Día de los Stormtroopers Muertos

We had decorated this Stormtrooper from last Christmas, and our idea was to decorate it in the style of something from the holiday today, Día de lost Muertos.  We've already watched "Coco" and "Book of Life" this season, and there wasn't much time with martial arts this evening after school, but we did have time for this guy, who turned out pretty well.  It was a stormtrooper helmet that came with markers and a few stickers and stencils.  We colored in the eyes, and then added the design ideas everywhere else - it's all off the top of our heads, and onto this head.  It turned out pretty good, in any event.

Here's another thing we decorated today, while Madison was at school:

Yes, we put up our first Christmas tree of the season, and it also turned out rather well.  This was a fun controversial post on social media, as many Thanksgiving purists are out there who disagree with the tangling of Christmas and Thanksgiving.  I could point out that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade features Santa Claus, or that there aren't any great Thanksgiving songs to listen to, and that there simply isn't enough time any more to do all the Christmas-related things we want to do this season, especially when working with the church.  The argument was fun to listen to, and a fun diversion from the other arguments on social media that seem to be more heated again:  politics.  There's an election coming up soon, and we've voted already. But the campaigning continues, as does the heated and sometimes divisive rhetoric.  Can't wait until Election Day has come and gone, so we can unite about Thanksgiving and Christmas and things like that.  If it's possible.

It was a nice day for Madison - she did well on her Language Arts test, and she's doing well in all her classes currently.  We have a big math test coming up, and hopefully she'll do good enough on that to bring the average back upwards again, but even if not, she's studying hard for these, and I feel she has enough of an idea about what the math problems are all about.  It's not a knowledge thing, but rather a test-taking thing, and we'll hopefully improve upon that.

In the meantime, tonight we had taekwondo again, and Madison was putting on her punching gloves and whacking things.  She's learning how to get out of a hold when someone has you in their grip, and her flexibility is increasing very much so.  She's almost there on her splitting, which is crazy.  She's working on that, and we're like... ouch!

While Madison was at the dojo, Mommy and Daddy were out shopping at the local Hallmark for a few new Christmas ornaments.  One of them is a gift for Daddy's birthday, something Mommy used money from the grandparents to get:  it's a Rowlf the Dog ornament.  He plays on the piano, and you can hear Rowlf the Dog on the Christmas tree now.  It's great!  Another ornament we got for later, and you'll see it soon enough - but we needed a new one for the Star Wars tree.

It was a rainy day outside today, and it rained very hard all throughout the day and into the night.  This is one of those things that seems normal.  In fact, Guns N' Roses once wrote a song about November Rain.  But I wanted to stop and acknowledge that it did not rain a bit yesterday.  At all.  It didn't train on the trick-or-treaters or those at the Fall Festival.  It didn't rain during the afternoon or in the morning of October 31st at all.  In fact, the weather was astoundingly beautiful, and perfectly pleasant all evening long as we walked around our neighborhood.  Today, it poured.  It goes without saying that we're exceedingly grateful for timing of all this rain, and that it did not rain yesterday.  The kids had a great time, collected candy, and enjoyed a remarkable evening out together.  We're thankful for the rain, of course, but extra thankful that it was today, and not yesterday.  We'll start out this month of gratitude by saying thank you Lord, for this wonderful gift.