Día de Muertos

After church today, we headed over to the library to have a bit of fun with Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  It's a holiday celebrated in Mexico, for those of you who don't know, one where relatives celebrate their ancestors of the past.  It sounds like All Saints Day, where someone said, "Why do we have to remember just the saints?  What about "All Souls Day?"  Which sounded good for a while, so that was printed on a few calendars, and then someone else brought up the fact that this Halloween holiday is really taking off, so why not call "All Souls Day" the "Day of the Dead," with happy skeletons and lots of colors and so forth?  And so it came to pass that we have this remarkably odd mixture of remembrance with brightly colored skulls and candies.  But don't think for a moment that we're passing judment here - we're fully aware of the fact that somehow here in America a ginormous rabbit comes each Easter, the day we remember Jesus' resurrection.  And mixed in with the story of Jesus' birth, we have a jolly man on a flying sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, plus one with a bioluminescent nose.  So we're not making fun of anyone's holiday at all here.

In fact, it was a great time making crafts for Dia de Muertos.  We made this intricate flower pattern with colored tissue paper and glue, almost like Rose Bowl Parade workers the night before the big day.  We were sitting there, laboring on and on, gluing each flower down to make a final product that looked pretty good.  And then there were the skulls, which you can see above.  We decorated our own skulls, sort of paying hoage to the cultural styles of the day itself.  It's a fun look, certainly gaining a lot of popularity in recent years.

It just so happened that "Book of Life" was available at the library, so we checked that movie out - it's all about Dia de Muertos, as the movie takes place that day.  It's also a wildly imaginative movie, with a lot to learn about the culture of Mexico on that day.  We watched that tonight, completing our Dia de Muertos Tour de Force.  Yes, I'm aware that last part was French.

In between these two events was a whole lot of piano.  With all that's been going on lately, there hasn't been time for piano so much.  So we did some catching up this afternoon.  And oh,by the way, it rained today.  Yeah, it rained a lot.  Once again, the timing of this was perfect for us.  That's thing number one we listed for Madison being thankful.  Madison reminded us that in November, we all make a point of listing things we're thankful for each day.  Mommy mentioned fireplaces and cozy blankets.  Madison said her family.  Daddy talked about all the great times we've had together recently.

This morning, we started our new series, "Game On."  It went well, particularly the second service.  Our theme was the Game of Life, which had a great message behind it.  But the skit we did had a lot of Candy Land in it as well.  Plus we showed some videos that turned out well.  Our new books came out today, and here we are, starting a new series once more.  This one has never been done before, and there's a lot of excitement in the air over the idea of getting together and playing some board games.  Ironically, we didn't have time for that today, but you can be sure we'll be doing that a lot this month.  It's all about getting together as a family, and enjoying each other's company.  And this month, we'll be sure to do that.