preschool halloween party

What happened to wearing your Halloween costume to elementary school to show off to your friends and teachers? Or turning classrooms into haunted houses and having a school-wide Halloween parade? I was disappointed to find out most schools around here don’t allow the kids to wear their costumes on actual Halloween… I guess I will just have to hold on to my fond memories. To compensate, Samantha and Amelia’s preschool had a Halloween party the weekend before and the kids were none the wiser.

Peter Pan received many compliments from other parents on his green tights!

Princess Leia and Tink.

The teachers transformed one of the classrooms into an enormous cardboard box maze, which took the girls’ fairy wings, shoes and crowns as major casualties as they crawled through. Carnival games were the other huge hits.

Samantha and Amelia stood in line forever just to throw a ping pong ball in a fish bowl in the hopes of winning a beta fish. I blew off any chance of them succeeding and told them to go for it. To my horror, Samantha won not one, but TWO beta fish with her amazingly accurate throws. I’m thinking softball career?

Poor Amelia stood in line twice without winning, and couldn’t be consoled, even though Samantha promised to share her fish with her. Fortunately, Miss Debbie said the fish would be available to pick up at the end of the party, by which time we had left and the girls had completely forgotten about them. Phew!

At school the week before Halloween, Samantha and Amelia brought home some cute crafts and were both the Helpers of the Day– their favorite. They brought in a fun Storytime in a Bag book and puppet from the library, “Go Away, Monster,” for their share item and made spiders and monster apple mouths for their snacks. And by them, I mean me.

I contemplated many existential questions (including what is the meaning of my life?) while putting together 30 cracker spiders and apple monsters at 5 a.m. that morning. True confession… I actually enjoy this stuff.

Our neighbor, Nate, came over to decorate sugar cookies with us and the girls were surprisingly willing to share and help him with his cookies.

My sugar cookies pale in comparison to my friend, Jodi’s, who makes the absolute best. We’ve gotten our girls together for cookie decorating three years running and it never gets old.

2013:

2014:

2015:

2016:

Meredith took advantage of me not paying attention and lunged forward. Her reward: delicious frosting!

Burning off sugar and playing ring around the rosie with Allie and Maliyah.

I want to play too!

The day after Halloween, the girls, Maliyah and Allie took their costumes out for one more spin since we weren’t able to get together on actual Halloween. Allie and Meredith were cute as matching Tinkerbells, and Maliyah showed off her very convincing “Argh!” as a “girl pirate.”

Going to the park is actually semi-relaxing for me and Jodi these days because the girls generally keep themselves busy playing games. They especially enjoy tag (monster tag and every other variation), Steal the Bacon, What Time is it Mr. Fox?, Red Rover, and Red Light, Green Light.