The Pre-Party

A lot of our Halloween activities are scheduled before the actual day this year.  In fact, today was extremely busy from start to finish with Halloween events.  I dropped Maddie off at school today wearing part of her costume with the rest tucked away for her to don later in the morning before the school party.  Avonlea and I raced over to gym where everyone was costumed.  She wore her costume longer than I thought she would and even managed to do some tumbling in it.

After gym was over we went and picked up Grandma to come to Maddie's school "parade."  Over at the school we met up with my mom and Nate.  The parade was very cute--all the kids circling around the big room and then stopping to sing some songs.  Avonlea still had her costume from gym and decided that she would look good up front and joined in with the big kids.  I let her stand with Maddie for a bit rather than risk a tantrum if I pulled her away (because how can I explain to someone not quite 20 months old why she was in costume but not part of the festivities?!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may recognize Avonlea's costume from last year.  Beth made it for Nate.  (Wait until you see what she made for him this year.  It's without a doubt the cutest Halloween costume I've ever seen-Nate is perfect for it!) I made Maddie a larger blue one which if you know me, was quite a feat.  I did make her oompa loompa costume a couple years back, but that was minimal sewing and mostly involved fabric glue (and brown dye--what a pain in the butt).  However, I did manage to load the bobbin and thread the needle and use my machine (passed down from a friend) to sew Maddie's costume (and I did use the glue gun for their hair ribbons).  If you see them up close the craftsmanship on Beth's is far superior, but as long as mind holds up through Monday I'll consider it a success!

 

 

After school Grandma offered to take us all to Wendy's so we loaded up and invaded the Wendy's (where we ran into an old friend from high school who was there with his family celebrating after his son's preschool Halloween parade!)

They really chowed down at lunch.  I think poor Grandma may have had indigestion due to her fear that one of the kids was going to fall off the bench or get us kicked out for being too noisy.  The picture below was supposed to be a group shot, but I gave up and only captured the mayhem of trying to get three preschool-aged children who are loaded with sugar and french fries to look at the camera.

We dropped of Grandma and headed home to relax a bit (Avonlea actually ran to her room for her nap and Maddie conked out on the couch) before getting ready again for the costume contest for our town.  Poor Andy was home from work for about 5 minutes before we had to head out again.  I thought the kids would enjoy seeing the other costumed kids and despite some initial fear about a werewolf and ghost they did indeed enjoy it.  None of us left with a trophy (which we expected, although Nate should have won!), but fortunately we're in that sweet spot where the kids were old enough to enjoy it but young enough to not care about the contest aspect.  It was a long day, but a good day.  Now we need to recover a bit before Halloween.

 

 

Avvie was crying because of the scary costume.  But, before long she was saying "me-now, me-now" to the werewolf sitting next to her.  It was a pretty scary mask, but somehow she thought it was a kitty cat, hence her approximation of "meow" which she says all day long to Charles Wallace.

 

 

 

 Isn't he the perfect Prince Charming?  And yes, Beth made his amazing costume.