Thankfully the day before the festival was a Saturday, and Brian went to his parents house to work on a car with his dad and took both kids along with him. Since they ended up eating lunch and taking naps at Nana and Granddad's house, I was left with the whole day to finish up costumes. When they got back home that afternoon, the costumes were ready for a test run. Sarah was so excited that she made sure that I did her make up as well!
Nathan's costume needed just a little more tweaking (finish the hat and modify the tail so it wasn't so heavy), but it was in excellent shape the next afternoon for the Fall Festival.
The kids LOVED all the different inflatables they had at the church. They first spent lots of time in the bouncy house, but then when I convinced them to try the giant slide they were hooked for the rest of the night. Nathan must have gone down this slide 20 - 30 times, and Sarah almost as many! They both loved getting major air as they jumped their way off the top of the slide and Nathan always wanted "Mr. Daniel" (Brooks, who was one of the men monitoring the chaos) to watch him as he went down the slide!
After taking a few pictures, I realized that videos would do better justice to the kids' experience. Here is a longer one:
And here is one that gives a better view of Sarah. Unfortunately the only good angle I got of Sarah was the very first video and its pretty jerky since I hadn't figured out exactly how best to record (I took a couple but could never figure out which side which kid would be sliding down).
After all that fun, it was time for the actual Trick-or-Trunk portion of the night. Just like last year, the kids combined "Happy Halloween" and "Trick-or-Treat" into their own greeting of "Happy Trick-or-Treat!!".
Now fast-forward to Friday, which was both a school day and Halloween! The kids were encouraged to dress up for school that morning and Brian and I both got to be there for the kids' Costume Parade. Here's Nathan...
...and with his preschool class!
And Sarah? Well, I had commented to Brian earlier in the morning that I wasn't sure how this was going to go with dropping off Sarah (still with tears every day), then seeing her again, then her having to separate again. As expected, it didn't go smoothly, as you can see from this video where Sarah's class starts out the parade.
She refused to leave my lap and join her class for the rest of the parade or for her class picture. So I didn't force the issue, but I was so glad that Daddy was there so he could handle dropping her off twice in one morning!
But here we are Halloween night, looking cheerful again! The weather was cold and rainy, so we decided to take the kids over to the West End Trick-or-Trunk (which, brilliantly, was held inside the building!). David and Carroll went with us while Gran stayed at our house to hand out candy (though only one lone trick-or-treater came to the door the entire night. Our house is at the top of a hill on the edge of our neighborhood, so I wasn't counting on many kids anyway). We had a nice time at West End, the kids enjoyed it (though by that time they certainly didn't need more candy) and te adults got a chance to visit with some old friends. A wonderful evening was had by all!
Great costumes and smiles
ReplyDeleteGran