You would have thought that this year would have been the perfect Halloween. It had a lot of things going for it. It was on a Saturday - we could party the whole day long! It was quite a nice warm day. It was also a full moon, and not only just full, but it was the second of the month, making it a blue moon. Also daylight saving time was ending that day so we had an extra hour. The conditions were perfect! But......you know. Covid.
We really did have a fun Halloween but of course it wasn't the same. Luckily we had a couple of heroes swoop in and save the holiday for us.
For starters, Emma's elementary school decided to host an outdoor parade a few days before Halloween. She and I had a good time walking around the corner, looping around the school and saying hello to many beloved teachers and staff. Emma had the most intricate costume this year of all the kids - and it wasn't too hard. I'm so used to my kids having major demands for their costumes every year and me scrambling to piece them together. Only Emma had a specific character she wanted to be. She was The Painted Lady from the Avatar cartoon. Well, more specifically, she was one of the characters from the cartoon dressing AS the painted lady. Don't ask me. I've never seen Avatar. (I'm such a loser, I know. ) Anyway we just ordered a few things from Amazon, stopped at a craft store, and voila. The Painted Lady.
On Friday, the primary put together a scavenger hunt at a park. Emma is almost ready to graduate out of the primary but she and I decided to head over anyway. It was really for younger kids but it was so fun anyway. She and I had a nice walk through the park, hunting down clues and saying hello to people we hadn't seen in so long. Here's a photo of a very cute family dressed up as the Curious George gang.
Halloween itself, falling on a Saturday, really got taken up with all of the stuff we needed to get done! It was a super warm day, perfect for raking up leaves and finishing our coop. A storm was heading in the next day and we wanted to get cleaned up, so some raking happened. Plus Troy and I were just so close to getting the chicken coop done for the season. We didn't get it totally done that day but we finished a lot of the major left-over stuff. It took up a good chunk of the day.
In the afternoon I got the kids to do some pumpkin carving. It was actually really fun to get them into it and they created some fun faces. I might have a pumpkin in the mix as well.
I know a lot of neighborhoods out there just totally skipped the trick-or-treating. And some others totally went ahead with it the way they always did. I'm sure there were trick-or-treaters here and there around us with some houses setting up a little treat table outside and others letting kids know not this year. We actually got one set of trick of treaters - we felt bad! We never get trick or treaters! We didn't buy candy, and not just because of covid, but because we never buy candy because we never get kids here. It was weird. We did not do trick-or-treating because we were provided with an alternative activity, thank the stars!
The youth leaders at our church were so awesome. They put together a big-kid scavenger hunt. And it was not joking around. They invited Emma to join in since she will age up into the youth group starting in January. The clues for this scavenger hunt were ALL over the place - from the cemetery to South Temple to the University. The kids split up into small groups (and wore masks) and walked for about 4 miles, taking over 2 hours to do it. I know they were tired but that had such a great time. The clues were clever and funny (Thank you Emily!) and I was thrilled that the kids were able to socialize and get some treats and celebrate the holiday.
Before heading out on the hunt, the kids got dressed up in their costumes. Romney was a vampire - it was so cute, she and two other friends all dressed up as vampires but were totally different from each other. One was what Romney calls "historically accurate," which she says means dressed in 1700s garb and had tuberculosis. The other just wore all black. And Romney of course was the classic Dracula type. So fun.
Chase...well...usually he has a very specific character he wants to be but really didn't have the heart for that this year. He just put in his weird contacts from last year and wore his pikachu pjs and called it good.
And me? Well....I decided at the last minute that I needed to channel my mother, the Halloween Troll. She bought this costume from a theater and absolutely loved wearing it whenever she could. She even showed up unannounced and uninvited at Troy's work one time dressed in the costume. That was funny. I did not go anywhere in this troll suit but I did enjoy wearing it and thinking about my mom. I think everyone else thought I was extremely weird.
So we had a happy Halloween, even though it had absolutely zero trick-or-treating. The costumes were less over-taking this year which was good, and thanks to Emily making prizes for the scavenger hunt, we seem to have as much candy sitting on top of our fridge as ever we do.
No comments:
Post a Comment