Celebrating Seth...and Halloween???

On Seth's birthday I was out of town (does that make me the world's worst mom???)  Anyway, a couple weeks ago Seth and I were at Walmart and we didn't have much time, but he saw the rides and asked if he could go on them.  I told him "not today, but maybe on your birthday we can come and ride some of the rides"..."ok!".  Two weeks later (last Thursday) I mentioned to Seth that his birthday was only a couple days away and his first response, "then I can go on the rides at Walmart!!!"  Ummm, yes, yes you can.  Soooo, needless to say that is what they did on Sunday.  Josiah wanted to give Seth some of the money he earned this summer to go on rides and to pick out a present.  He gave him 1/2 of all the money he had...they really do have a sweet relationship.  (Sorry for the fuzzy pics, I think Dan's camera on his phone must have been on a lower quality setting...oops!)  

When I got home on Sunday he opened his present from Grandma & Grandpa Hacker....

 And his present from my sister and her family.

Last night, (on Halloween) we went out to eat to Space Aliens (per his request) 

and used my Savecoin coupon

Then we came home.  Halloween is that holiday that we don't know how to 'celebrate/not celebrate'.  In years past we've gone to fall festivals, we've ignored the holiday and had family fun, we've had a pizza picnic and watched a movie while handing out candy to kiddos that come by...but this year Dan and I talked about it a couple weeks ago and decided we'd use trick or treating as a time to continue building relationships with our neighbors.  After deciding that, we then came across some articles saying the same thing.  Though we don't like what Halloween stands for, we do appreciate the opportunity to easily walk up to our neighbors door and be able to chat with them (without it being abnormal) and to be able to meet some of our neighbors that aren't outside their houses much.  So, we went up and down our street meeting and seeing our neighbors.  I don't know that it's something we'll do every year...who knows...Halloween is something that I wish didn't exist, but it does and so we tried to make is purposeful.  What do you do???

We didn't buy costumes, the kids just raided our dress up bin and this is what they each picked.  Josiah tried to talk Alayna into being something 'girlie', but she REALLY wanted to be batman. :)

When we got home, Seth opened his presents from us 

(in between the door bell ringing with trick or treaters)