We spent a lot of September, and some of October, discussing various costume ideas. I was adamant that we would make no costume decisions until after my birthday. After many ideas floated by Kiddo, once she found her old Snow White costume, she knew exactly what she wanted to be, and I spent an hour and half repairing the ripped tulle so it was ready. (Not to be confused with the second time, my husband and I tag teaming the mending of the gigantic rip across the front.) She was very excited to be a beautiful princess, because they are not scary and are nice, which is exactly what Kiddo wants from life. We tried to convince Babs to be a little witch, my husband even bought her a hat. But she told anyone and everyone that would listen that she was going to be Jessie. So the day before the party I bought her a Jessie hat, and the day of the party I made her some Jessie pants, and a braid for the hat. She was very, very excited.
I also invited a girl from Kiddo's school and her mom to the party. I may not have done that had I known what my ward party would be like. First, the lights in the gym were almost all off, so it was pretty dark (mood lighting I know). They announced that adults were encouraged to be in costumes, so I made my first costume in decades. (No pictures, sorry, but also no big deal. I sewed some leaves on my brown T-shirt and went as fall. I'll tell you what though, small kids loved it.) And, as announced, there were lots of adults in costumes, and many of them were pretty scary for little kids. No masks, of course, just dark face paint. How could I have expected this? The end result of the lights, noise, and costumes was that Kiddo shut down, and did not want to associate with any one. In fact, she spent about half the activity sitting out in the (well-lit, quiet) foyer with my husband, leaving me there with our potential new friends. Thank goodness for Babs, our little ambassador, who played all night with Kiddo's preschool friend. In fact, the two of them are now better friends than Kiddo and the girl.
Babs did take two breaks from playing. One was for a diaper change, and the other was when she found one of the five-year old boys who dressed as Woody. Babs spotted him, and yelled "WOODY!" then ran up to him and said, "It's me! Jessie!" The boy was not excited to see Jessie, and pulled his hat low over his face, as if this would hide him, and tried to get away. I really should have grabbed her, but it was so funny the way she was chasing him, yelling about how here she was, Jessie! But then he looked so uncomfortable I finally tried to convince her to stay at the table.
When we got the trunk-or-treat portion of the party, a small announcement was made. "It's raining." I assumed that would be followed by an announcement that we'd move it indoors, but no, they just let us know it was raining. In the 10 minutes we were outside it moved from a sincere sprinkle to thunder, lightening, and serious rain fall. So we yelled a brief goodbye to our visitors, strapped soaking wet children into our van and came home.
Compared to that, our Halloween was pretty tame. Preschool was still cancelled that day (see our hurricane event), so we just stayed home again. After bribing our children to eat some dinner, we layered them up with multiple undergarments, and they went trick-or-treating with their dad. They visited ten or so houses, and by then their small buckets were full, their daddy was tired of carrying Babs, and he brought them home. They LOVED it! (My husband was not as sour as this picture would lead you to believe. But I was pretty sure that asking him to take another picture would not lead to a happier face.)
