Halloween Weekend, Part I

November 1st is here, so this morning I replaced the ceramic pumpkin and ghost on the kitchen table with the ceramic turkey, and later today I'll get out our little pilgrim figures. More importantly, I scooped up most of the Halloween leftovers and put them in the freezer. This is a little mental trick I like to play on myself. They're out of sight and hopefully out of my mind, then I'll stumble across them in February or March when cleaning out the freezer (optimistically) and think, "Halloween leftovers...goodbye!"

We do what we have to do.

We had one of those weekends that was jam-packed with activities and every sentence ended with, "...and then we had candy." Elaine woke me up at 6:00 one of these mornings and asked if she could have candy. [Picture a 4-year-old tapping on my cheek relentlessly.]

On Saturday, the girls had a birthday party to go to. It was a fancy tea party at a country club, which went from 11 until 2. I had to go to the rehab hospital to pick up my dad and bring him home, but I got them as ready as possible before I left. I helped them with their showers and did their hair and told them wear their robes until it was time to get dressed. Darren said, "I don't think I can handle dressing them. Can't you put their dresses on before you go? Then they can just sit on the couch for an hour."

"Have you met our girls?" I asked him. I then reiterated to them that, for all of Daddy's wonderful qualities, he doesn't do hair, so to please not run around until it was time to leave.

Here they are--didn't he do a great job? The man had to navigate tights and shoe buckles as well as dresses.


Here is Lucy, looking so grown up and poised it takes my breath away. Where did that chubby-cheeked baby go?


When we all got home, they told me all about the tea party. I wish you could hear it in Lucy's voice, which sounds like an odd cross between mine and a Valley Girl, complete with dramatic facial expressions and hand gestures.

"MOM. It was sooooo fun. We decorated our treat bags and played a sugar cube relay and played musical chairs and I met this really nice girl named Alex but I bet her real name is Alexandra," she said, all in one breath.

"AND WE HAD A PINATA THAT LOOKED LIKE AN ICE CREAM CONE," broke in Elaine, at top volume.

"Then, GET THIS," Lucy added, "You would just DIE, Mom. We had this fancy tea with little sandwiches and blueberry scones that were sooooo yummy and cake and ice cream and the cake was pink with flowers and the ice cream was golden and looked kind of like pumpkin ice cream but it didn't taste like pumpkin ice cream and we had THREE drinks--I had all three--water, lemonade and tea but at first the tea wasn't sweet but then they passed around sugar and I took one of those little blue packets and added then and then it was sooooo sweet and tasted really good." Also all in one breath.

The next day was Halloween, and I tried to get them to settle down in the afternoon but you know that was a completely lost cause. At 5:30 (we had weird hours this year: 5:30 to 7:30), they were dressed and ready to go. Since the day after Halloween last year, Lucy has been saying she wanted to be an American Indian. Elaine wanted to be Fancy Nancy until a few weeks ago when she adamantly changed her mind and decided to be Raggedy Ann. She adores Raggedy Ann. I ordered her costume, and it just got here on Friday.

On Thursday, Katie and I took all the kids in their costumes to visit my dad in rehab, so I threw together a Fancy Nancy outfit for her then. But she was relieved that her Raggedy costume arrived in time for trick-or-treat.


Here is the back view so you can see the papoose tied to Lucy's back. (We don't have an Native American dolls. How negligent of us. So, we just used her Bitty Baby.)


And here is my dear little Raggedy Ann.


They ran around in the cold to all our neighbors and got more candy to add to their Trunk-or-Treat stash from Wednesday and the pinata stash from Saturday.

However, the most exciting part of the weekend happened Saturday night, but I'll leave you hanging until tomorrow.

I'll give you a hint though: Meow.