This Is Halloween

Oh, for the days when Halloween meant a couple of hours trick-or-treating! Somehow, Halloween has grown into a week-long festival.

Day 1 of Halloween Week: For us, it officially started on the 25th (this is not counting the earlier pleas for help and donations from the various room moms, the messages from the teachers about the planned activities and appropriate clothing (costumes for kindergarten, black or orange for 1st grade, bring a black shirt for Cordelia to decorate at daycare), friendly arm-twisting to provide baked goods for the cake walk at the ward trunk-or-treat, etc.). We decided to take an afternoon off and treat the kids to the McWane center after Jay was done with class. (Kit was supposed to be at a Scout biking activity, but we found out it was cancelled just minutes after we bought him a bike, so he got dragged along as well. And also as a side note, Jay forgot that he had a CES faculty meeting that night and I forgot about a baby shower. Brain-missing, indeed!)

The kids had fun and enjoyed the "spooky science" demonstration. The tarantula was interesting and blowing the (pre-carved) face out of the pumpkin was exciting, but not even I could bring myself to pet the hissing cockroach. After a couple of hours, we left so we could pick up costumes on the way home. I used to make costumes for Kit when he was little since nobody checks for straight seams or the correct fit on a Halloween costume. I even did a sort of theme one year - Kit was Robin Hood and my niece Billie was Maid Marian. I don't think I've made any costumes since Kyle came along. After a couple of disappointing stops, we finally decided to face the crush at Party City. Kyle picked out Superman and we talked Kinneret into a modest vampire costume. Cordelia wanted a butterfly costume, so we pinned some wings from a fairy dress she already had to Kinneret's dance recital costume. She was happy. Let's wait until Monday night to try on the costumes, please!

Day 2 of Halloween Week: No, you tried on the costumes last night. You really don't need to try them on again.

Day 3 of Halloween Week: Bake the cake and the cupcakes for the cakewalk. Please put the costumes away so they won't get torn up before Wednesday!

Day 4 of Halloween Week: Kinneret's dance class had a costume party. When I went to pick her up, the smaller children were watching some of the older children dance in blacklight. It's nice that they made it fun for the children, but I'm not sure how much tap, jazz or ballet Kinneret was able to do in a vampire costume. Luckily, Jay's class was cancelled that night so I could get the cake and the cupcakes decorated for the cake walk. That also meant that he could help the children carve the pumpkin this year (after I helped them finish digging out the seeds, of course). The costumes haven't changed - you don't need to try them on again!

Day 5 of Halloween Week: No, you cannot wear your costumes to school. Trunk or treat is AFTER dinner which is AFTER school. Naturally, the children were too excited to eat any dinner. Probably making sure there was plenty of room for the sugar. We got the children dressed in their costumes, put the candy, baked goods and trunk decorations in the car (a few fake lighted pumpkins - no time for creativity this year), finally got everyone buckled in, and the car wouldn't start. There was not even enough battery juice to turn on a reading light. How the battery died so completely in under two hours I do not understand. We tried to jump it using Jay's car, but that didn't work (after which I remembered that not even a tow truck could jump it the last time it happened). I should note here that the children were remarkably patient while we were working on getting the car started. Dare I say on a public forum how we finally got to the church? A clue: the garlic that was part of Kit's costume (anyone recognize the book/TV show character?) got to be a little overwhelming for him in the 1/2 mile between our house and the gas station. I breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the church without being rear-ended! We arrived 30 minutes late, which was fine with me since that was 30 fewer minutes to wonder where the children had disappeared to. After 30 minutes of games and 45 minutes of trunk-or-treat and eating candy, we crammed back into the Cruiser for the ride home.

After stopping long enough to drop off me and the smaller children, Jay and Kit went out to buy a battery charger. On the way, they drove past an open Auto Zone with a sign in the window offering free battery charging. So they drove home, worked the battery loose and took it to Auto Zone (open until midnight!). After a little over an hour on the charger (most batteries charge in about 45 minutes), they brought it home almost good-as-new.

Day 6 of Halloween Week: Make Rice Krispy Treats for Cordelia's daycare party. (Although she ended up not getting one. She said she wasn't listening - not sure what that means.)

Day 7 of Halloween Week: Party Day! Kinneret and Cordelia get to wear costumes. Kyle was supposed to wear black and/or orange. The only Halloween-y shirt we could find was a black shirt with "Got Candy?" written in glow-in-the-dark letters. Oh well. One of the emails in a series of messages between the room mom for Kinneret's class and the teacher was mistakenly sent out to all the parents. In it was a suggestion that a volunteer read to the children after they finished the classroom activity to keep them occupied until it was time to rotate to the next classroom. Since Jay is STILL working Sunday-Thursday and would be available that morning, I asked him if he wanted to volunteer. He thought it sounded like a great idea. Kinneret's teacher was excited that he volunteered. According to Kinneret, none of the other classrooms had stories. Jay dressed up like a pirate and talked like a pirate until it was time to switch to his storytelling voice. One of the kids said that Jay sounded like someone from TV. So Jay said, "Arrgh you ready?" and the kids said "Aye, Aye, Captain!" They loved it! He had planned on reading Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini, a new favorite at our house, but it was too long for the amount of reading time available, so instead he read Pumpkin Town! by Katie McKy to Kinneret's class. It wasn't as interactive and entertaining as Piggie Pie, so for the other three groups he read Just a Minute by Yuyu Moralis, another great read-aloud interactive story.

And finally, trick or treating time! There are only a few houses on our street that bother with candy anymore, so we drove the kids over to my boss' kid-friendly neighborhood and walked down our street afterwards. An hour later, Halloween is OVER and the candy is ALL MINE!

Day 8 of Halloween Week: Okay, this doesn't really count as part of Halloween week, but at swim lessons Saturday morning, the swimming instructor asked if she could give the kids a piece of candy since she had so much left over. Sure, why not, what's one more piece?