Happy Halloween!

The Halloween celebration continued this past weekend, first with an Enchanted Evening, hosted by fellow playgroup parents. This is something that Gabriela and Sara (the wife-half of the couple who owns the home) puts on every year. I had heard descriptions about it in years past from friends whose children attended the playgroup, and it sounded like a lot of work. The more I thought about it, though, the easier it seemed. The idea is for each family to create a "scene," made up from a chosen nursery rhyme. You can set up your scene however you wish. These scenes are then displayed and enacted, spaced out along a wooded, candlelit path, which the children then walk along after the sun has gone down, pausing at each scene along the way. The children traveled together in three sizable groups, meaning we had to perform our nursery rhyme three separate times. And treats were handed out after each performance, at each station.

Seeing as Elsa dressed up as a puppy dog this year, I chose "Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone." This seemed to me to be an easy choice. Build a cardboard dog house. Bring along Merckx's collar and leash. Make cookies that look like dog biscuits. Simple enough. But then I waited until the last minute to complete all of the tasks at hand. Jarrett helped me build the dog house, which I think turned out really great (and Elsa is still using it as a toy for her little stuffed puppy). The cookies, on the other hand, proved to be a disaster. I thought I was being all fancy by making gluten-free sugar cookies, not only to benefit myself, but also a little boy who attends playgroup and happens to be gluten free. However, I nearly killed another little boy who has a severe nut allergy by coming close to adding almond flour to my cookie dough. Thank goodness I caught myself at the last minute. So then I tried to improvise, using a combination of recipes. The "dog biscuits" turned into unrecognizable blobs in the oven. Being the slight perfectionist that I am, this would not do. So I finally gave up and ran to the grocery store at the very last minute and opted for the artificial, bagged sugar cookie mix. Gabriela would likely keel over if she read the ingredient list (I nearly did myself), but the dough rolled out, cut out, and baked beautifully -- it was like dealing with play dough!

The only photo I ended up snapping that night was this one of my scene:

I was asked several times by the little ones as to whether my lost dog was really out in the woods. The kids really seemed to enjoy the event, though I do think Elsa was maybe still a little too young to fully appreciate it.

On Sunday evening, we went over to the house of our friends, David and Shelly, where Atticus and Alison and their boys joined us. We had a yummy chili dinner and then the kids decorated Halloween cupcakes. Well, all except our daughter anyway. She was throwing tantrum after tantrum, would not eat a bite of dinner, and I was beginning to wonder if trick-or-treating was going to be a disaster. In the end, though, she really seemed to get into it. As we would approach a house, I asked her, "Now, what do we say when we get to the front door?" Elsa would reply, very enthusiastically, "Trick or treat!" However, when the homeowner actually opened the door and started passing out candy, all you could hear Elsa saying was, "Elsa want candy! Elsa want candy!" She had no idea what candy really was (I don't think anyway) except that it was wrapped in lovely, colored wrapping and certain pieces smelled suspiciously of chocolate. She tried to bite right through the wrappers of a few. The best part, though, was that we got an orange at one house that Elsa immediately wanted to start eating, and some raisins at another, which was the one treat she chose to eat once we got home. Since then she's tried Twix, Reese's peanut butter cups, and Nerds, seeming to like the Nerds the best. She must take after her mommy and daddy.

This one makes me laugh:

As I was putting on Elsa's nose that evening, she insisted that Mommy have one too; thus, I became a cat in very short order.

The biggest excitement of the evening involved something quite scary. We witnessed a little girl of about four years old catch on fire. See the evil illuminary in the photo below?

Well, the little girl was wearing a long cape, which was obviously not flame retardant, and it burst into flames. Thankfully, the stop, drop, and roll approach really does work, and the fire was put out by dropping the girl to the ground. She was not burned at all, but the poor little thing was distraught. Really, all the kids were quite frightened over the incident. It kind of put a damper on the rest of the trick-or-treating, and we were not out much longer after that. Overall, though, we had a fun time. Elsa certainly loved running from house to house and collecting her goods.