A Sweeter Halloween for St. Jude's Hospital

I can't believe a month has almost passed since Halloween! Families everywhere are preparing for Thanksgiving. I love turkey day but I don't cook so tend to just show up for this event, which is very unlike me. Maybe I was trying to make up for this at Halloween. Actually, this post may seem a bit late, but it's an important time of year to think about giving, and how we are going to teach our children to do that. And so a bit late, but here's the story of our Halloween...

See, we decided to host a "small" party. The idea came to me as I was over-thinking my son's costume. Was I really going to prepare for a month so that I could walk my 11 month-old down the street for 5 minutes? NAH!

I figured my friends would want to show off their kids just as much and I was right.We had over fifteen kids under the age of 2 in an apartment! And you can multiply that by two for the rest of the guest list! It was very cute and not as hectic as you'd expect. It was a perfect age. If many of the kids had been much older it would probably have been nuts!

To make the showing off even better, I distributed a flier in our neighborhood and promised a very cute Little Monsters Halloween Parade! I also asked our neighbors to make Halloween even sweeter by donating $1.00 (or whatever they could) to my son''s Trick-or-Treat bag on behalf of St. Jude's Children's Hospital. We asked party attendees to do the same.

We had a blast and raised money for a good cause. We did the same at Lucas' baptism, and will make a small personal donation in honor of his first birthday. See, I consider it our responsibility to teach Lucas to do as much as he can for others in need. I hope that makes him appreciate how lucky he is in so many ways. If we make this a normal part of his celebrations, he'll never ask "why" but hopefully wonder "why not".

We choose St. Jude's because being a parent is the best thing I'll ever be, and having a child has been life's biggest blessing. I don't dare imagine having to fight for the life of a child. St. Jude's does amazing things for their families. We have also had our own battle with a family member's cancer (an adult), and we want Lucas to always honor that person and his bravery.