chuck e cheese

By the time Halloween finally rolled around, the month had seemed never-ending! I don’t know when Halloween turned into Christmas, but it seemed like there was something Halloween-related going on every day of October. We were pretty selective with the activities we did end up doing, but we still felt sick of Halloween by the time it got to the actual holiday!

Decorating pumpkins at preschool:

As the Room Mom, I helped out with this activity, and man, was painting pumpkins with 20 preschoolers stressful! I had to go home and take a nap afterwards.

Earlier in the month I had helped out Amelia’s class with a monster craft.

Halloween dress rehearsal for Meredith.

Preschool Harvest Party. Amelia just loves her teacher, Miss Becky.

The school’s Harvest Party always features a bunch of games, and this year, Samantha won a beta fish by successfully tossing a ping pong ball into the fish bowl. She named the fish Vivian and a month later we ended up getting it two new friends, who recently died after Jake changed the water too quickly and they went into shock. Vivian remains the lone survivor.

Grace and Zen class Halloween dance.

Decorating cupcakes with friends.

As a Room Mom, one of our biggest events of the year is the Annual Dinner. The most stressful part is constantly bugging everyone for donations to our class basket, which is then auctioned off at the dinner, as well as finding restaurants and people with connections to donate higher-ticket items for the live auction. We spent the better part of two months planning it, and I’m pretty sure other parents were avoiding me by the end since they were so sick of me bugging them for donations, but this year’s rodeo-themed dinner ended up being a hit!

The Hamilton tickets Jake was able to get donated from a vendor of his firm went for the highest price of any item during the auction, and I was happy to have finally won the bid for one of the class platters (each class decorates a platter with their thumbprints and some kind of design– parents are always fighting over them). I also won the “Family Fun Night” class gift basket which included a bunch of movies, board games, a snuggly blanket, a popcorn maker, and pizza gift cards. Amelia made me promise to win one of the most popular items– an ice cream social with Miss Becky and three friends, but I was outbid by one of the other Room Moms. There’s always next year!

Phi and Sarahs’ kids don’t go to our preschool, but they were nice enough to support our school, buy tickets and join us for date night. So fun to to have them there!

This is the closest Jake has to anything cowboy themed in his wardrobe.

Jake’s back was killing him for days, but he said it was worth it.

Our town does a Harvest Celebration and I’m not sure exactly what it entailed since Jake took the girls while I… napped? Got stuff done? I don’t remember. But the girls came back looking like enjoyed the carnival. And since I’m not a huge fan of carnivals, it worked out well for everyone.

On another random Daddy Daughter Excursion, Jake decided to take the girls to Chuck E. Cheese of all places. They always come back from school talking about it (I’m assuming it’s a favorite amongst the other preschoolers), but the girls had never been. Finally, their dream came true!

It was everything they had hoped for and more. Except they never really talked about it again and haven’t said anything about wanting to go back, so that’s a win for me since I don’t really want to go there.

Finger-lickin’ bbq chicken!

On Halloween morning, the twins had a preschool field trip to Zoomars. Since I chaperoned last year’s field trip, Jake took over on this one, but I decided to drive over there with Meredith at the last minute since we didn’t have any plans that morning anyway. It was the best of both worlds– we all got to hang out, but I didn’t have to ride the bus! I felt kind of bad thinking about Jake’s very long legs being squished into those tiny bus seats, but I had to suffer through last year, so it was his turn!