Preschool Halloween Party

Christopher's preschool celebrated the weekend before Halloween. I don't have any individual shots of my children, and didn't feel it right to post pics of others' children, so here are some mood shots of the evening. We started out with a few adults/older siblings up on "Crystal Gnome's mountain" (otherwise known as the wooded hill at preschool) handing out goodies at stations. One station had candy, another had cute little pipe cleaner spiders, and my station had little spice bags made by another Mom. I was dressed as an Egyptian queen mummy, so I called the bags "embalming spices." My station was the most popular as there was a tub of "boiling" dry ice there. A few of the older boys stayed with me the whole time, stirring the pot and putting leaves and twigs in it.

Jeff carved the awesome owl pumpkin to contribute to the decorations. Michael was a tiger, same as for trick-or-treating. The preschool (Waldorf-based Prairie Flower Children's Center) frowns on media characters, especially violent ones, so instead of Batman, Christopher chose to be a sheep. One day a few weeks ago he came down from upstairs wearing my gray slippers on his feet, Jeff's socks on his hands, and a white handled basket upside down on his head and proclaimed he was a sheep. We modified the idea a bit for the preschool party and borrowed an actual sheepskin (which wouldn't really stay on, oh well).

I made the cream cheese pumpkin, above, and provided crackers. The stem is a large twisted pretzel, the eyes and nose are raisins (cut in a triangle for the nose), and the mouth, out of desperation, was made from a strawberry Tootsie Roll from Christopher's 4th of July parade stash (yes we still have a big bag left over, lol). I don't have a picture of the cheeseball at the party, but the Tootsie Roll got all warm from me molding it into a smile shape, and started to melt...it looked way cool, like a bloody dripping mouth! (Maybe not the greatest thing for a non-scary preschool party, but one of the other dads thought it was great.) And I have to say, this was my idea from start to finish...I'm not saying no one else ever thought of a cheeseball pumpkin, but I didn't/don't know anything about it. I don't come up with too many original ideas, so :-P

The children bobbed for apples hung on strings from the ceiling, played outside a bit, and then we played a game I found on the internet: I bought a skein of cool black fiber/yarn and rewound it in a ball. We sat in a large circle and the chilren threw the ball back and forth while the adults held onto the fiber until it became a large spider web. The kids all threw their pipe cleaner spiders on it and we bounced them up and down, then they ran in the middle and got all tangled up and giggled and giggled.

There was a quick story time, then cleanup. Unfortunately Michael continued his sometimes habit of hurting himself as we are leaving someplace (he got a huge knot on his forehead and a bloody nose this summer as we were leaving the Bible School picnic): He was standing by Gray on the stone stairs, and next thing I knew, a couple feet away, he had tumbled down one or 2 stairs and was crying. He bit his lip and needed one stitch below his lip...his first (and I'm sure, not last) stitch. So I had to take him to the ER where I work and have Dr. Fisher sew him up. He was fine by the time we got there and just wanted to explore. One of the nurses commented she could see how he could get hurt, as active as he is.