October 31

This week we enjoyed celebrating two things on October 31. We have never done much in the way of Halloween in our family - a few costumes through the years, but nothing much. We have honestly avoided it as much as possible. There is so much in the world that is just plain evil that is "celebrated" that day in one way or another. We just didn't know how to best interact with it. So we avoided it. This year, we decided to take part in it in some small ways. It was a blast! The kids all got dressed up - twice. We were invited to a playgroup (that we're not part of) Halloween party which was real fun, and then we dressed up on Halloween itself and went trick or treating with our friends. It was really fun to see the boys get a kick out of their costumes (they were "sports men") and their pursuit of candy. It was awesome.









We also celebrated Reformation Day. Funny to me that they happen to be on the same day. I always saw Reformation Day as the Christian world's way of celebrating something on Halloween without acutally celebrating Halloween. I was wrong. Reformation Day is awesome. What Martin Luther and the other reformers stood up for are a matter of life and death for us as believers. Here are a few of the things they stood up for in the face of the church of their day - salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone (no work on our part!!), we need the Bible in our own language (at the time they only had it in Latin and most people didn't read Latin...I don't read Latin, so I'm thankful it's now in English!), we need to repent of our sin daily, grace alone is what saves, etc. I found a couple of cute ideas on a website HERE.

This is our version of the Wittenberg Door where Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses. We taped ours :) And we didn't do 95.



Owen did a maze and a word search.



They did a water color painting of the Luther Rose - each color meant something different relating to the Gospel. This was Baxter's...he uses EVERY inch of paper.



When Luther was being tried for the "crime" of believing the things he believed, he was taken to a council/jury to be given a chance to recant. At the time they called this a "diet." They were in the city of Worms, Germany. Thus, we had a "diet" of worms for snack :) Again, not something I came up with, but so fun!