Halloween partiessss etc

Well I am preparing to have a kids halloween party. We are expecting 10 kids plus our own, only 2 invitees aren't coming, but one is the kids "cousin" and the other is a good friends son, so they will be here another day. I made spikey spidey cake, I decorated about a dozen cookies, made the cheese swamp dip, bat puffs, witches fingers. We are also having swamp punch, blue tortillas(seem spookier than plain), eerie crudite, and some ghoulish brains, worms, and spiders. I have several games lined up: a treasure hunt, pin the face on the jack-o-lantern, mummy wrapping, pumpkin making contest, and bobbing for apples, a 2007 more sanitary version(own pail, own apple!). The kids each have parties to go to after our party too, plus one of our guests is staying longer, so busy day. Good thing Mia is helping, because Dave got notified he is flying on Sat 2 days ago. I was not impressed, but what do you do, it is the nature of the business. Noni then has another party to attend on Sunday as well.

Well I now add this after the fact, the parties went really well, the kids had a blast! Our party was 5 yo's for 1 hour, then the second hour was the 5 yo's, plus the 8-9 yo's. We had team activities with older ones paired with younger ones and the kids had a ball. The third hour was just the older girls, then the 4th hour was just Amelia, Keadon and Cameron. It was so much fun, however, next year I will do two separate parties for the sake of simplicity. I feel haloweened out after this weekend, we had no energy to attend a party we were invited to after Amelia got home from her last party at 9pm, so we stayed in.

Sunday we went out for breakfast and skipped gymnastics. The kids were too tired this am after such a long day on Sat. After we dropped off Lauryn at her 3rd party on sunday, we went to the mall for some starbucks and looking around. I ended up getting a hoodie at american eagle, although i am still looking for a new hat and scarf to go with my new coat, and Amelia picked out some marbles at the explore store-she wants to collect them. Lauryn's second party yesterday was a mad science birthday party-very cool, they made slime!

We watched Prom Night massacre IV last night of all things, it was predictable, but kind of fun in a cultish way. We have 3 pumpkins to carve and Lauryn's class is having a halloween party that I need to bring snacks for. The kids are getting lots of wear out of their costumes this year, which is good since they were good costumes. In the back of my head I am getting ready to shift into Christmas mode, I am planning to completely revamp my main tree. I have almost 2 doz new glass balls in etched clear and adding a new color-a shade of almost olivey green, for lack of a better description(gluckenstein), new ribbon in that shade from homesense,and the awesome faux frosted berries I got in Kingston. I am remving my old ribbon garland for good this year-enough years with that. I look forward to the change. The cranberry pillars are all changing to the same green shade with the spiced apple oak as I picked up a ton of them.

I feel melancholy right now, still somber with thoughts of Dad. I also am thinking of impending change. While it is exciting, it is sad too, to close different chapters.