Remember

In just a few minutes I'll be heading up to my son's school for their Remembrance Day assembly.  If the 11th of November fell on a weekend, I'd be making my way down to the Cenotaph to pay my respects.  It's an important day and I'm glad I have two children who realize the importance of remembering the sacrifices of the past.

Here's a little something I saw in Wales.

Simple and Elegant - it is the best Cenotaph I've ever seen.

Hallowe'en - come and gone...

 Once again the house was dressed up to encourage visits from all of the neighbourhood ghosts, goblins, witches and monsters.

Trixie - the Hallowe'en Cat my daughter and I made last year at a Tim Murton workshop - graced our carport again this year.

The inside of the house had some decorations, as well.

The kids were decked out to liberate candy and treats from the folks about our town.

My daughter was Opal, a vampiric anime fox creature of her own invention.

The boy was, of course, Puss in Boots of Shrek fame.

He claims this look garnered him extra portions of candy...

Hallow's Eve

It's that best time of the year.

Once again I'll need to get my spell-checker rant out of the way.

Hallowe'en.  Okay, spell-checker - take that squiggly red line and shove it.  Hallowe'en is the correct spelling, regardless what some listless Microsoft code jockey with the latest Wiki-dictionary decides.  The word itself is a contraction of Hallowed Evening - hence the need for the apostrophe to denote the missing letters.  It's one little keystroke to make the word correct.  And actually I don't mind if you lose the apostrophe.  Take it out if you want, but don't you dare turn around and tell me I'm wrong when I include it.

End of annual Hallowe'en Spell-checker Rant.

The front porch is decorated.  The kids' costumes are ready.  Trixie the Hallowe'en Cat has found her way down from the attic to the eves of the carport.  Pumpkins are waiting to be transformed into Jack O'Lanterns.  Everything is ready.

Hallowe'en is my favourite holiday.  I love that it gives us all permission to feel like little kids again.  We get to dress up and travel about in disguises and ask strangers for candy.  We spend 364 days of the year telling our kids to do the opposite.  But the thing I might like best of all is that eerie hint of the supernatural.  Maybe, just maybe, there is another world layered on top (or beneath, or beside) the one we see each day where wonderful, magical and scary, impossible things could happen.

At Hallowe'en, at least, we open ourselves up to the possibility.