Halloween and All Saints Day

It finally feels like there is a break in the action.  Samantha's birthday plus Halloween in the same week is exhausting.  Since I already wrote about Samantha's birthday, we'll skip to Halloween.

We started with pumpkin carving on Sunday afternoon.  We took Samantha and Josh to the local church parking lot to pick out a pumpkin and then went out for ice cream at the Frosty Caboose (Samantha's favorite!).  We sat out on the back patio with Alli and carved our first family pumpkin.  I would love to say it was something right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it was full of me asking Samantha to get off my back as I wielded the butcher knife.  In the end, we were left with this…

Everyone survived and we got a nice family photo out of the deal :)

We had joked about dressing up the entire family for Halloween this year.  We celebrate with wonderful friends who dress up as a family and so we thought maybe we would get in to the fun.  As time went by I figured we had given up on the idea and I let it go.  I'm not a huge fan of Halloween anyway.  But then, on Tuesday, my costume from Jason arrived in the mail.  So, I had no choice but to muster up my accountant level artistic skills to create Jason's costume.  In the end, this is what happened…

Not too shabby…  I didn't think it would be kind to dress up Alli (although I realized later that I had a cookie monster shirt for her), but she did have her own special holiday outfit and I managed to catch her in this moment with Samantha…

Samantha has been spending a lot of time in Alli's room.  I wish I could capture every moment they are together.  Alli's special holiday outfit…

We enjoyed visiting with friends and trick or treating around the block.  Samantha landed a healthy stash of treats to share with the family and now we are on to Thanksgiving!  

For those of you who aren't Catholic, November 1 is All Saints Day.  It is followed on November 2 by All Souls Day.  All Saints Day is the time that we honor and celebrate our Catholic role models.  It is a holy day of obligation and so I went to mass last evening.  One of the rare times I have been able to go to mass on my own.  I arrived early and had some time to clear my thoughts.  I haven't written much about how Alli is doing the past few weeks, as I struggled with how to deliver this message.  She has been resting comfortably at home since her last admission, however, since she has been home, we have started the process of working with hospice.  Alli is in respiratory failure, which will likely be a terminal condition.  Her breathing is currently supported with the bi pap machine at night and during short intervals during the day.  Hospice has been wonderful and I will gladly discuss that process with anyone who wants more information.  The point is that we have come to understand that Alli's life with our family will be shorter than we had hoped and we have had to confront her eventual mortality in a very real way.  So, as this has been going on, I found myself in tears (yet again!) during mass last night.  Not the whole mass.  Just certain parts.  It is so hard sometimes to sit there and sing "Glory to God in the highest" (literally) with all of this going on.  As I sang last night I could feel my very breath being sucked out of my chest.  But, I continue to sing, because in all that we do to care for Alli and each other during this process, we are giving Glory to God.  We may not be singing the words as we go along, but I have to believe that He is pleased with our efforts.  As the priest explained last night, All Saints Day is about ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives.  It isn't limited to just the canonized saints.  We all do extraordinary things during the course of our life that please God.  So we honor and celebrate our role models and endeavor to emulate their extraordinary efforts in some facet of our life.