A dear lady said, "Oh, but the chili dinner is a
tradition." I replied, "Well, the Lamanites gave up their wicked
traditions when they converted to the gospel. So can we." She said, "I
wouldn't call the chili dinner a wicked..." At that point I walked out of
the kitchen and screamed in the hallway. I really did. Just as the bishop
walked by. He looked too frightened to comment. Don't worry, though. People
were vacuuming, so probably nobody else heard me. Oh, and I had vampire makeup
on with fake blood dripping out of my mouth.
3 comments:
"Wicked Traditions" and screaming in the church will be my all time favorite story forever.
The RS has strayed so far from its original and humble but crucial God-given original prerogative. We feed and we feed and we feed--typically at ward events--to the very people who need it least. Which leaves us far too exhausted to meet the leginate needs of our own families, let alone succor those outside our families whose knees are week and hands hang now. More ministry, less casseroles--that's my motto--unless a family is without employment or otherwise suffering in the depths of financial despair, in which case the provision of food transforms into a sacred privilege. There was a time in my life where I gave every last ounce of myself to serving ward members in RS. I have severe pain when I recall the faces of my little ones looking up at me, begging me to be a mother, and me brushing them off to make a four star meal for someone suffering from plantar fasciitis or some such nonsense. I regret those years. They did not fill me up; they drained me dry, and I'm still feeling the effects. We need to take back our RS and re-examine what it means to alleviate suffering. I don't think the answer is always found in scratch-made rolls that take the entire afternoon and drive the chef to tears. Just sayin.
That was the best comeback ever.
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