Saturday was our branch (church congregation) Halloween celebration. Trying to explain it in retrospect with some semblance of order is too much for my brain, so I'll just cover the highlights:Although our church has a no-mask policy, no one remembered to tell the kids, so some showed up with masks. These were in conjunction with fairly scary costumes, especially if you're almost three. I spent a lot of the beginning of the activity holding Kiddo because she was scared. When the mom figured out, she told the kids to get rid of the masks. They are good kids, so they came up to apologize to Kiddo. At this point, their clothes were associated with the masks though, so she wasn't up for that fun. One of them, attempting to make amends, said "Hit me." How do I explain to this good ten-year old that our family solves our problems differently than that? At the end of the party, the masks re-emerged, and sent our little girl over the edge. We went home without helping clean up.
I had basically one assignment, prepare the trick-or-treating venue. (Many congregations do a trunk-or-treat. As there are few cars in our branch, we chose to set it up in our one hallway.) And I tried to prepare for it. And then found that my planning was co-opted by the Primary President, who changed it to something a little less fun, and nothing like what I had envisioned. Oh well, the kids still enjoyed themselves.
We were supposed to have a pinata. Excellent. Except it was homemade, so it was actually just a cardboard box decorated with a Halloween theme. It was a tough cardboard box. The bat did not split the box, it was finally just opened.
Babs spent a lot of time with her friend Mac. Mac has a thing for crawling to Babs, then pulling at her, and chewing on whatever part of her he can locate - feet, hands, shoulder, face, whatever. They are about the same height, but she has about five pounds on him, which makes a difference.
Although we managed to get the bulk of the primary children to the party, the next day at church, as is typical right now, Kiddo was the only child there.
Despite all this, Kiddo has fond memories of her Halloween experience. "I was a fairy, Sami was a chicken, and Babs was a penguin." The highlight for her was surely musical chairs, which quickly morphed, for her, into dancing on the side with her Daddy. What more could my girl want?
