Thursday Thirteen #13 - Spooky!

Thirteen Things about How Our Halloween Went So I just realized that my 13th Thursday Thirteen post falls right after Halloween... Weird, huh! So here are 13 words (and related photos) describing how our Halloween was this year. Sick - Why do we always get stuck with these non-illness sicknesses? Hannah was definitely sick but by the afternoon she was acting fine and she seemed completely herself by evening. She didn't eat much but she hasn't thrown up in over 24 hours now. Hopefully that's all there was to it and she's over whatever it was. I feel bad that she had to miss her school Halloween party, but there wasn't any way we could've sent her to school. Trick - Well the weather certainly played a trick on us, that's for sure. It threatened rain all day but never really followed through - until right at trick-or-treat time. Our 60-ish degree temperatures got colder throughout the day and the girls ended up trick-or-treating in cold, windy weather that spit rain at various intervals. Not the best conditions, that's for sure! Treats - Somehow I ended up buying more bags of candy than I thought I had and then we didn't get nearly the amount of trick-or-treaters that we have in previous years, so we have a total of 8 bags of candy left over. Definitely more than we can eat on our own! A lot of it will go to school with the girls to donate to the library and I'll probably take some into work as well. Parade - I did make it to the school parade and got to see Abby and her class all dressed up. The staff and teachers were all dressed as chefs and paraded with each class. It was still somewhat warm out for the parade thankfully, although the wind had already picked up by then. It seemed like there was a lot of variety this year for costumes! I did see quite a few power rangers, Darth Vaders, black cats and princesses/fairies but there were also some pretty creative ones, like one of Abby's classmates who was dressed as a box of movie theatre popcorn. I also noticed a definite lack of Disney princesses as compared to previous years. Party - I was able to stay for a little bit of Abby's class party in the afternoon. They had several fun activities planned like wrapping TP around kids to make a mummy, making candles in baby food jars and their snack was making spiders out of Ritz crackers, cheese spread and pretzel sticks. Here's how Abby's turned out: Kids - My kids were excited to see so many of the friends they know from riding the bus that came to our door trick-or-treating. And we found out that one of the kids in Hannah's class lives just a street over from us! 'Snacks' - This is what Becca kept asking for after we got home from trick-or-treating. It was hard to keep her away from the bowl of candy we were handing out - she was constantly (and very insistently) demanding "a-s'ack! a-s'ack!" (a snack! a snack!) after I'd let her taste a couple of the treats in her bucket. I'd have let her eat a few more except that all she was doing was taking a bite out of them and then wanting something else. I did eat her leftovers though - couldn't let them go to waste, of course! But boy did she get mad when I wouldn't give her any more! Shy - Becca is and my other two girls certainly aren't. They have no problem whatsoever with going up to people's houses and asking for candy. Becca, on the other hand, didn't want people coming anywhere near her and buried her head in my shoulder whenever someone tried to talk to her. After the first house or two she did let them put candy in her bucket though - shyness apparently only goes so far... :) Chair - This is what Abby and Hannah were standing on to hand candy out of our front door. Ron takes the windowpane out of the top half of our screen door (good timing to change from the screen to the glass every fall anyway) and the girls stand on the chair inside the house and just hand out candy through the opening. They LOVE doing this. And even Becca got to hand out a few pieces this year too. Cat - One problem with leaving the top half of the door empty was that our kitten kept jumping through it to get outside. Then she'd jump back in when she realized it was cold and dark and rainy outside. Apparently she'd then forget about the weather because a few minutes later, back outside she'd go. Ron got these pictures of her in one of the trees in our front yard (silly kitty!): Turns - Halloween this year was all about taking turns for us. I usually take the girls down the cul-de-sac street the runs next to our house - we hit several houses along there while Ron hands out candy at home. Then Ron and I swap and he takes the older girls (just Abby this year since Hannah was sick-ish) out while I stay home with Becca (and Hannah this year) to hand out candy. With the cold and rain, Abby didn't want to stay out very long either so she and Hannah took turns handing out candy for the rest of the night. Each of them had a job - one stood on the chair to hand out candy and the other held the bowl up with candy to grab. And then the next time kids came to the door, they switched. This worked fairly well with only one meltdown when Abby didn't want to let Hannah have a turn. Dora - I finally hit upon a way to keep Becca occupied and out of our hair (and the candy bowl). First, we looked through the Toys-R-Us ad to find pictures of Dora. That worked for a while. So then I put on a couple of Dora episodes off of the On Demand and she was enthralled. Not to mention probably in sugar shock as well since she'd had more candy tonight than ever in her life before - which really wasn't actually that much given that she only took a bite of everything, but definitely more than she's used to! Happy - I don't think the girls cared about the weather, being sick or anything else. They seemed to have a blast and that's exactly the way it should be! Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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