Halloween

I had big plans for Halloween this year. I was gonna hit every haunted house/attraction I could find. Halloween crafts all week long, Halloween meals, jack-o-lanterns, fun kids outings, the whole bit.

Well, the month slid by... it came down to the last week and I hadn't hit a single haunted house yet. Derek's on one of his more annoying rotations that has him up at 5:30 and home at 5:30, so he's always tired and not interested in haunted anything.

And I find myself halfway through the week and my babysitters are all going to be at a Halloween party- together. Not that I expected to get anyone-- I mean, c'mon, it's Halloween. What kid doesn't have plans?

So at this point, I decide to pour all my Halloween effort into Friday and Saturday. Friday morning is Avril's Halloween book parade--- dress up as a character from a book and bring the book and march around the school twice while all the parents cheer their kids on.

Avril's costume for Halloween this year is a devil costume. Know any good childrens books about devils? Yeah, me neither. So we opted for the easier route-- a Cinderella costume which she already had for a Cinderella (ok, princess) book she already had.

Isn't my little girl beautiful?

I didn't use enough hairspray or something, because by the time her parade was to start (30 min later), her hair looked like this. Oh, well. She's still so stinkin' cute.

So that night my plan was to hit IHOP for their free Scary Face Pancakes for kids under 12 and then the mermaid show at the Princess Kaiulani Hotel.

Well, neither of those things happened, but we did miraculously find a sitter (a friend of mine hooked us up. How awesome is she?!), so we took advantage of a Halloween date night and got delicious sushi and went to Zombie Prom. Classic love story-- boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love. Parents forbid girl to see boy, girl breaks up with boy, boy commits suicide in local nuclear power plant. Girl mourns boy, boy comes back to life as zombie, campaigns for equal rights for zombies so he can graduate high school and take his girlfriend to prom.

If you ever get the chance to see it, you should. Definitely made for a fun date night.

Saturday morning we got up, made our own scary pancakes (the kind of scary pancakes that it takes about three guesses to figure out what it's supposed to look like and why it's scary) and got dressed.

Borders was "supposedly" doing a Halloween activity with scary stories, a puppet show, a craft and a parade. So we showed up all dressed up and made up and all excited....

and ok, an hour or so late... and of course missed it. I thought with all that stuff we might at least catch the parade by then, but no such luck. Maybe the wrong Borders? Anyway, I let the girls pick out a few books and used my coupon (40% off!) and went home, pretty let down and tired...

By the time we got home, Xandri was asleep, Roman was still napping, Derek was still watching football and Avril wasn't too happy because the day hadn't been fun enough yet.

So we discussed what to do with the rest of the time-- trick or treating and festival thing at Aloha Tower or jack-o-lantern carving and no more driving until the ward trunk-or-treat slash potluck. She opted for jack-o-lanterns and trunk-or-treat, so we got out the pumpkin and she designed the face and I cut it out.

By the time I finished, I was done with Halloween. I got my expectations up too high and tried too hard (well, ok, hard, but not hard enough since they fell through from my own lack of planning) to do all these extra special things that the kids didn't really care about. And then ran out of energy when the day wound down to what they really did want to do.

But I pulled it together anyway and we went to the trunk-or-treat slash potluck (about thirty minutes late which didn't improve my mood any) but when we got there....

"Look at the camera, Roman!"

Xandri made this face BEFORE Daddy said "Silly faces!"



Silly Faces

And why was Roman missing from the previous pictures?

Ahh..... here we go....

The sole picture I got of Derek that actually turned out. Hawaiian pirate. Meaning pirate top, bottom in flipflops and cargo shorts.

and found that we were actually quite fashionably late and it was an easy, laid-back affair (c'mon, where did I think I was? We're in Hawai'i!) I let it all go and enjoyed the potluck (I was a taker this time, I'll admit it) while the kids ran around with their friends and played on the playground equipment.

When it was time for the trunk-or-treat, there weren't many cars, but they had a lot of candy. By the time the kids were done and we left, I think every kid had gone around to each car at LEAST five times. Which worked out fine for us since that was pretty much the only trick-or-treating they got in this year.

All in all, Halloween was fun for the kids, which is the most important thing in my book. It was disappointing and stressful for me (except the things we actually did), but ended well.

So, if I DO have any lurkers out there, you know, you people who read my blog but never comment, I'm asking you to step out of the shadows and give me your ideas. What do you do to make holidays and birthdays special? What kind of traditions do you have for special days, any of them really, but Halloween specifically?...... Bueller?..... Bueller?.....