Hooray for a Halloween on Saturday!--no rush getting kids fed and costumed, etc., etc., the only drawback was how many costumes Lucy could change into before actually trick-or-treating. I thought it would be such an easy-going holiday! AND THEN, ANNE & LUCY, as they were "playing house" Friday after school (which is literally 90% of their waking time at home) talked about having a Halloween party, and before I knew it they were making REAL invitations, and begging me to be able to go and deliver them all. They had hand-written 7 or 8 of them with marker on white printer paper. Honestly, I was in the middle of the book, and mostly wanted to keep reading. I tried to explain that parties took a LOT of planning, and their friends needed more notice, but that maybe we could have a fun turkey party before Thanksgiving? Plus, the invitations said the party started at 10:30, and that lunch would be served! "What will you serve for lunch?" But Anne had an answer for everything. She drew a line through the lunch service part, made a list of all of the activities they could do, agreed to clean the house for it, and I just relented! When they got home, and told me how many they had left on porches (any time there was no answer, OR if there was a car in the driveway, and they didn't want to interrupt?!), I figured we may have a neighbor or two come over to play, which is no different from any other day, so no big deal. That night though, I did get a couple of texts from Moms wondering if I knew they had dropped the notes off, and thankfully thinking it was adorable that they were so unguided! I still figured we'd have 4 kids tops. The girls got their jobs done that morning, and Spencer and Emily joined in the fun baking cookies to decorate while I contributed some Candy Corn banners for the window (I'm sure every child's favorite part!). And would you believe, we had 6 children show up?!! Anne ran them through all of the games until noon, when two of the boys were begging me to convince their parents that they could miss the basketball game and stay at our house all day ;). The whole thing was a hilarious hit--and I learned a lot from my 7 year-old about party planning---I spend WAY too much effort on things that don't matter, and the fun part--getting everyone together is really simple and worth it! (Yes, I even got anxious at this one, and snapped a few times before people started coming b/c of too many diapers on the floor or dishes in the sink--I have a long way to go!). Anne REALLY thrived at being in charge of her own thing like that--most days I just want to ask her to take over for me ;).
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| Her activity list and the bats she had cut out to decorate |
We had Jack-O-Lantern pizza for dinner since I'm the only fan of dinner in a pumpkin around here, and then watched Batman between trick-or-treating shifts. The older children had a little wave of homesickness not being able to have that zany kind of fun they'd enjoyed with longtime friends the past few years, plus, it's been long enough that you kind of get that feeling of, "Ok, I've been a good sport about this, can we be done being "new" now?--and it doesn't just go away. The littles were a good pickmeup though, and overall, it was a fun day.
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