Creepmania Halloween 2009

Hey guys! They took my computer! Ack! Actually a friend is graciously trying to fix it for me, but my addiction is well seasoned and going cold turkey is giving me the shakes! I have to tell you all about the Halloween parade at school,and all about trick or treating last night, so I grabbed my husband's iPhone and am doing it primitive style.

So, my kids go to a new charter school that just opened, and it is pretty fantastic but everything has had to be invented as we go along. Yesterday was the first Halloween celebration, and they decided to go old school and host a costume parade. I love costumes and I was tickled to see a tiny mother nature, a god Apollo, and even my own little vampire and cleopatra marching proudly by. The kids each had parties in their classrooms and I took off of work to be there. That may have been an irresponsible decision considering I missed two days just crying, but I really want to enjoy this stuff with the girls while they are still kids. I have missed so much of their toddlerhood in sharing custody, I can't bear to miss out on any more.

I helped out in my vampires' class first. They had a sugAr buffet with homemade pumpkin pie, crafts to paint and a homework pass to color- obviously, the teacher is awesome. He told me that he went crazy at the craft store the night before because they didn't have what he needed and the phillies game was starting!!!! In this area we have a healthy mix of Yankees and phillies fans and everyone was on the edge of their seats with the two local favorites head to head in the world series. The teacher is a BIG Phillies fan, and had the kids make Go Phillies signs to hang all over his door. Some kids could not be coherced into this blasphemy, and wrote Go Yanks.

In Cleopatra's class, we had the lights down low and all the kids had scary stories they had written to read and healthy snacks to munch. Someone even sent goody bags in with brand new crayons and gluesticks inside! Score! There is a comfy couch with blue velour flowers on it in Cleopatra's classroom, and I got to sit on it. I am pleased to see that my preconceived notion that this school was going to be full of nothing but the progeny of rich, white, yuppies-turned-greenies(gruppies?) is absolutely not the case. The school is very diverse and there are a full rainbow of skin colors inside. I'm not quite sure how that happened because all of the planning meetings that I went to were a sea of subarus with pithy liberal bumpersticks, and white faces, but I am happy.

They go trick or treating on the friday before Halloween around here, which I haven't quite gotten used to yet, but we had great fun nonetheless. We went with a huge pack of friends and neighbors...five kids, five adults, and the cutest little bulldog puppy you ever laid eyes on. I am highly irritated that so few people in this neighborhood leave their porch lights on, but I have already repeatedly commented on the un-neighborly, irrationally fearful attitude of the people in our city. Gah! What's gonna happen if you give candy to trick or treaters!? I'm not sure why, but off porch lights seriously bug me. Ok, if you've got religious reasons, but trick or treating is a great exercise in being part of a community, a skill grossly undervalued in modern times. I would say only 30% of houses participated in our neighborhood.

My neighbor across the street lead by example. He has a small apartment, which often are overlooked on the trick or treating circuit, so he set out a cardtable on the sidewalk, with a strobe light, and a huge bowl of individually constructed goodie bags for the children. Not because it is the work of Satan's holiday, but because it's fun to see all the kids on the street running up with happy faces. The kids were optimisticly prepared with pillowcases to load up with candy, and I gave them a quick math lesson...THE MORE HOUSES YOU HIT, THE MORE CANDY YOU GET, SO RUN YOU LITTLE BUCKAROOS!!!! It was good.