Halloween Recap

After two slightly "heavy" posts, I've decided to return to fluff and tell you about our Halloween. You can read my predictions here for background.

So, Sky went to school on Halloween with his Minecraft Creeper shirt on but no costume. Going from Catholic school to public school, he was completely unfamiliar with the Halloween parade. I tried to explain that everyone else would be wearing a costume, but no matter. There was no way he was wearing the costume to school.

The rain made the day much more complicated than it needed to be. Sky and Pink go to school in buildings that share a playground but are in no way connected. So, day-long rain meant the kids wouldn't parade in one long line around the parking lot but in two shorter lines in separate buildings at. Exactly. The. Same. Time.

Perfect.

The parades were both scheduled for 1 p.m. Both kids wanted me there, so I had to figure out how to make that work.  Over breakfast I'd told the kids that I'd go to see Pink first and then Sky, hoping that somehow they'd be staggered.

They weren't.

Despite the fact each school has more than 200 kids, Sky and Pink paraded literally simultaneously. Something I discovered only after I stood in a ridiculously crowded school hallway to watch tens of  preschoolers and kindergarteners shuffle past so I could high-five Pink P before running through the rain to the other building to try to catch Sky. I missed him. But I did see plenty of other kids sporting the same costume he refused to wear. This did nothing to relieve my anxieties about how he was handling Halloween. So, I invited myself to the class party and was deputized as a parent volunteer. When I got there, I encountered a very sullen Sky. Turns out he was anxious about all the forbidden food floating around the room, anxiety no doubt heightened by the fact I'd let him eat a Halloween cupcake at Cub Scouts a few days earlier and he promptly threw it up. After I double checked a few labels and reassured Sky that he could eat some of the stuff, he was much more cheerful.

By the time he got home from school, though, he had 102.5 fever, which probably explains most of his Halloween funk. It also answered the question once and for all of whether he would wear the costume and hit the streets for candy. He opted to keep the cardboard head on after pictures and pass out candies (and no doubt germs -- sorry other moms on our street) to trick-or-treaters. I know I should have banned him to his room, but I didn't have the heart.

As part of the Halloween festivities, we carved our first pumpkin in years. Sky retold the saga of our last pumpkin which amazed me both in its accuracy but also because I didn't realize four years had passed since we last carved a pumpkin. Turns out I was more traumatized by the fate of our last pumpkin than I thought.

Ren hasn't lost his touch. Though this one looks a lot like the kuchisake-onna from Japanese urban legend. Ren claims this was intentional, but I think he may have been trying to figure how to carve such an average-sized pumpkin with such an oversized knife. The kids loved the pumpkin, though. Plus, we have an awesome motion sensor light that makes the pumpkin scream and bark at passers by which meant that most trick-or-treaters didn't have to ring the doorbell because we could hear them scream.

Pink, Stow and I made the candy-gathering rounds in the rain. Neither seemed to mind. Stow acted like an old pro, announcing, "Hi-yo, Tricky, Thank you much!" to anyone who would listen (and even those who wouldn't). When we got home, no one, and I mean no one was going to pry his cold damp candy bag from his hands. Fortunately, all three kids seem to have a very short memory because the candy got put away and no one's asked about it since. Maybe they've just resigned themselves to their destiny of healthy eating.

I love this picture. Somehow this is what it's like to do Halloween at our house.