fall festival

Last night was the Fall Festival at school. Basically a big Halloween party for the elementary school students with games, food, and trick-or-treating.

Here we have our Dread Pirate Roberts (with his awesome sword — silver yarn crocheted over a coat hanger. Josh bent the handle into the correct shape and I wrapped it with black fabric to give it the right grip) and our Tae Kwon Do black belt. In the background is our little pumpkin. She is twice as big as last year so the pumpkin “dress” has become a “shirt.”

Calvin is dressed up as a cool middle schooler. He had a birthday party to attend after the school party so he didn’t want a costume.

Both gyms were set up with carnival games and the boys went around collecting candy and prizes.

One of their favorites was the Angry Birds game: they threw beanbags made to look like Angry Birds at other bean bags made to look like pigs. Knock down the boxes and crush the pigs to win!

The Angry Bird bean bags were really cute! There was a line for that game all night.

Then it was time to line up outside for trick-or-treating. One of Caleb’s best friends (dressed as a tent).

Another one of his good friends — adorable Princess Leia. 

This is why he came home from school wanting to be a vampire. He talks about this girl from his class all the time.

Caleb and his teacher — Mrs. Bernhardt. The reason why there are no pictures of Carter is because as the hundreds of kids lined up outside the school building Carter and a friend saw an opening at the front if the line and squeezed in. Of course he tells me all this later when I finally caught up with him and asked where he disappeared to. 

Calvin helped out with the “throw a wet sponge and hit a teacher” booth.

Girly was happy just hanging out on my back. I couldn’t tell if she was really tired, or just happy with so much to see.

 Back in line for more games and more prizes. 

Another one of Caleb’s best friends. Are you sensing a theme here? 

Finally I caught up with Carter and his partner in crime. His mom was in charge of the Fall Festival so he and Carter got their pick of the candy stash in her office. This is when I found out that after all the work I put into his pirate costume, he went around telling people he was a ninja. Sheesh.

Picking through the stash at home. Camille wanted to make sure she got her share of the loot. I made sure the boys knew how lucky they were cause back in the olden days when I was a kid, I didn’t get to eat my Halloween candy. We would dump it all in a pile and each of us could pick out 3 pieces to keep. The rest was “thrown away.” I found out later that mom kept a stash, Kristy kept a stash, Carrie kept a stash, and knowing Wendy, she probably did too. I’m the only one with Halloween = no-candy memories.

Still trying to get to the good stuff . . . actually, because they don’t do Halloween here the stores don’t sell bags of miniature “good” candy. Most of it was those weird tootsie-roll shaped chews like my grandma used to eat, suckers, and hard candies. No Smarties, no Sweet Tarts, no M&Ms, no Nerds, no Jujy Fruit, no Whoppers, no Snickers, Milky Way, or 3 Musketeers, no Hershey’s minis (Special Dark) and no candy corn. I had one Twix, which was the best Twix I’ve ever had, a 1/2 of a Bounty (which is like a Mounds — coconut inside chocolate) and a few bites of  the different chews to see if there were any worth eating (nope). So, pretty much a normal, candy-free Halloween for me.